Post #368820 by TikiSan on Sun, Mar 23, 2008 10:15 PM

Here's the entire article:

March 23, 2008
Shaken and Stirred
I’ll Have Some Rum, Hold the Umbrella
By JONATHAN MILES

WHEN a former bootlegger calling himself Donn Beach unveiled a potent triple-rum drink named the Navy Grog athis Hollywood restaurant Don the Beachcomber, he reportedly limited customers to two. At Elettaria, a restaurant and lounge that opened late last month in Greenwich Village with the Navy Grog on its menu, there’s no such limit. At least not yet.

“I don’t think it’s a drink to fear,” said Brian Miller, a bartender at Death & Company in the East Village who mans Elettaria’s bar once a week, and who helped, with the bar manager Lynette Marrero, create its cocktail list.

That differentiates it from the infamous Zombie Punch, another one of Don the Beachcomber’s tropical staples available at Elettaria, which comes with a walloping four and a half ounces of alcohol and is restricted to one Zombie per customer.

The Navy Grog — a heady mix of one ounce each of three rums, fresh lime and grapefruit juice, and a softening dose of honey syrup — is the Zombie’s less rowdy cousin. But like the Zombie, it has a rich legend.

It’s a throwback, as all New York cocktails are these days, but from what cocktail historians would deem more “recent” history: the 1930’s. That’s when Ernest Raymond Beaumont-Gantt, as Donn Beach, started serving dolled-up rum drinks at his Polynesian-themed restaurants, kicking off the decades-long “tiki” phase of American drinking. Along with the Mai Tai and Zombie, the Navy Grog was part of his holy trinity of tiki drinks. “These are truly classic cocktails,” Mr. Miller said. “They’re bright, refreshing, with tastes that really pop in your mouth. They’re relics that people should get to know.”

Before too long, however, they may not be able to avoid knowing them. “You’re definitely seeing a big tiki comeback,” said Angus Winchester, a former London bartender and self-described “international bar consultant” who was mixing drinks recently at a tiki cocktail party held by the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States.

Mr. Winchester credits the resurgence to a recent spate of super-premium rums hitting the market — bartenders seeking to showcase these rums are being inexorably led by the ghost of Donn Beach’s old swizzle stick. But there’s a reactionary element at work, too, he said.

“Certain elements of mixology have gotten too dry,” he said, referring to a bar ethos that esteems pre-Prohibition cocktails, sometimes to a point of purism. “Cocktail lists are starting to look like history lessons, with bartenders hiding behind the fact that they’re using the 1812 recipe of a drink rather than the 1814 recipe. Tiki is the antithesis to all that.”

To a degree, anyway. As Mr. Miller said of the Navy Grog: “We’re using the original 1941 recipe.” Yet, pedigree aside, the drink can hardly be called austere. It’s a serious drink that, refreshingly, shouldn’t be taken too seriously.

Unless it proves, um, popular enough for Elettaria to resurrect Don the Beachcomber’s old two-Grog limit. “We don’t want tables overturned,” Mr. Miller said.

NAVY GROG Adapted from Elettaria

1 ounce Demerara rum
1 ounce Gosling’s Black Seal rum
1 ounce Cruzan Estate Light rum
¾ ounce freshly squeezed lime juice
¾ ounce freshly squeezed grapefruit juice
1 ounce honey syrup *
¾ ounce club soda
Orange slice and cherry, for garnish.

Shake all liquid ingredients except club soda together with ice in cocktail shaker. Strain into Collins glass filled with ice, top with soda and add garnish.

Yield: 1 serving

• For honey syrup, mix 2 parts honey with 1 part warm water, then cool.