While working on this week's review of Hotel Albatross in Ballard, I found myself deep in a confusing black hole of tiki drinks. Tiki, born in 1933 at a Los Angeles bar called Don the Beachcomber, is a decidedly American genre, one that goes beyond Caribbean rum-based drinks to also include decor that is vaguely Polynesian.
It seems the point of tiki is to evoke the feeling of being on vacation in the tropics (which would explain its popularity—who doesn't love escaping to a beach?), but exactly where a tiki drinker is supposed to be transported to is unclear: Jamaica? Palau? Barbados? Hawaii? (They're not all the same.)
Feeling in over my head, I called my friend Bill, a longtime bartender with a fondness for rum, to help me sort through it. Over a Death's Hammer Daiquiri and an Arawak Cup at Hotel Albatross, we talked about the why tiki drinks, which are a major presence in Seattle's cocktail culture, are so popular.
"I've never been to the tropics—any tropic," he told me, noting that during our long, gray, wet winters, tiki drinks hold a special appeal. It's an idea echoed by Albatross owner Zach Harjo, who told me he and co-owners Keith Bartoloni and Drew Church (who also co-own nearby bar Hazlewood) opened the bar "because Seattle, more than anywhere, needs a room that you can enter and feel like you are somewhere else, drink from a flaming coconut, and recall skinny-dipping with manta rays in warm waters."
As we talked, I realized that, for Bill, the kitschy tiki touches—ceramic parrot-shaped mugs, paper umbrellas, glowing red lights—have nothing to do with being taken on a journey. It's the liquids themselves—dark, rich rum, fresh juices like pineapple, passionfruit, and lime—and their flavors that really matter.
After I had emptied my skull-shaped mug, Bill suggested we walk down the street to Stoneburner for a final drink. He told me that Stoneburner's bar manager, Erik Carlson, has long kept his cocktail menu rich with rum and rhum agricole. (Carlson even partnered with a Portland distillery last year to create Stoneburner's own house rum called Bridgetown.) He added that chef Jason Stoneburner likes reggae and often plays it over the restaurant's speakers.
I'd never actually been to Stoneburner before, and its bar is about as far from thatched beach hut as you can get: a white, pressed-tin ceiling, dark quilted leather bar stools, a glossy wood bar topped with a marble rail, and glamorous, modern lamps that hover above you like golden, bursting fireworks. Carlson's drink menu jumps out from the stately ambience: punches and cocktails made with various rums from Barbados, Jamaica, and Haiti, as well as lime, grapefruit, orange, and cinnamon-bark syrup.
I took a sip from my friend's Floridita ($11) and sat up straight in my chair. There were bright, sweet, familiar flavors—rum, lime, vermouth, grenadine—that evoked a warmer locale, but also a deep, darker note of creme de cacao which, while unexpected, makes perfect sense as cocoa trees grow in humid, tropical forests around the globe.
I settled into my comfy, high-backed barstool, looked up at the lights, and felt very relaxed and far away.
