Martin Cate is keeping Tiki culture alive, one Mai Tai at a time.
The acclaimed San Francisco mixologist, who’s making an appearance Sunday at the Left Coast Bartender’s Guild’s Sunset Tiki Party at Post Card Inn on the Beach, traces the beginnings of the Tiki tradition to one man, Don Beachcomber (real name Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt). Inspired by trips he’d made to the Caribbean and South Pacific, Beachcomber opened a bar in Hollywood in the 1930s that featured Polynesian décor as interpreted by a movie set designer and served elaborate drinks that mixed rum with spices like ginger and nutmeg.
After Prohibition, most domestic spirits were no longer in production, but rum imports were plentiful.
“Rum was the first spirit that came back in swinging,” Cate said. “The rum was cheap and it was really good quality.”
Beachcomber is credited with inventing the Mai Tai. The process of making the drink correctly is highly involved, says Cate, a careful dance toward the final cocktail that requires multiple rums, fresh fruit juices, and precise measurements.
“You would never think of having a martini with three gins,” Cate said. “But there is a real diversity in these spirits.”
Cate got into what he calls “Polynesian pop culture” about 13 years ago. The Tiki aesthetic was the gateway drug that led to his full-on love affair with rum. His San
Francisco bar, Smuggler’s Cove (named the best new cocktail lounge in America in 2010 by Bon Appetit), features 75 cocktails using 30 different rums.
“We don’t believe in well rum. Those are bad words to me,” Cate said. “It’s about the right rum for the right drink.”
The craze for the island vibe really took off after World War II, Cate says, and lasted about 30 years. Hosts threw luaus in their backyards and contractors built tiki-themed apartment buildings. Escapism was at the heart of it all, an invitation to flee the daily grind for a place in the sun.
“A big part of Tiki is about leaving your troubles behind,” Cate said. “To mid-century America, it was warm and inviting, like a trip to the beach.”
But Tiki cocktails got a bad rap in the 1970s and ’80s, what Cate calls a dark age for the American cocktail.
“Real junk started to come into the American drinking habit,” Cate said. Tiki drinks began to be perceived as “something colorful but appalling.”
The entire genre was dismissed as tacky, almost becoming obsolete. Drink recipes were diluted; bartenders didn’t want to spend time measuring ingredients and squeezing fresh juice, and the true nature of some classic cocktails was lost on later generations.
“The Mai Tai is the single most abused cocktail ever,” Cate said. “A real Mai Tai is a very simple recipe meant to accent a rare and expensive rum.”
Cate pleads that a thatched roof does not a Tiki bar make, despite the prevalence of that design feature in Florida. But he does give the state credit for being home to the ultimate Tiki bar: Fort Lauderdale’s Mai-Kai.
“It is the single greatest Tiki bar ever built,” Cate said. “It’s a mecca for Tiki lovers.”
Cate is optimistic about the future of Tiki. Cocktail mixes are out, patience and good spirits are once again in.
“Tiki culture or Polynesian Pop is born from a mid-century American naïve kind of understanding of what the South Pacific might be like,” Cate said. “It’s a very, very, unusual slice of American history.”
Tiki cocktails are back in their rightful place as an authentic genre in the history of American cocktails.
“It is like being an anthropologist,” Cate said. “I am unearthing artifacts of lost civilizations.”
This article appears in Jun 7-13, 2012.