Eat Drink Play:
Take a sip of a tropical paradise with these cocktails available for delivery from Bay Area restaurants.
A really good tropical cocktail has the power to transport — to create the feeling of being on a beach, somewhere far away. Even before taking that first sip, you can almost see the bobbing boats and feel your toes in the sand.
We may not be traveling to Hawaii, Cancun or Barbados, but that doesn’t mean we can’t drink like we are. Islandthemed Bay Area restaurants, from San Jose’s Hukilau to Oakland’s Sobre Mesa and Pleasanton’s Oyo, are offering their specialty libations for pickup and delivery. And at the South American-inspired Oyo, you can enjoy the Jive Bar’s brightly garnished caipirinhas and other cocktails on the patio, which currently spills onto Main Street.
Chef-owner Maurice Dissels named the bar after his father, Asmond, a native of Guyana and a professional dancer known for his award-winning 1930s jig. He certainly would have approved of the Caribbean-centric beverage program developed by Maurice’s son, general manager Sam Dissels, and bar consultant Juan Campos.
Rums from Guyana, Trinidad and Jamaica are mixed into cocktails that complement Maurice’s jerk tofu, pepper pot and oxtail stew. The drinks incorporate tropical ingredients, from fresh mango and black cardamom to a housemade hibiscus syrup created by steeping a brew of fresh pineapple, star anise and other aromatics with hibiscus flowers.
“It’s so different,” Maurice says, “and enhances whatever you mix with it.”
The hibiscus syrup pops up in the nonalcoholic pineapple sorrel refresher, as well as the Jamaican rum punch and bright pink hibiscus caipirinha, which is garnished with an edible orchid.
The staff is working on a rare Puerto Rican rum flight, as well as a cocktail made with cassareep, a complex, caramelized liquid made from cassava. The “Long Island-like” drink will be called Muxalace, a term Maurice’s grandmother invented that means “a mix of the pot,” and is fitting for the current times.
“If she said we’re having Muxalace for dinner, it meant that times were lean and we didn’t have a lot of resources, so she was going to pull together what she had in a pot,” he explains.
Despite the coronavirus pandemic, Oyo’s drink sales are actually slightly up. Maurice thinks he knows why.
“People are sick of (bad news),” he says. “They need a drink. And when they arrive here, we want them to be transported or at least feel as if they are sitting somewhere on a tropical island in the Caribbean and escaping for a brief moment.”
In Uptown Oakland, you can escape to Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic via the handcrafted cocktails of Sobre Mesa. Chef-owner Nelson German’s Afro-latino restaurant and bar does not currently offer outdoor dining, but you can enjoy some of its libations at sister restaurant alamar Kitchen & Bar, which does. The rest of the drinks, including the rum-centric Caribe Colada, are available in 8-ounce bottles through pickup or delivery.
Bar consultants Alex Maynard and Susan Eggett developed Sobre Mesa’s distinctive beverage program, which features small-production spirits, including Haitian clairin and Colombian aguardiente, after listening to German’s stories of his childhood growing up on his Dominican mother’s and grandmother’s home cooking.
“We approach cocktails based on that idea of home cooking,” Maynard says. “If you think of an island destination, we serve more of what the natives are drink
“People are sick of (bad news). They need a drink. And when they arrive here, we want them to be transported or at least feel as if they are sitting somewhere on a tropical island in the Caribbean and escaping for a brief moment.” — Maurice Dissels, chef-owner of Oyo
ing than what people are serving at the hotels.”
Think ingredients like soursop, a fruit found in the Caribbean, and spiced honey, coconut oil-washed rum, and cocktails such as an Old-fashioned made with banana and housemade coconut-orgeat.
Sobre Mesa’s spicy mango margarita, which features a housemade serrano pepper tincture, has been so popular that German recently began offering it in 32-ounce Capri Sun-like pouches. He scrawls notes such as “Thank you for supporting us” and “Our sobre hearts go to you and your family” on them. German says he has plans to launch breakfast takeout — hello, pina colada mimosas with caramelized pineapple, cream of coconut and cava — and house-baked goods including a mango-and-lime cream-filled cronut. Expect weekly Sobre Mesa dinner pop-ups at alamar Kitchen, too.
And if you’re making your own cocktails, a vodka or rum infusion is a great bet when it comes to shelf life and affordability, Maynard says. Remove the stems from a pint of strawberries or slice a few large peaches, drop into a liter of your preferred spirit and refrigerate for 24 hours. You’ll have a lovely, fruit-forward libation that can be used to make a bevy of tropical cocktails.
Even simpler: Bust out the frozen fruit and coconut milk and whip up something refreshing. While you’re in the pantry, grab a can of lychee fruit and use it to make a satisfying lychee martini, says Joe Olchovik, manager at Hukilau in San Jose’s Japantown. (That’s 1 ounce of vodka, 1 ounce of canned syrup and 1½ ounces of water, shaken and served up.)
The Hawaiian-themed restaurant and bar opened in San Jose in 2003 but the original Honolulu venture opened long before that, when three friends set out to re-create the aloha and “plate lunch” vibes of their native island towns of Hilo, Hawaii; Kapaa, Kauai; and Ewa Beach, Oahu. According to Olchovik, Hukilau is not a craft cocktail kind of bar.
“We don’t have the fanciest drinks, but people love them,” Olchovik says.
Think lava flows (pina colada swirled with strawberry puree), daiquiris and martinis of every tropical variety. The restaurant is currently offering any four of its Surfboard Menu cocktails for $20 — for pickup and delivery only, of course.
“We started it after the shelter-in-place to try to boost business,” Olchovik says.
He recently asked one regular customer if he’d like to take a cocktail home with him, a passion guava daiquiri, perhaps? “No, not today,” the customer said. “It’s not the same.”
If you can relate, try making a mai tai at home and staring deeply into its sunset-swirly colors while you ponder the cocktail’s storied history. In fact, better make both recipes — Vic Bergeron’s original California-style mai tai and his Hawaiian version. (You’ll find those at bayareane.ws/maitai.)