Mai tais, zombies, and hurricanes have officially escaped the tiki bar

Welcome to Swig City, highlighting can’t-miss cocktails at the best bars, restaurants and clubs in the city.

At nearly every San Francisco cocktail bar worth its salted rim, you can find at least one tiki drink on the menu. Zombies, mai tais, painkillers — or some variation on these over-the-top, typically rum-based concoctions — can be seen among the Negronis and the ubiquitous espresso martinis, easily spotted by the curved hurricane glasses in which they’re served with elaborate garnishes like a wedge of pineapple speared with a maraschino cherry. 

What you won’t find, though, are grass skirts, cargo cults, or maps to Tahiti. Granted, it still rains every hour inside the Tonga Room, but a growing cultural discomfort with the more flamboyant aspects of the tiki aesthetic — usually fantastical mashups of the Caribbean and the South Pacific that are seen as insensitive at best and imperialist at worst — has forced mixologists to confront whether rum runners and fog cutters still have a place in a modern bartender’s repertoire. 

In other words: Can you have tiki without the tacky?

It seems the answer is yes. Christ (“krisst”) Aivaliotis is the outspoken owner of El Cerrito’s Little Hill Lounge and the former proprietor of downtown Oakland’s Kon-Tiki. (He closed the latter in December and went scorched-earth on Instagram.) Aivaliotis says tiki drinks not served in tiki bars are exactly what Bay Area drinkers are craving. “People are like, ‘I want to have a mai tai or a jet pilot,’” he says, “‘but I want to be in a place where I don’t feel like that’s the only thing I can get.’”

Tiki cocktails can also be deceptively strong. Many people are positively hammered after two. For bartenders, the drinks can represent simplicity in an age of baffling, multi-ingredient concoctions and hoity-toity techniques. To Aivaliotis, tiki drinks are a refuge, classics on par with the sazerac or the boulevardier. “I don’t go for a lot of the modern foofaraw,” he says. “I never use the centrifuge. I don’t do fat-washing.”

So what makes a tiki drink a tiki drink? There’s certainly a formula: Nearly all comprise some combination of light and/or dark rum, tropical juices, and a liqueur — although there are exceptions, like the gin-based Singapore sling. Other ingredients play prominent roles, like the almond-and-sugar syrup known as orgeat or its spicier cousin, falernum. Tiki drinks are usually served in tall barware — sometimes novelty glasses to take home — with a straw.

But tiki is arguably more about a vibe than the sugariness. Newly affluent postwar Americans thrilled to tiki culture because it offered escapism and — however problematic — cinematic glamour. Jointly popularized in the 1930s and ’40s by Hollywood’s Don the Beachcomber and the Bay Area’s “Trader” Vic Bergeron, tiki offered high-octane drinks masked with an assortment of juices that would have seemed exotic to 1950s audiences, served in gaudily decorated spaces that evoked Port-au-Prince by way of Polynesia, with more than a little East Asia thrown in. 

“I think it’s about presentation and the way it makes you feel,” Aivaliotis says. Echoing the Supreme Court’s definition of pornography, he adds, “You know it when you see it.”

True Laurel, Mission: Mai O Mai
Pistachio orgeat and a coffee-rum float vault this riff on the mai tai into the stratosphere. It’s milk-washed for maximum clarity and a hint of creaminess.

Horsefeather, Divisadero/Lower Haight: Daywalker
The daywalker is among the more frequently modified drinks in the tiki canon, and Horsefeather swaps rum for reposado tequila and cinnamon for chipotle, then adds pineapple tepache foam.

Charmaine’s, Mid-Market/Tenderloin: Big Cat
Aged for 23 years, Ron Zacapa forms the backbone of this cocktail with passion fruit, vanilla, and lime at the rooftop hot spot.

Holy Water, Bernal Heights: Zombie
Absinthe isn’t a requirement in a Zombie, but Bernal Heights’ best cocktail spot throws a few dashes of the Green Fairy in for good measure. Cheers to the undead!

ABV, Mission: Horchata Colada
Is a piña colada technically a tiki drink? You can make a case either way. But in our view, adding orange-zest horchata tips the scales to yes.

Pacific Cocktail Haven, Lower Nob Hill: Aloe, Aloe, Aloe
Hello, hello, hello to this rum-fueled curio made with a broad array of flavors, from apple to lemongrass to “snow fungus.” 

BlindPig, Russian Hill: Pig Steals My Purple Corn
This mezcal-and-pineapple concoction pays homage to one of tiki’s great traditions: novelty glassware (in this case, an oinker sticking its butt in the air).

RM 212, Financial District: Tradewinds
There’s neither apricot nor coconut in this stripped-down version of a ’70s classic, but SF’s most grown-up bar does things its own way.

Golden Eye, SoMa: ¿Dónde está la biblioteca?
The city’s new interactive darts bar dresses up a classic hurricane with Amaro Nonino plus banana and ancho chile liqueurs. Bull’s-eye.

Bar Iris, Russian Hill: Okinawa
Polk Street’s ultra-serious Japanese cocktail lounge has a playful side, and this lavender libation made from Okinawan and French rums, aged shochu, yam, calamansi, and Chinese salted plums is as rarefied as a tiki-style drink will ever get.

Harlan Records, Financial District: Mai Tea
This riff on a tiki staple elevates the classic with pandan and coconut liqueurs, plus club soda to make it pop.

Stookey’s Club Moderne, Nob Hill: Corn & Oil
Perhaps the city’s preeminent 1940s cocktail bar, Stookey’s conscripts rums from Jamaica and Barbados to make “the Caribbean’s answer to the old-fashioned.”