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Tiki Central / General Tiki / Opening a new Tiki bar restaurant? What do you look for in a Tiki bar?

Post #793600 by Prikli Pear on Wed, Mar 6, 2019 12:38 PM

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On 2019-02-01 07:01, tikiskip wrote:
If you are more than a bartender, and even higher than a great cocktail maker, a mixologist
start making that new Mai tai.

They're out there, trying. I've been listening to a lot of cocktail-related podcasts, and man, bartenders want to be the one to come up with the new cocktail that creates a sensation. The most recent one is probably the Penicillin, created by Australian Sam Ross in New York circa 2005. It's everywhere now. Look at the ingredients, and you immediately think, "Wow! That looks like a tiki drink!" even though the base spirit is scotch, not rum. And had Ross been working at a tiki bar back then instead of Milk & Honey, it would be. But it wasn't, so folks don't think of it as such.

I've had excellent original cocktails at tiki bars and meh ones. I'm not sure why none of them have taken off. Then again, I'm not entirely clear why anything succeeds or fails--I'd never have guessed that the negroni, of all things, would surge to such popularity in recent years. Sooner or later a tiki cocktail will become a phenomenon, but we probably won't notice until it's already well under way. Goodness knows I'll be the last to know!