The Chicago Tiki Bar That Serves An $800 Mai Tai
If you live in a big city, there's a good chance that you've bemoaned the price of decent cocktails. At the pricier spots, it's not difficult to run up a triple-digit tab after just a couple of rounds. Eight hundred dollars for a single cocktail, though, probably sounds like a joke. However, at one Chicago cocktail bar, you can order exactly that.
Three Dots and a Dash is a tropical-themed bar in Chicago's River North area that slings flashy, fruity tiki-style drinks. Within Three Dots and a Dash is the Bamboo Room, a cocktail lounge dedicated to high-end rums and original and remixed versions of classic drink recipes. Most of the Bamboo Room drinks are pricier than the ones served in the main bar, but we're talking in the neighborhood of $20 to $30. Then, there's the Vintage Mai Tai, listed at a whopping $800.
Despite costing the equivalent of a good chunk of most people's rent, the drink isn't just a senseless splurge. It's a veritable piece of history. Mixologist Kevin Beary has recreated the original Mai Tai recipe first concocted in 1944 by "Trader Vic" Bergeron, the man credited with creating the template for the loosely Polynesian-themed tiki bar concept. As you might imagine, sourcing spirits used 80 years ago is quite the undertaking and the main reason for the Mai Tai's price tag.
An authentic mid-century Mai Tai
Naturally, a drink made at a fancy cocktail bar in the 1940s wouldn't have used ingredients you can easily find at a liquor store today. Many of the bottles that existed back then have long since been depleted, so they're not easy to come by. However, Kevin Beary found a bottle of Wray & Nephew 15-Year-Old Rum dating back to the early 1950s at an auction. He also located some Extra Sec Cusenier, an orange-flavored liqueur from roughly the same era.
With the help of tiki expert Jeff "Beachbum" Berry, Beary leaned on historical documents and some intensive mixology experimentation to fill in the remaining blanks and flesh out the complete original recipe, which also includes a housemade orgeat (an almond-flavored syrup) and lime juice. The final concoction, served over crushed ice and garnished with orchid, lime, and fresh mint, was, as Beary told Food & Wine, more "delicate" and less spirit-forward than the bartenders had expected. It's about the closest you can get to tasting one of the drinks Trader Vic himself would have been shaking up in the early 1950s.
Tiki today
While the traditional tiki bar concept has somewhat fallen out of fashion due to recent reckoning with the racist and imperialist implications of faux-Polynesian recipes created primarily for white American audiences, tropical-themed cocktails are still widely beloved. Though authentically Polynesian they're not, few cocktails can lift spirits like fruity, spicy, colorful, and extravagantly garnished tropical-inspired drinks can, especially on a cold, gray Chicago day.
If you don't have $800 (plus tip) and a way to get to the Bamboo Room, a splash of sunshine in the form of a modern Mai Tai is still within your reach. All you need are a few ingredients from the liquor store and some fresh juices. Or, if you're looking for different tropical flavors, you can always mix up a sweet and tart Bahama Mama or a classic, crowd-pleasing Piña Colada. Break out your most exciting glassware and treat yourself to a little mental getaway.