Focus on Beachbum Berry

This week to celebrate Tales of the Cocktail, Sharlafied is running the interview she did with Jeff “Beachbum” Berry that took place during Roma Bar Show back at the end of May. Enjoy!

I'm speaking to Jeff “Beachbum” Berry at the Roma Bar show. First of all, welcome back to Italy. You've been at this for a long time. Can you tell me what first fascinated you about the world of Tiki?

It was the décor of the bars and the restaurants, they were so beautifully designed. Like mini Disneylands with alcohol. That's what pulled me in first before I could ever drink.

You wrote seven books and uncovered Tiki recipes made up of a series of secret mixes. What do you want to discover next?

A way to retire comfortably.

Tiki is all about nostalgia. Has Tiki turned the corner, and has it started reinventing itself?

Yes, it definitely has turned the corner, I think Tiki is about nostalgia only for people of a certain generation who were taken to places like these as a child, like I was. But now, younger people weren't around for the first wave of Tiki and there’s nothing nostalgic about it for them. It's just a category of drinks and a type of bar to go to. And the ingredients are changing. New ideas and new techniques are coming in and a lot of molecular techniques have been folded into Tiki. There are new spices and new base spirits being used, so it has pretty much reinvented itself completely in the 21st century.

You made a switch from being a scholar and doing a lot of studying to being a bar owner. How was that learning curve?

It was a very steep learning curve. The only reason that I was dragged kicking and screaming into opening the bar was because, as you know, writing just doesn't make that much money (laughs). I thought I could make a living writing cocktail books but that turned out not to be true. My wife Annene Kaye was the one with all of the restaurant experience. At a very early age, as a 17-year-old punk rocker in the Lower East Side, she had done everything—she bartended, hosted, she was in the kitchen cooking, she served; she knew the business and I didn’t. She was the one who told me: ‘Look, other people are opening up Tiki bars and using your recipes and they're making their reputations and making money. Why don't you do it?’ And with her holding my hand and doing all the heavy lifting we eventually got it open. Annene was the one who got the place open. She knew about staffing, she knew about the permits, she was very good at doing the build out and…

Credit: Jochen Hirschfeld

The interiors of Latitude 29. Credit: Jochen Hirschfeld

I want to compliment you on that because that was done with such style. You know, sometimes it can get really gaudy and yours is done just so well. I love that.

Thank you, I really appreciate that. Before I get into the learning curve, you said you have your own Tiki experiences. 

My grandmother had a tiki bar in Dayton, Ohio, and that's where my fascination with tiki came about. So for me it's nostalgia, because I am in that age group. You know, it just takes me back.

So back to my learning curve. Annene left me in charge of the drink menu. We both collaborated on how the restaurant looked, but it was mostly my task to do the drink menu. And my learning curve was when I was writing the books, the only thing I had to think about was how to make the best possible drink. If I wanted to spend a half an hour making the drink at home and I wanted to use an $80 bottle, I could do it, and that's fine. The most important thing was to get the best possible recipes in the book. What I learned was that I had to play three dimensional chess when doing the menu and I had to respect every recipe in the book because that’s how things had to be done. So, the first level is, how do I make the best possible drink? The second level is: okay, how do I make the best possible drink in the least amount of time? And the third level is how to make the best possible drink in the least amount of time for the least amount of money. So all three of these things had to come into play while still doing that you are proud of. So that was a very very steep learning curve.

Can you just give me a couple of words about your new Zombie Rum blend that you created with Hamilton?

Yes. Several different rum companies approached me about putting my name on a bottle of a barrel that I chose or something like that. Well, that's just ego. There's nothing interesting about that to me.. But when Ed approached me he said What do you want to do? And I said, well, Trader Vic's back in the 60s and 70s had a Mai Tai rum put out where you blended the two rums you used in the restaurant so people didn't have to go out find Martinique rum and find Jamaican rum, they could just pour from one bottle.

The Zombie bottle. Credit: Randy Schmidt

That’s a brilliant idea. 

I thought it was brilliant, and I thought let's do that for the Zombie. Nobody's done that for a zombie and the zombie has three different rums you have to source including Demerara rum. So the idea was, let's put the three rums in one bottle and blend them so that they work in the one bottle and also blend them at an ABV strength so that you only have to use half the amount of rum you would have to use normally. 

