Tiki: A Brief History
Generally made with rum, tropical drinks are gaining popularity once again—and we’re not talking about the tooth-achingly sweet drinks, but rather those made with real fruit juices and home-made syrups. The Mai Tai, the Scorpion, the Zombie; drinks that illicit just as much visually as they do taste. They were the crown jewels of a drink movement that took pre-WWII America by storm. Enchanted by relics from tropical paradises, patrons poured into the rum slinging bars in search of the perfect Tiki drink. The idea of Tiki Bars was introduced to the United States in 1934 by a gentleman named Ernest Raymond Beaumont-Gantt, a Louisiana native who had spent time sailing through the South Pacific. Upon his arrival in Los Angeles, Gantt came upon a recently vacated tailor shop on Hollywood Boulevard and opened up the Don the Beachcomber, a bar dressed in artefacts he had collected throughout his travels through the tropics. Post-prohibition, rum was relatively cheap and easy to ...