Comfortable enough to order a Mai Tai at a bar in Plentywood, MT in January, that is. That really happened. I was in the northeasternmost corner of Our Fair State a few months ago for work and was looking forward to a trip to Hawaii. It was so cold out there that the antifreeze in the generator that was running our test froze. Needless to say that I was brimming with nervous anticipation of spending some time in the tropics with friends (I just checked The Google to see if Hawaii is technically tropical. It is, except for Necker Island. Huh). The Mai Tai has become sort of an emblem of those islands, and Alaska Air even pours you a free (albeit crappy) one on your way there. I was bumming pretty hard because I had maybe just broken an expensive test that might not yield any usable results and even more, might keep me in a hotel room in Plentywood for another two weeks.

The motel where I was staying, The Sherwood Inn, is a Robin Hood themed place that’s next to Fryer Tuck’s Restaurant (which actually has pretty good Mexican food) and the Robin Hood Lounge. In case you’re in the area and you need to unwind a little, there’s also Maid Marrion’s Nail Salon, and Little John’s Tanning Salon. This is real. I understand that during the fall they see a lot of bird hunting traffic, but in January most of the tenants were there as agents of the burgeoning oil and gas interests in the region. On most nights the Robin Hood Lounge was half filled by a mixture rough hewn oilmen and close-knit tables of laughing locals exchanging rounds of Patron.

On one of my later nights there I didn’t feel much like fraternizing and was really looking forward to Hawaii. To get my spirits up I ordered a Mai Tai to go, and the conversation went something like this:

Me: You can’t, by chance, make a cocktail to go, can you?
Bartender: Sure can.
Me: This is the best place ever. Can I have a Mai Tai?
Bartender: I’ve never heard of that. What’s in it?
Me: I’m not really sure. (So I looked it up, and came up with a usable recipe that called for ingredients that these guys stocked. The bartender and I looked it over, and he made it.)
Me: Heck yeah.
Bartender: Say, that looks kind of good. Maybe I should start making those . . . . Sorta looks like a chick drink, though.
Me: Oh, it’s definitely a chick drink.

I took the Mai Tai back to the room and managed to catch a couple episodes of Law & Order: SVU on USA (and also came up with the theory that that show is 98% of their programming). The Plentywood Mai Tai was a satisfying and tantalizing foreshadow of Actual Mai Tais to come, but was entirely too sugary to be actually palatable.

Anyway the test was not a complete failure, I was allowed to return from the Great Northeast, and a couple of weeks later escape for a while to Hawaii. We drank a lot of Mai Tais, and I was thinking recently that we spent some time dialing in the recipe. It’d be a shame for all of that work to go to waste and so I decided memorialize the recipe in The Cloud. So here it goes. This is really just the original Trader Vic’s recipe except with dark and white rum instead of Martinique and Jamaican rum. And with muddled herbs.

– 1 oz dark rum + a splash extra
– 1 oz white rum
– 1 oz fresh lime juice
– 0.5 oz orgeat syrup
– 0.5 oz Grand Marnier
mint or basil

Muddle a pinch of mint or basil in a shaker. Add ice and the rest of the ingredients. Shake and strain over ice. Top with a float of dark rum and garnish with fruit or mint.

That is all.

Photos compliments of Kristine Akland.