Imagine that it’s 1948 and you are on a beautiful Douglas DC-3, winging your way from Honolulu to Maui at sunset, drink in hand…
The Royal Hawaiian
Named for the Royal Hawaiian Hotel on Oahu, this drink is gin, pineapple juice, lemon juice, and orgeat (almond syrup). Apparently the bar at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel doesn’t make this cocktail anymore. What a shame.
This thing is gorgeous. The glowing yellow liquid capped with a pillowy white foam…it looks fake. It absolutely rocks the biscuits off the pretty scale and gets a ten on the Interesting Taste-o-meter. It’s probably the orgeat, but all the other familiar flavors like gin, lemon, pineapple seem new, pronounced and different when mingling together in this drink. It’s confusing my tongue: “It’s delicious!” “It’s cleaning fluid!” “It’s delicious! “It’s cleaning fluid!” I think…it’s a masterpiece. Flavor extremes perfectly drawn even with each other. Floral, tart, sweet, nutty. This drink is Homecoming Queen at Cocktail High. Wait. Is that inappropriate? High school drinking? Yeah like you didn’t drink alcohol in high school…
I think I’ll make these to complement the French Martini at Adrienne & Rye’s holiday fête tonight.
The Aviation
Though the hipster renaissance of this cocktail is well at hand, the drink dates back to the early 20th century and was probably invented to celebrate the pioneering men in the sky.
The drink is a beautiful blue. I was worried that it wouldn’t be blue at all what with my experiences with grenadine and the fake-ass photos in The Essential Cocktail. But here I had a distinct advantage. DeGroff’s recipe doesn’t call for crème de violette, as the original Aviation did, because he assumed at the time of publication that shmoes like me wouldn’t be able to get it. Not only does the books recipe not indicate the violette, it also lacks a picture. That’s okay, because it would make for a dull image; without the violette, it’s just gin, lemon juice, and maraschino liqueur (which is clear). But the fine folks at Wally Wines & Spirits had a bottle of crème de violette in the back and I made it mine! I am certain that I have achieved the hue of the vintage Aviation cocktail. It is a stunning thing to behold.
To drink, not so much. Really please just stop with the violets. It tastes like Splendor In and Amongst the Violets by Estée Lauder. Oh how I wanted to love this cocktail. It’s not unbearably perfumy, but I suggest ordering some pizza shooters, shrimp poppers or extreme fajitas if you order this drink in a bar. You’ll need to distract your palate from thinking that you’ve gone sideways into drinking your way through the dusty bottles on Grandma’s vanity top.
A Hawaiian Airlines DC-3 gliding over the islands.
a) I will take 5 Royal Hawaiian’s served in a child’s beach pail at the party tonight.
b) Couldn’t agree with you more about the Avaition. Really wanted to love this drink, but instead I was just looking for something to take the taste of it out of my mouth. As the young actress on the Original Iron Chef would say “In my mouth, it was not good.”
I am in possession of a homemade cherry vodka liqueur, complete with whole cherries. We should experiment.
After sampling the Royal Hawaiian on Friday night, I have to say that is one of the most delicious cocktails I have ever had in my entire life. The ingredients play off each other and transform into an elixir of the gods. So good is this drink, even Linda would not be able to find fault with this gin-based taste of nirvana.
“iss gorgeous. drink it up. then we take the armoire…”