The Tippling Point | The trappings of paradise and a heady origin story

A Tiki Bar (Photo by Frank Schwichtenberg via Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0).

Palm leaves; exotic murals; red, green, and yellow golden tealights and lanterns; rum-based cocktails; tropic-print or Hawaiian shirts; mermaid wear; Hula girls wearing vibrant colours... sky is the limit if you decide to breathe life once again into the tiki culture that raged in the West for almost forty years, from the 1930s to '70s, its embers still smoldering.

What is tiki? Tiki is the first man according to Polynesian and Hawaiian culture. How can a set-up be called a tiki bar?

Tiki-bars are bars inspired by ancient Polynesian culture (islands in the Pacific Ocean) that mushroomed in the US during the '30s. If you can recreate the vibrant, sunny, colourful, coastal ambience of the tropics inside your dingy hole, you have laid the foundation for your tiki bar. Cocktails like Zombie and Mai Tai would give the final flourish.

Tiki didn't take birth from thin air, spontaneously, mind it.

Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt, who later became popular as Donn Beachcomber, was only 24 when he washed up in Southern California looking for a job. But those were bleak times, the 1930s, America was reeling under severe economic depression. Gantt tried his hand at bootlegging alcohol, as prohibition was in force. He had only one advantage working for him, a charming and sociable personality that would win him friends even from Hollywood.

Gantt's frequent escapades to the South Pacific and the Caribbean helped him collect exotic articles from beach fronts that spoke volubly about an ancient Pacific culture.

When prohibition was finally lifted, Gantt put what he had collected together, raising a small café in the corner of a small hotel just off Hollywood Boulevard. It would hardly serve about two dozen customers, but that was enough to begin with. It was the South Pacific accessories that adorned his bar that first prompted customers to check in with curiosity. Visitors had never seen old nets and wrecked boats against a drinking hole till then. The now-ubiquitous cocktail umbrellas were all born of Gantt's brain. It was almost like relaxing on a Caribbean beach in the shade of a coconut tree. Gantt called the bar Don the Beachcomber (Gantt had already changed his name to Donn Beach).

So what should the signature drink in his watering hole be?

A modern-day Mai Tai.

Rum-based cocktails, he had no doubt about it (rum was also the least expensive drink). With lots of layers of tropical fruits. Donn worked on his drinks, slowly creating an exotic menu no other bar in the country could dream of (many believe that it was Donn who created Mai Tai, the legendary cocktail, in 1934). Navy Grog, Tahitian Rum Punch, PiYi, he made more than 84 different cocktails in his lifetime.

One day a well-dressed man waltzed into Donn's bar and ordered a cocktail. He liked what he drank and asked for a repeat. Could I have one more? he asked again at the end of it. By Donn's sheer luck, the visitor was a reporter from the New-York Tribune. Word soon spread about the Polynesian magic (complete with eclectic decor 'rhum' rhapsodies) that was happening in this small corner of America. Don the Beachcomber! Do visit!

Donn welcomed the glitz and glitterati, Charlie Chaplin included, to his bar with his customary phrase: "If you can get to paradise, I'll bring it to you."

But the paradise didn't last for long for Donn Beach.

When WWII broke out, he set out to the war front, leaving his tiki bar into the safe and able hands of his wife. When he came back, Donn saw his establishment already spread out across the country with more than 16 units, all flourishing healthily. Isn't that reason to celebrate? Uh-oh no!

Donn Beach fell out with his wife Irene 'Sunny', and the divorce cost him his rights to the business he once painfully built up. According to the agreement, he could not set up a bar with the name Don the Beachcomber in the United States.

After signing as a consultant, Donn retired to Hawaii, where he opened his own Don the Beachcomber, making it an instant landmark.

Most of the cocktails Donn created in his life were legendary. But he was always tight-lipped about the recipes. The formulae of many of his greatest drinks went to the grave along with their creator because of his obsession with keeping them close to his chest. The bottles in his bar were mysteriously coded with numbers; only the most trusted employees knew the mixture and proportion.

It was only by sheer luck that the recipe of perhaps his greatest contribution to the cocktail world - Zombie - leaked out. Tiki aficionado Jeff 'beachbum' Berry finally got to it with the help of the daughter of a bartender whom Don hired in 1937.

Though Donn Beach died in 1981 at the age of 81, his legacy lives on through the concept of the tiki bar and the exotic cocktails he made.