The Search for the Ultimate Mai Tai

We had such a fun time at the Mr.

Staying in Soho, we got to try a bunch of new cocktail bars that we hadn’t visited before in London.

You’d expect a World Cup hangover at San Pedro Square, but the crew at Dr.

While walking the city of York we stumbled upon the charming Life on Mars, a bar that serves dumplings, coffee, and cocktails.

We would be remiss without wishing everyone a wonderful Black Tot Day, celebrating the date in 1970 when the Royal Navy ended the daily rum ration.

We ran across this Whitebox canned Mai Tai in York, England – and it interestingly bills itself as a “1944 Mai Tai” with rum, lime, orange curacao, and orgeat.

As fans of gimmick bars, we gave the Frankenstein Bar and Bier Keller a shot during our recent trip to Edinburgh, arriving at around 9 pm on a Friday.

Upon arriving in town we made a beeline for The Tiki Bar Glasgow for some drinks and treats.

Cab-a-Rette is a taxi tour of Edinburgh that’s like no other, featuring driver and performer Sylvia who dons several personalities including Geraldine the Nun to show us the sights and puts on a show herself along the way.

We’d heard that Vintage Cocktail Club had great cocktails including a tiki section, so we planned to visit during our trip to Dublin Ireland.

We ventured out of the downtown area of Dublin to check out Hole in the Wall, the ironically named pub that’s the longest in Europe.

The brightly colored Temple Bar is named after the Dublin neighborhood where it resides.

The Bar of America is a Truckee restaurant that’s part of the Gar Woods chain of restaurants that are officially licensed to serve Trader Vic’s Mai Tais, including Vic’s glassware and made with Trader Vic’s syrups and rums.

We returned to Alter Ego Cocktail Club to give their Spring 2026 seasonal menu one last try, with Mrs.

I had a lemon to kill and I’d been thinking about revisiting this hybrid Mai Tai / Blue Hawaii cocktail that I developed a few years back.

The Golden Gate Bridge fireworks were of interest to Mrs Mai Tai, but the high threat of fog made elaborate plans seem risky, so we took a sort of safe route by heading to Emeryville to have some drinks at Trader Vic’s before heading to the end of the pen…

We spent time in the city last Saturday looking at the various Pride light displays and also getting our steps in ahead of our vacation to the British Isles starting next week.

The sea of World Cup revelers parted for the afternoon on Sunday, offering the opportunity for Dr Funk to hold their quarterly Rum Asylum rum club meeting.

Yes, we would break several laws to climb to the top of the Empire State Building to help everyone learn that the Mai Tai that Trader Vic brought to the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in 1953 did not contain any pineapple juice.

The Hawaiian Sunset was a cocktail from the Aku-Aku restaurant at the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas, circa 1960s.

We’re halfway through 2026 and it has been a great Mai Tai year so far, including a variety of on/off-menu Mai Tais at Trader Vic’s locations.

Pele Utu is a newish traditional tiki bar located near downtown Reno just north of I-80, sandwiched between the Gateway Inn and Taste of India restaurant.

Mrs.

Our evening in Sacramento continued with a visit to downtown to check out the mermaid show at Dive Bar.

Daytripper is a new Richmond Grove Sacramento craft cocktail bar that focuses on agave and cane spirits in a Latin America themed setting.

This new Demerara rum expression from El Dorado follows a previous “high ester” release a couple years ago that paired Diamond Distillery’s intense Diamond High Ester (DHE) marque with a rare LBI marque.

Shipwrecked Paradise Island Tiki Bar is the Sacramento location and sister property of the original Shipwrecked in nearby Davis.

Probitas is a blended rum collaboration between Barbados’ Foursquare distillery and Hampden Estate from Jamaica, known as Veritas outside the United States.

I had the day off and decided to check out the World Cup madness in San Pedro Square, arriving late in the USA vs.

We previously wrote about loving Crafthouse Cocktails‘ excellent canned Mai Tai, and the kind folks at Crafthouse sent us some others from their lineup to try out.

Mrs.

If we’re making a list of the most important tiki bars of the 21st century, Alameda’s Forbidden Island is a sure bet for the top 5.

Our San Francisco weekend finished with Sunday brunch at Hula Hoops in South San Francisco.

One of the new offerings we tried during our recently visits to Smuggler’s Cove is a new cocktail and mug pairing featuring one of the Cove’s signature crate mugs paired with a new cocktail from Dane Barca (of Dr.

During our staycation weekend we had two late visits to Smuggler’s Cove, finding it full but not overly packed to enjoy the myriad cocktails the venue is famous for.

Every once in a while we find ourselves in North Beach with maybe some time to kill or looking for a cocktail escape.

Mrs.

We had another wonderful visit to Walnut Creek to have a family dinner and drinks at Tiki Tom’s.

Mai Tai Day is the day each year where we celebrate the birth of the world’s greatest cocktail and the man who invented it, Trader Vic Bergeron.

We were so impressed with Crafthouse Cocktails Mai Tai we naturally had to compare it to our previous favorite Tip Top Proper Cocktails Mai Tai.

This canned Mai Tai has been on my radar for a little while, with seemingly universally great reaction from the few posts I’ve seen about it.

This brand of ready to drink Mai Tai was recommended and the 25% ABV on the label was a good sign, but unfortunately I found this RTD cocktail to be quite lacking.

Livermore’s Fat Pigeon has launched their latest themed popup experience, the pirate, tropical, and tiki inspired Lost on Pigeon Island.

Issued as part of Denizen’s new Wanderer Series, this is a Single Origin Jamaican Rum aged for eight years and finished in Port Casks for three months.

Livermore’s Rosetta Roasting coffee roastery is going full tiki for their evening cocktail persona this summer and adopting Tikeasy as the venue branding.

Derek has come up with an all-new design for his Make and Drink YouTube channel’s Mai Tai glass.

What a better way to celebrate a new Star Wars movie than to have a fantastic Mai Tai with a premium Jamaican rum, Worthy Park Single Estate.

I had business near Sacramento again, so it was a perfect opportunity to check out Time Travel Tuesday at The Jungle Bird, the city’s leading tiki bar.

San Pedro Square was awash in the aloha spirit on Sunday for the inaugural luau at Dr.

We thank Derek at Make and Drink for doing the heavy lifting to recover this recipe for the Scorpion cocktail that inspired Trader Vic to make his own version.