Reviews

Here's Part 1 of the first Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass special, sponsored by the Singer Sewing Machine Company, originally aired on April 24, 1967 on CBS.

Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass Special.mov
Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass Special.m4v

Despite the much ballyhoo’d rebirth of Huntington Beach’s iconic Sam’s Seafood restaurant last year (complete with new tiki mugs and a revitalized classic drink menu) the place lasted less than a year.

Reborn from the ashes is Kona, a new restaurant with a new chef, Roy Hendrickson, who keeps the Hawaiian theme but tweaks things slightly. The restaurant is making a play for tikiphiles with weekly events designed to draw the passionate, aloha-shirt wearing, and presumably alcohol-swigging crowd.

16278 S. Pacific Coast Highway, Huntington Beach, CA 92649 | (562) 592-1321

Visit the Kona website

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This weekend, I finally got an opportunity (and the ingredients) to make one of the Zombie recipes in Beachbum Berry’s excellent Sippin’ Safari book (it is also published in Intoxica). Specifically, the 1950 version published by Louis Spievak in a barbeque recipe book, allegedly provided for him by Don the Beachcomber.

As Sippin’ Safari reveals, the recipe is very different from a typical Don the Beachcomber drink. It’s shaken instead of blended, and uses a very different set of juices and mixers than Don’s other Zombie recipes.

Whatever the backstory is, one thing is certain: this drink is amazing!

Here’s the recipe, as provided by The WikiTender:

• 1 ounce unsweetened pineapple juice (Dole, in small cans)
• 1 ounce fresh lemon juice (fresh squeezed)
• 1 ounce fresh lime juice (fresh squeezed)
• 1 ounce passion fruit syrup (Trader Vic’s, glass bottle, made with real passion fruit)
• teaspoon brown sugar (dark brown sugar, Publix brand)
• dash Angostura bitters
• 1 ounce gold Puerto Rican rum (Cruzan Estate Dark Rum - it’s actually the equivalent of a gold/amber)
• 1 ounce 151 Demerara rum (Lemon Hart)
• 1 ounce white Puerto Rican rum (Cruzan Estate Light Rum)

For those of you who are into the specifics, I’ve put the brands I used in parenthesis next to the ingredients. And yes, I replaced the Puerto Rican rums with Virgin Islands rums, which I like much better.

Although the drink has a lot of ingredients, it’s fairly easy to make as it calls for exactly 1 ounce of each liquid - which may also make it a good candidate for a punch.

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After years of playing with Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk, the saxophonist emerged as a jazz virtuoso by the end of the 1950s. But it was the restless exploration to follow that made him a pioneer of American music.

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