This week, I got the chance to take a vacation in Hawaii and lucky for you (or maybe not), a laptop joined our trip at the last minute. So here is my quick and extremely subjective impression of drinking here on Hawaii’s Big Island.
Drinking in Hawaii
Bars in Hawaii are pretty similar to mainland bars, except maybe for the gorgeous sea views and general lack of walls. I get the impression that locals primarily drink beer. While a lot of rum is on sale in the local stores, I think most of that gets poured into Coke. Visitors appear to want one or more of the following: whatever they have at home, something luxurious to celebrate being in Hawaii, and/or something tropical. And by tropical, I mean rum and fruit. Of the ‘burgeoning cocktail culture’, there were no traces to be found. But then again, the Big Island is not where I would look if I was serious about finding it. The big city- Honolulu, on Oahu- would be much more likely to reflect mainland trends.
Don the Beachcomber
Before leaving home, I checked with my tiki sources (OK, TraderTiki and critiki) and turned up nothing of tiki interest to visit on the Big Island. So imagine my heart-warming surprise (and dread) when finding a listing in a guide book for Don the Beachcomber’s Mai Tai Bar at the Royal Kona Resort! Having honeymooned at the Royal Kona some years ago, I knew where this was, and also knew that any bar would be better than what had been there. Rum and sour mix Mai Tai, anyone? Donn Beach himself was clearly not involved in this new endeavor, having died in 1989. We had to see and drink for ourselves.
We got there before sunset and snagged two house Mai Tais, which turned out to be pretty decent. The “Don’s Original Mai Tai” was made with Bacardi 8 rum, orgeat, curacao, mystery fruit juice and a float of Whaler’s dark rum. The menu claimed the fruit included lime, but it tasted primarily of pineapple. They repeatedly claim on their logo and advertising that Donn Beach invented the original Mai Tai. I thought that the controversy over who invented the Mai Tai had been settled in Trader Vic’s favor, but it lives on, at least on the internet and here.
We flagged down a manager and asked for the story. Turns outs that a bunch of resort manager types had been walking around their Lahaina property and passed one of the old, boarded-up Don the Beachcomber restaurants. They decided to revive the legend and bought the rights to use the name. They redecorated the existing bar and restaurant at the Royal Kona Resort, which both have gorgeous wide open surfside views of the sunset over Kailua Bay. For you tiki-philes, yes, they have gone ahead with full tiki décor. There are Hawaiian style tiki heads placed around the bar, a trio of floor-to-ceiling concrete tiki idols in the center of the main grill room there, and a plethora of tiki torches lighting up the surf around the lanai. I apologize for the lack of photos; my digital camera is one casualty of this trip.
Moving through the menu, we tried the Don’s Plantation Mai Tai and the Tiki Tai. The Plantation had orgeat, apricot brandy, a potent blend of dark and light rums (Bacardi white, Whaler’s Dark, and two other unidentified rums) and fresh squeezed lime juice. (Hand squeezed from the garnish wedges for some reason). The Tiki Tai was very similar to the Original, but used a big dollop of very fine shaved ice. The rest of the menu features about 6 Mai Tais, as well as Navy Grog and a Scorpion. After that it veers into such crowd-pleasers as a Chocolate Martini and a Ginger Mango Martini. The fact that happy hour prices coincide with a glorious Hawaiian sunset makes these forgivable. And Don the Beachcomber has a much better Mai Tai than I expected to find on this Big Island vacation.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Dear Friends,
While there were a number of errors in your story “Hawaii Drinkin’”, on the whole it was an entertaining review of tiki drinks, most of which were created by Donn Beach, the famous “Don the Beachcomber,” who created virtually everything that is today central to the “Tiki Culture” in his tiny bar in Hollywood.
The only error that must be addressed is the report that ” a bunch of resort manager types had been walking around their Lahaina property and passed one of the old, boarded-up Don the Beachcomber restaurants. They decided to revive the legend and bought the rights to use the name.” Indeed the first part might have been true, but the statement that they “bought the right to use the name” is false. Actually those “managers” prior to then had a company running their hotel in Lahaina, and that company at that time had the right to use the name, purchased from Don himself. But when the new owners booted them out, they took with them their rights, and never sold them to anyone, but left the agreement that specifically denied the owners of the hotel the right to use the name “Don the Beachcomber.” And they did not, for many uears. But they used the building that had been built by the former hotel managers, renamed it “Beachcombers,” and then one name after another, finally using it for furniture storage. Then, after Don the
Beachcomber Industries had been granted the exclusive use of the name by the United States Patent and Copyright Office, regretted that they had never followed up to purchase or otherwise acquire the name, and so created the “Don the Beachcomber” on Kona from a run-down tiki restaurant that had been there for years.
I cannot speak to the quality of the food and drink at Kona. There have been reviewers who have visited them that reported one way or the other, and the best that you can say is that they are incon- sistent. But they are not a bona fide “Don the Beachcomber,” and one day this will be made very clear.
Mahalo!
Art Snyder, CEO
Don the Beachcomber Industries
There is one more thing that this low-level manager said that did not make it into the original post. I asked him if the mainland rights were separate from the Hawaii rights, as I’ve read that after his divorce, Donn’s wife ‘Sunny’ had the mainland rights, but that Donn himself was free to go to Hawaii and start over. His response was ‘Well, we’ve won all of the lawsuits that I know about’.
I visited Huntington Beach for the first time on the way back from Hawaii, and wish you all the best in opening a new establishment there. Maybe you could fill us in on opening dates, food and drink, location, etc.?
Aloha, friends!
A lot has taken place since you heard from me last. Pleasant Holidays, the mega-travel agency, accepted the settlement we offered years before, and we (i.e. Marisol Ltd., dba Don the Beachcomber Industries) were determined by the Court in 2010 to be the sole owners of the trade name “Don the Beachcomber” in the United States, EXCEPT Hawaii. It was tough to let it go, but they had just about run us out of money, and having the rights in 49 states was better than having to fold up the suit.
So, using the rest of what my wife Delia and I had saved from our last restaurants in The Venetian Hotel, Casino & Resort in Las Vegas, we rented a great old building (first part was built in 1923) in Huntington Beach, CA (SURF CITY, USA), on Pacific Coast Highway, that had been one of the first and certainly the largest (15,000 sq.ft.) and opened up the first mainland Don the Beachcomber in 20 years. We advertise ourselves as “restaurant, bar, and event center,” and are rapidly becoming a leading center for entertainment (as well as for weddings, anniversaries, reunions, and singles clubs) in the surf part of Orange County.
The drinks are THE authentic drinks of Don the Beachcomber, the food is dynamite, with my wife Delia as Executive Chef. Delia is in the process of reviving the food served by Donn Beach when he opened a kitchen in the McCadden Place Don the Beachcomber in 1937–”Chinatown ‘37″. And, of course, the decor, when installed many years ago, used the McCadden Place location as the basis for the design. Delia and I have replaced all the pilfered and vandalized epherema of Tiki, and made major repairs to the infrastructure of the building to assure that it will not fall down.
So say a little prayer for the memory of Donn–and a location that puts authenticity and quality first–in his name! You can see a lot of what we’ve done at http://www.donthebeachcomber.com. And if you’re Tiki, you are REQUIRED to drop in and taste the REAL Original Don’s Mai-Tai and the REAL Original Don’s Zombie–both of which originated in “Ernie’s Place,” the McCadden Place speakeasy that Donn ran before he changed his name to Donn Beach, and before Repeal.
And we’ll talk about Donn and his life and his drinks. As he often did with his customers.
Mahalo!
Art Snyder