Post #799745 by mikehooker on Fri, Jan 3, 2020 1:28 PM

Gonna do some nerding out here. So I think we've established that Vic opened the original Honolulu location in 1940 and left by 1941 with Granny Abbott taking over. Here's a postcard sized menu I have that is undated...

...which is presumably earlier than this one somebody else posted...

...where Fred Mosher's name is added. Unless the two of them originally bought out Vic in '41 and then Granny bought out Fred after that. Anyone know?

Anyway, the inside content of both are practically the same. No dates or drink prices included, just clever drink descriptions not unlike ones Vic himself would write. The only indication of age is the place for a 3 cent stamp. I googled when the 3 cent stamp was used to see if I can pinpoint a date but it began in 1932 and didn't change until 1958, so that's unhelpful.

A couple weeks ago I spotted this menu on ebay, which has both owners names, but different content inside, including drink prices. What makes this one special is a hand written letter that is dated July 1945, a whole year after the date many have accepted as when the Mai Tai was created.

A couple things they wrote struck me:

"The owner of Trader Vic's is the originator of the Zombie."
"I just love to go there, it is so nice, just full of Hawaiian atmosphere."

So much to digest in so few words!!!

First off, someone visiting Honolulu is stating they're getting a full Hawaiian experience at Trader Vic's, which was a relatively new establishment on the island and the brain child of a mainlander's idea of paradise. So wish we had more interior pictures of this location to witness what they were taking in.

But what really caught my eye is the statement about the Zombie. We know Vic had nothing to do with this location by that time, or the zombie for that matter. Vic liked to embellish and borrowed heavily from Don, and this establishment continued the rhetoric following his departure. But what I'm wondering, if the Mai Tai was invented in 1944, when did it actually hit the menus of Vic's establishments, and when did it become a phenomenon where every other bar in the world tried to copy it? If this non-Vic owned Trader Vic's is flaunting about drinks that they created, why wouldn't they at least be claiming the Mai Tai as their own, rather than the zombie. My guess is that the Mai Tai wasn't yet a sensation. It doesn't appear on any of the three menus above (although we only know for certain one post-dates the creation of the Mai Tai). But I also have this undated menu from Vic's Hawaii...

...which lists a "Mai Kai" but not a Mai Tai. I've seen this menu advertised as being from 1947 and other Vic menus from his actual establishments from around '44-47 which have no mention of a Mai Tai. If he created the drink in '44, why wasn't it promptly put on a menu?

I want to believe the 1944 story but besides his own sworn testimony and that of the lady who named it, I haven't seen empirical evidence to back it up. Curious when other bars in the US started putting their versions of the Mai Tai on menus. I'm guessing not until the 50s.