Mr. Bodi Hai

Taste

On the nose it's coffee and banana, roasty and a bit funky before the tropical fruit gets a look in. On tasting the rum leads with a rich aged warmth, then the coffee liqueur's bitterness and the banana's sweetness take turns, held together by the toasted macadamia orgeat, which genuinely tastes toasted rather than just sweet. Pineapple and lemon stop the whole thing getting too heavy. Angostura ties it off with a bit of baking spice. Coffee and banana and nuts and rum should not work on paper. It absolutely does.

Origin

Mr. Bodi Hai is a modern riff on the Mr. Bali Hai, a tiki classic created not long after San Diego's Bali Hai Restaurant opened on Shelter Island in 1954, where it became the house's own drink. The restaurant, and the cocktail, took their name from "Bali Ha'i," the song from the 1949 musical South Pacific, about a beautiful island glimpsed from a distance but never quite reached, exactly the vibe a tiki bar wants. The Mr. Bali Hai recipe drifted over the decades, a well-documented 1970s version runs dark Jamaican rum, light Puerto Rican rum, coffee brandy, pineapple, lemon and sugar syrup. Mr. Bodi Hai keeps that coffee-and-tropical backbone but adds banana liqueur and swaps in a toasted macadamia orgeat, a newer spin on an old tiki house drink rather than a historic recipe in its own right.