Another brilliant idea. 

So the bottle goes that much further. So that was the idea. behind that. And then that came out and people liked it. So we did another one. We did a Navy Grog rum.

And you're doing syrups as well.

Yeah. These are being done with my friend, Adam Kolesar. He lives in Brooklyn and makes the syrups at Orgeat works, They're all pretty much handmade small batch syrups. And when we opened Latitude, he said, Hey, are you making your orgeat and I said, ‘hell no. I don’t want to blanch almonds and squeeze them through cheesecloth... same thing with Falernum, I don’t wanna make Falernum, that’s even more difficult. That’s orgeat plus more steps.’ So he said, ‘well, let me do that for you.’ And I said, ‘that would be fantastic!’ In addition to blending them for us to serve in the restaurant, he came up with a line of retail serves, and also a Mai Tai mix.

Are they in a squeeze bottle?

No they are glass or plastic, your choice, 375 ml. He also did a Mai Tai mix. The idea behind it was: how do we help home drinkers make something if they don’t have all the ingredients on hand? And this idea came about because I was in Hawaii and I couldn't get a decent Mai Tai anywhere the last time I was there.

So the idea was: you're on vacation, the only rum you can get is white Puerto Rican. You can get a lime. Where are you going to get orgeat syrup? Where are you gonna get Martinique rum? Where are you going to get Jamaican rum? What are you going to do with this white rum? So, what he did—it was all him and it was brilliant, all I did was just taste various samples—he recreated the taste of Curaçao by burning orange peels and putting it into this macerated mix. Somehow by smoking wood and doing stuff that I don't even know about, he recreated the flavor profile of a dark Jamaican and the grassiness of a Martinique agricole rum in this non-alcoholic syrup. And of course he added orgeat to it. So the idea is, you don't need to hunt down these hard-to-find rums, all you need is that white rum you find at the 7-11 store. So the mix was designed specifically to work with a neutral white Puerto Rican. If you actually use Jamaican and Martinique rum, it doesn’t work. And of course we stopped short of putting the citrus element in there because it's not going to be fresh. You can always add that yourself. 

Your Bar Latitude 29 in New Orleans is a great success—any spinoffs down the line?

We’re working on that, Covid put a crashing halt to to some of our expansion plans in different citi4s, but as the markets open back up we are going start exploring, but that is the plan.

And the city? Can you give me a hint, East Coast, West Coast?

We're not going West Coast. It has to be within driving distance from where we are, for quality control.

Are you working on another book right now? 

I'm going back and forth. There's almost no time to do it. Between the restaurant, traveling etc, et cetera, but Iwant to do a sequel to Potions of Caribbean so I am amassing information. I don't know if I have the recipes to do it yet. So I'm doing a lot of reading. If a book comes out of it, great.

Okay, and do you talk to Wondrich a lot?

He is the sort of the guiding light, we all look up to him.

What's your next speaking gig?

That is in Dallas for Dallas Tiki. And then after that, we'll do Tales of the Cocktail. 

And I’ll be there for the first time! You’re still a young man of course, but what would you like your epitaph to read? 

I would like it to say: We're still waiting for him. He's not dead yet.

If you can have a drink with anyone, living or dead, who would it be?

They say you should never meet your heroes. I’ve met a few of mine and I think that’s a very good maxim. I think that's what I have to say. I would just want my next week to do with my wife Annene.

Five questions for Beachbum Berry

Favorite bar tool?

That would be maybe my Navy grog ice cone mold.

White or dark rum?

Dark.

Jamaican or Agricole rum? 

Ohh Sophie's choice—ah, let’s say, today… Jamaican.

Where do you like to vacation? 

The pacific islands, Tahiti, Hawaii, Easter islands. There’s just something special about them.

Finish this sentence, When I am not thinking about tiki I am…

Sleeping.

Wow, every waking hour. Thanks so much for this interview.

My pleasure.

Where you can find Beachbum Berry

Twitter: @Latitude29_NOLA
Instagram: @latitude29nola
Facebook: @beachbumberryslatitude29