Post #393885 by bigbrotiki on Mon, Jul 14, 2008 4:00 PM

Here's even a Trader Vic's version that is rum only, completely mitout Absinthe, from a 1940s booklet that I lent someone and forgot who (boo hoo):

Vic knowingly changed it and thus renamed it. Even though (if the illustration is supposed to depict Dr. Funk) he seemed to had an inkling that the good Dr. was of Caucasian origin, I doubt he knew about the R.L. Stevenson connection, because he repeats the "Dr Funk of Tahiti" moniker, while we now know that the man lived and practiced in Samoa...

Re-reading the text passage that I started this thread with:

"But his fame spread...from Samoa to Tahiti..."Dr Funk" one hears in every club and bar.."

It appears to me that the DRINK spread to Tahiti and became THE thing there, and so "Dr. Funk of Tahiti" is meant in regards to the cocktail, not the man. I asked Mr. Berry, and he believes that it was here that Don the B picked up the recipe, on one of his early travels.
Both Vic and Don liked a good story, and if they would have been privy to the fact that the cocktail was invented by the physician of a famous South Seas writer, they would have used that.

Which means A.) We now know more than Don and Vic did, and B.) We still need to find the original recipe, the one without rum.

[ Edited by: bigbrotiki 2008-07-14 16:22 ]