Beachbum Berry does New Orleans

Last night Jeff “Beachbum” Berry — the great tiki drink authority and noted layabout — served as bar chef and tour host of the Tales of the Tiki Cocktail, held at the Pelican Club in the French Quarter of New Orleans. The event, organized by the Tales of the Cocktail folks, was sold out — about 100 people turned out and filled to capacity the restaurant’s two large dining rooms.

The theme was New Orleans tiki, with each of the six drinks presented by Berry having a link to the Crescent City. Everyone was greeted with a delightful Bali Bali welcome cocktail, made with rum, cognac, gin, falernum and passionfruit, and derived from a lost recipe of the late, lamented Bali Hai restaurant. (This was one of New Orleans's Big Night Out Polynesian restaurants, located up on the tropical shores of Lake Ponchatrain.)

Other drinks were either once served at defunct local bars (like the St. Charles Hotel’s Outrigger Bar), or created by Don the Beachcomber, who was born in New Orleans as Ernest Raymond Beaumont-Gantt. These drinks included: the Mystery Gardenia, the Nui Nui, Missionary’s Downfall, the Mai Tai, and the Bo-Lo.

A few comments: the most remarkable feat to me was that a small staff got these drinks out to the huge crowd in perfect shape — the crushed ice not yet watery, the gardenia not wilted, the flavors still pert and lively. The only glitch was with the Mystery Gardenia, which calls for a mix of honey and butter, which needs straining. That took longer than expected and left our table with a brief but manageable drought, but generally the drinks kept flowing, and stayed coordinated with their intended food pairings. (Of which, the ginger-sesame scallop and coconut crawfish cake with a spicy slaw and cilantro-jalapeño-lime dressing was the clear winner in my book. Chef Richard Hughes did an equally outstanding a job getting meals out hot and fresh.)

The Nui Nui was my favorite drink of the night — although someone at our table thought the allspice and cinnamon made it taste too much like a Christmas cookie, after which each sip brought visions of sugarplum fairies dancing in my head. The Missionary’s Downfall, blended with fresh mint, rum, lime, peach brandy, and pineapple, was very green and very minty. The classic 1944 Trader Vic Mai Tai was made with Rhum Clement VSOP, which was a bit woody for my taste on the initial sip, but I found method in this madness when I tasted the pork ribeye with five-spice mango barbecue sauce. The two paired up like a deconstructed grilled meal, with the smoky taste of the drink complementing the full, sweet flavor of the pork.

The final drink of the night was a beauty, the Don the Beachcomber Bo-Lo, served in cored pineapples with the tops reattached with toothpicks. Even though we all had been sufficiently numbed by the five drinks leading up to this, the trays of pineapples making their way through the room was like the grand finale of a tiki fireworks display. And the drink — made with molasses and sugar cane rums, lime, pineapple juices, passionfruit and honey mix — served as a great nightcap masquerading as a dessert.

Add this to the fine evening: I got to sit with rum collector Stephen Remsberg and talk about rum for several hours. And nobody noticed or thought it weird.