When I recently heard that Trader Vic’s in London was closing I was upset. Mainly because it was only at that point that I discovered it existed! I had no idea a venue was located in London and as it was due to shut at the end of the year I had less than a month to visit!
Luckily I had an arrangement to go into town to meet some friends for lunch one weekend so this gave me an opportunity to seek it out and try some of their legendary Tiki drinks. See Trader Vic’s has the reputation of being one of the first tiki-themed restaurant/bars to open in California in the 1930s. Victor Bergeron, or ‘Trader Vic’, was himself a bit of a character and would tell people that the leg he lost to tuberculosis at age six was actually bitten off by a shark! The London location was the longest-surviving franchise having opened in the basement of the Hilton Hotel on Park Lane in 1963.
Victor Bergeron claimed to have invented one of the all-time great Tiki drinks: the Mai Tai. So this ‘original’ recipe had to be my first drink order, with my partner ordering a Zombie which is another Tiki classic.
My Mai Tai was served in a generously sized double old fashioned glass and decorated with the classic mint sprig and lime slice. The menu lists the ingredients as lime, orgeat, rock candy, orange curaçao and aged rum. Rock candy is the name given to a simple syrup made with sugar and water in a 2:1 ratio, but this drink wasn’t overly sweet. I found it to be incredibly well balanced with the tartness of the lime, the dryness of the curaçao and the boozy rum. The almond flavour of the orgeat which is a hallmark of so many tiki drinks is also quite forward in this drink and it certainly went down very smooth.
As the legend goes this Mai Tai was concocted by Trader Vic in 1944 and the first customer he served it to exclaimed ‘mai tai roa ae!’, which supposedly translates from Tahitian to ‘out of this world!’. This drink had a Jamaican 17 year Wray & Nephew rum as it’s base but this has since gone out of production, so I’m not sure what rum substitute is used these days but they describe it as aged and I would suspect it is Jamaican. In the 1972 edition of ‘Trader Vic’s Bartender’s Guide’ Victor Bergeron suggests Trader Vic Mai Tai rum or half and half of dark Jamaican rum and Martinique rum.
The Zombie was a drink created by another Tiki pioneer, Don the Beachcomber. He wouldn’t serve his patrons more than two of these drinks in one night due to its ability to make one ‘like the walking dead’. The fruity flavour disguises the strength of this cocktail and the one served to us was perhaps the best tasting I have been served at a bar. Trader Vic’s menu describes the ingredients here as light and dark rums, grenadine and curaçao although I’m sure from what I know of other recipes there are a few ingredients missing from this list.
The glassware for both these drinks were solid and functional but hardly exciting with no prints or decorative cuts. Tiki drinks can suffer from being mixed into a brown muddy colour, which is one reason why tiki mugs are popular in order to obscure this. The Mai Tai here was a nice light amber colour and the zombie was a brilliant red so their vessels at least showcased this nicely.
To enter Trader Vic’s we walked inside and to the left of the main entrance lobby of the Hilton on Park Lane. Passing under the sign for the ‘boathouse bar & restaurant’ two staff members at the desk greeted us and radioed downstairs to confirm there was an available table. We then descended down the impressively large spiral staircase to the lower floor. This expansive basement bar was decorated with Polynesian style boats hanging from the ceiling, carved tiki statues, solid polished wood tables, glass fishing floats and wicker chairs with huge peacock-like backs popular in the mid-20th century. The wall lights were set in beautiful, huge, pink shells. We attended on a Saturday evening which we found the place was fairly busy and filled up as we were there. Sat on a table behind us was a good looking and well dressed group with hair done just right with the women in tropical dresses and the men in sharp suits. This group looked like they arrived from the 50s and I’m not sure if they were dressed up just for visiting this bar but I appreciated their efforts. Around the corner from us there was live music from a lady with a guitar singing covers of Rihanna’s Diamonds, Chaka Khan’s Ain’t Nobody, Stevie Wonder’s Isn’t She Lovely and Crazy by Gnarls Barkley.
When we ordered our second round of drinks we opted for two new drinks to us, a Koana Puffer and Maui Tai Tea. The Koana Puffer was the only cocktail of the night that came in a tiki mug. Not that we cared at all but it didn’t match the striking puffer fish mug shown on the menu but it was instead served in a big red fish with a gold ball in it’s mouth. The fish was actually kind of cute and fit the exotic and tropical theme of the bar.
Koana Puffer as a drink didn’t appeal to me when I read the ingredients; pineapple passion and almond, all mixed with gin and a dropper of overproof rum as per the menu and I’m not a fan of gin at all. To my pleasant surprise the juniper taste of the drink was overpowered by everything else so it was quite enjoyable.
My Maui Tai Tea was a concoction made from amber and 151 rums, citrus juices and a hint of pineapple. I’ll be honest it must have been a very subtle hint of pineapple because I couldn’t detect it and the whole drink tasted to me like a slightly more boozy version of their Mai Tai. This didn’t bother me too much and I very much relished the drink.
Near the exit there was a window case display of all things tiki, Trader Vic’s branded of course. There were cocktail stirrers, vintage menus, postcards and of course plenty of tiki mugs. Favourites included a stylised Death Star mug and for fans of the Warren Zevon song, ‘Werewolves of London’, a werewolf mug inspired by the lyrics about a lycanthrope caught drinking a piña colada at Trader Vic’s. A CD case in the display revealed that if you want to recreate an authentic tiki atmosphere at home then King Kukulele and the Friki Tikis are a good choice for the Hi-Fi.
So at the end of 2022 this Trader Vic’s franchise is set to close for good after fifty-nine years. In my first visit I really enjoyed myself and the cocktails and I’m gutted that I won’t be able to drop by in the years to come. Hopefully I will get to go one last time before they shut their doors for the final time and if possible I encourage you to too!
