Mr. Bodi Hai
Shouldn't work. Really does.
- Method
- Shaken
- Style
- Tiki
- Glass
- Rocks glass
- Time
- 5 min
Ingredients
- 45mlGold RumReal McCoy recommended
No Gold Rum? Light Rum — cleaner and sharper — the drink loses some body and colour
- 7.5mlCoffee Liqueur
- 7.5mlCreme de BananeGiffard Banane du Brésil recommended
- 45mlPineapple Juice
No Pineapple Juice? Acid Adjusted Pineapple Juice — leave out any other citrus in the drink. It lands more like a sour, so you may need to balance the sweetness, but you could be onto a winner
- 22.5mlLemon Juice
- 15mlToasted Macadamia Orgeat
No Toasted Macadamia Orgeat? Orgeat — less nutty and toasty, but it mixes well
- 1 dashAngostura
No Angostura? Old Fashioned Bitters — close to Ango, with the same spicy notes — just not the standard bottle
- Garnish
- Pineapple wedge and frond
Make it well
Shaken, properly.
Add the rum, coffee liqueur, banana liqueur, pineapple juice, lemon juice, macadamia and to your with ice.
for 10-12 seconds.
Strain into a glass filled with .
Garnish with a pineapple and frond.
On the palate
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.
Where it came from
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.
Keep pouring
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The bartender’s note
One drink, one story, one bottle worth buying.
Thursday evening, so you have time to shop. No more than that.