FRUIT&SPICE

Stick around long enough and history always repeats, but few are old enough to remember the first popular wave of Tiki drinks and style. It started in the mid-1930s at a Hollywood bar called Don the Beachcomber, which featured flaming torches, lots of rattan, and rum mixed with flavored syrups and fresh fruit juices to create cocktails such as the Mai Tai. Today, Tiki cocktails are enjoying a third wave, fuelled by a backlash against the serious whisky-heavy classics.

“Tiki embraces this sense of non-comformity, of levity, about a light-hearted approach to imbibing and enjoying company,” says Owen Walker, a bartender at Bar Isabel, a tapas restaurant in Toronto’s Little Italy neighborhood. “We’re moving away from the seriousness involved in getting a drink and moving back into fun. We’re well aware of the quality and efforts that go into a cocktail, so we can focus more so on having a little more fun.”

But Walker isn’t slinging the cloying drinks of yesteryear. Instead, he’s using classic Tiki as a framework to introduce different types of ingredients such as Campari or green chartreuse and even sherry. For example, the base of his Novarian Twist is rich Jamaican rum, in this case, Appleton Estates, but he adds half measures of Tio Pepe Fino Sherry, Aperol and orgeat syrup, a splash of lime juice, a spoonful of Campari and a dash of Angostura Bitters. “Tiki is known for ornate garnishes, a higher juice content, and we are still able to do that, but it’s directed in a different manner, a more tasteful manner,” he says.

A tapas joint may seem like a strange place to grab such a cocktail, but Tiki bars are starting to pop up in big cities across the country. Two in Toronto opened up last year, including the Shameful Tiki Room, an extension of one that opened in Vancouver in 2013. Both feature the appropriate decor and cocktails such as the Zombie, Jet Pilot and Mai Tai.

The other Toronto Tiki destination is The Shore Leave, whose decorative touches, including a large wall mural, bring the idea of the Polynesian islands home. You can grab drinks with an umbrella or served in half a pineapple, but its eponymous drink is the one to try: several rums are blended with ginger raisin liqueur, pressed citrus and pineapple ginger beer — just one is enough to take you away.