Hard-working 'Beachbum' uncovers treasure of Polynesian drink recipes

Nation's Restaurant News, April 15, 2002 by Gary Regan

I spoke with Jeff "Beachbum" Berry the other day. He's the co-author, with his wife, Annene Kaye, of "Beachbum Berry's Grog Log," a wonderful book that details tropical-drink recipes from the past and also includes some "new interpretations of old classics." The couple's passion for "Tiki" drinks jumps from the pages of the book, and Berry told me that he's now working on a new volume. "Since the first book was published, some of the older bartenders who were making these drinks back in the '40s and '50s are more willing to tell me their secrets," he said.

Berry's adventure in Tiki-land began when he was a child in the 1960s and found himself "...entranced by the all-encompassing atmosphere of [Polynesian restaurants in Los Angeles], which in my case succeeded in what they were meant to do: hermetically seal their customers off from the outside world by cocooning them in an escapist fantasy of a faux Island Paradise, art directed down to the last detail."

Details are obviously important to Berry. In the "Grog Log" he tracks America's fascination with Polynesian restaurants to 1934 when Don "The Beachcomber" Beach opened his bar on Hollywood Boulevard and started serving drinks with such names as the Vicious Virgin, Cobra's Fang and, eventually, the Zombie, his crowning glory. Four years later "Trader" Vic Bergeron copied Beach's idea -- something that Berry says Bergeron freely admitted -- and the "Trader Vic's" empire got its start.

Many of the drink recipes in those Polynesian restaurants never were committed to paper, and so secret were they that Beach would put ingredients into bottles labeled only with numbers or letters, so even the bartenders didn't know exactly what went into many of the drinks. Berry and Kaye had their work cut out for them when they set out to compile recipes for the "Grog Log."

Berry says that they spent" ... many years scouring used-book stores for long-out-of-print recipe books, pamphlets and trade magazine articles; studying bartenders at work; reading between the lines of the drink descriptions on vintage tropical drink menus to unlock their secrets and relying on a network of like-minded dipsomaniacs to pass on recipes they encountered." Their work paid off -- the book was so well received that one entrepreneur made Beachbum Berry mugs, patterned after a 1940s-era Don The Beachcomber mug, and in its honor, Berry created a drink to be served in it -- it's called Beachbum's Own.

Berry's new book, "Beachbum Berry's Intoxica," probably will be in bookstores by the time you are reading this. "It's a companion volume to the 'Grog Log,' featuring... several Don The Beachcomber recipes, a few more from Trader Vic and even some from places that are still in existence," he says. One of those places, the Tiki Ti, is what Berry claims to be the only true Tiki bar left in Los Angeles--it was founded by Ray Buhen, a man who worked at Don The Beachcomber's first bar when it opened in 1934.

It took Berry, who worked on his own for this volume, four years to find the 84 recipes in his new book, and along the way he discarded more than 300 formulas for drinks he didn't consider to be worthy. "It wasn't enough that the recipe was from a famous restaurant or otherwise of historical interest -- it had to taste good, too," he says.

It's good to know that somebody took it upon himself to detail the drinks before it was too late, and although we never might know the exact recipe for Beach's Zombie, Berry included one wonderful version in his first book. That will have to suffice -- a 1941 menu from Don the Beachcomber's stated: "The Zombie didn't just happen. It was the result of a long and expensive process of evolution.... In the experiments leading up to the Zombie, three and a half cases of assorted rums were used and found their way down the drain so that you may now enjoy this potent 'mender of broken dreams.'"

RELATED ARTICLE: Jeff 'Beachbum' Berry's Zombie

1 ounce fresh lime juice

3/4 ounce unsweetened pineapple juice

3/4 ounce papaya nectar

1/2 ounce applejack tablespoon powdered sugar

1 ounce dark Jamaican rum

2 ounces Barbados rum

1 ounce light Puerto Rican rum

1/2 ounce 151-proof Demerara rum

Shake everything--except Demerara--with ice cubes. Float Demerara on top of drink. Garnish with mint sprig, pineapple cube skewered between red and green cocktail cherries, and a pinch of powdered sugar sprinkled all over.