Post #713433 by tikilongbeach on Wed, Apr 9, 2014 11:10 AM

INGREDIENTS

1/2 ounce simple syrup (see note)
1 1/2 ounces blackstrap rum, preferably Cruzan
3/4 ounce Campari
1 1/2 ounces pineapple juice, fresh or a high-quality brand
1/2 ounce fresh lime juice
Pineapple wedge, for garnish
PREPARATION

1.In a mixing glass three-quarters filled with ice, pour 1/2 ounce of simple syrup, the rum, the Campari, the pineapple juice and the lime juice. Shake until chilled, about 30 seconds. Strain into a rocks glass over one large piece of ice. Top with pineapple wedge.
YIELD: 1 drink
NOTE: To make simple syrup, warm 1 cup sugar in 1 cup water in a saucepan over low heat until dissolved. Cool to room temperature before using. (There will be extra syrup; refrigerate if not using immediately.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/09/dining/a-bird-walks-into-a-bar.html?_r=0
A Bird Walks Into a Bar ...

On the concise drinks menu for the downstairs bar at Celeste, a cocktail den that opened in Chicago in February, there’s a small section titled Classics. The four drinks under that heading are the manhattan (of course), the Negroni (natch), the Brown Derby (a little more arcane, but a classic) and the Jungle Bird.

Jungle who?

In the last year or so, the Jungle Bird, a hitherto obscure tiki drink, has bloomed into a bartender favorite whose popularity goes well beyond the parameters of the resurgent tiki culture. Part of its appeal is simplicity. It has only five ingredients: rum, Campari, pineapple and lime juices and simple syrup.

The cocktail is on the menu at Three Dots and a Dash, the ever-crowded subterranean tiki palace down the block from Celeste. Also in Chicago, the Aviary, a Frankenstein-ish mixology laboratory where cocktails arrive with special equipment, is testing a molecular version on customers. (Spheres of dark rum are involved.)

In New York, you can order the drink at Attaboy on the Lower East Side, the NoMad hotel bar, Lantern’s Keep in the Iroquois New York hotel and Milk & Honey near Madison Square Park. Theo Lieberman, the head bartender at Milk & Honey, fell under the drink’s spell after being served one by Giuseppe Gonzalez at Painkiller, which is now closed. Mr. Lieberman has been pushing it since.

“I honestly think it’s so unlike anything else,” he said. “The two big drinks for bartenders in New York are Negronis and daiquiris, and the Jungle Bird is kind of a perfect hybrid between the two.”

This all amounts to an unlikely second act for a drink invented at the Kuala Lumpur Hilton in 1978, a year when the tiki craze was all but dead and buried in this country. The tiki historian Jeff Berry found the recipe in a 1989 paperback, “The New American Bartender’s Guide,” and reprinted it in his 2002 book, “Intoxica!”

“It definitely was on no one’s radar before I published it,” he said.

Mr. Gonzalez took that recipe and tweaked it, eventually replacing the prescribed dark Jamaica rum with the more intense blackstrap rum. This is what he served at Painkiller, and it is the version Mr. Lieberman offers at Milk & Honey.

Mr. Berry said he knew why mixologists like the drink. “The reason, I am 100 percent positive, is because there’s Campari in it, which makes it the only vintage tiki drink that today’s amaro-loving bartenders can relate to,” he said.

But Fred Sarkis, the program director at Celeste, who also first tasted the drink at Painkiller, said the Campari was just one element that set off his taste buds. “The mix of velvety texture, sweetness, fruit and bitter really captured my attention,” he said.

For the home bartender, it’s a rare tiki drink that can be made without any special syrups or rare rums.