Two Tiki drinks in as many nights?! How can you LIVE at that speed?!

So I put it to a vote among my Twitter friends tonight, asking them to choose one of the following cocktails for this blog entry: the Bronx, the Sunshine, or the Royal Hawaiian. One person replied, so I went with his request. I'll get to the Bronx and the Sunshine at a later time, because John wanted the Royal Hawaiian, even though we just had a Tiki drink last night. There's no accounting for taste. (Kidding!)

This drink comes to me from one of Jeff "Beachbum" Berry's cocktail compendiums, "Beachbum Berry's Grog Log". He got it from the old Moana Hotel in Honolulu, and it dates from the late 1940s. It's made as follows:

Royal Hawaiian

1 1/2 oz pineapple juice
1/2 oz fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon orgeat syrup
1 1/2 oz gin

Shake with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Orgeat (pronounced "or-ZHAY") is a milky looking syrup that tastes vaguely of almonds, though there's some other ingredients in there to boot. You'd probably find it either at a well-stocked liquor store or maybe in with flavored syrups for coffee at your grocery. It's perhaps most famous as an ingredient in Trader Vic's classic Mai Tai.

That being said, I was fully prepared to not like this drink. I thought it would be odd combining the citrus with the orgeat, and the orgeat with the gin...and I'm very happy to say I was wrong. This is really a nice cocktail. The lemon juice keeps the orgeat from being too sweet, and the botanicals in the gin really add a fresh layer to this. I'd almost suggest using a really good quality gin in this, just to let those herbal notes sing...Hendricks would not be out of place in this. In fact, if you were to add a tiny splash of Pernod to this, or absinthe, I think it would be even more interesting. I'll have to try that, as I'm planning on procuring some Pernod (quelle alliteration!) in the next few weeks.