The Original Hawaiian Mai Tai

In 1953, Bergeron was contracted with the Matson Navigation Co. to produce a food and cocktail menu for their Royal Hawaiian and Moana hotels on Waikiki Beach in the Territory of Hawai’i. Those menu items seemed to make an impression on the tourists and there were plenty of them to speak about their culinary experiences! Hawaiian tourism was really gearing up in the early 1950s and was a veritable phenomenon by the end of the decade when Hawai’i became the 50th state.

The Royal Hawaiian’s menu had ten cocktails including the Mai Tai, an exotic sounding drink that as a key selling point was said to be “from Tahiti.” That sure sounded a lot better than if it was referencing the true origin in Oakland. Trader Vic loved the cocktail so much that he specifically called out the Mai Tai when promoting the menu in early 1953, even though it wasn’t even the featured cocktail. The Royal Planters Punch topped that list of drinks, made with pineapple juice and bold rums. But nobody remembers the Royal Planters Punch because it was the Mai Tai that soon became a sensation on the island. National recognition came soon thereafter, including a 1959 syndicated column that declared that the Mai Tai was the “top tourist tantalizer” supplanting the Zombie. Notable mentions in popular media such as Elvis’ Blue Hawaii cemented the cocktail in the public’s consciousness.

So, what was the original Hawaiian Mai Tai? Published recipes varied slightly, but they all featured the same building blocks and Bergeron himself provided the recipe in this style to a customer in 1956. Rather than expensive long-aged Jamaican rums, the 1950s style Hawaiian Mai Tai used a readily available dark Jamaican rum as a base, with the popular Myers’s being the standard bearer. This Myers’s was 100% pot-still based and issued at 97 proof, making it a little boozy and significantly more flavorful than the expression you find today. A light Puerto Rican rum was used to lengthen the drink and make it more approachable for tourists. Besides the use of both light and dark rum, the sweeteners were always included in equal parts.

This was the Mai Tai that became world-famous.

The Original Hawaiian Mai Tai by Trader Vic Bergeron, 1950s
Juice of one Lime (1 oz)
⅓ oz Orgeat
⅓ oz Rock Candy Syrup
⅓ oz Orange Curacao
1½ oz Light Puerto Rican Rum
1½ oz Dark Jamaican Rum

Many people assume that this original Hawaiian Mai Tai was the version we see today, made with pineapple juice and orange juice and a gigantic dark rum float. But the 1950s Mai Tai was more like the original and continued to be popular throughout the 1960s and beyond; the Halekulani Hotel in Waikiki still serves a Mai Tai in this style. Many Mai Tai recipes published in the 1950s-1960s in books and nationwide newspaper articles used a recipe with these ingredients. In fact, pineapple juice wasn’t part of any published Mai Tai recipe until the 1960s and long after the Mai Tai became synonymous with the islands.

With the Mai Tai’s word of mouth spreading to the mainland, soon every bar in Hawai’i was serving a Mai Tai to cater to tourists. The recipe was no secret and the building blocks of Orgeat and Orange Curacao were typically used in this period, but over time variations of the Hawaiian Mai Tai began to appear. By the 1960s, pineapple juice and the iconic dark rum float began to be used more widely, though the Royal Hawaiian and Moana hotels stuck with the original recipe until the early 1970s. As cocktails of all sorts started to use premixed ingredients in the 1970s-1980s, the Mai Tai was no exception. Variants that included Amaretto and Grenadine became common thereafter, but it is important to know that none of these variants were introduced by Trader Vic himself.