Jeff Berry (mixologist)
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Jeff "Beachbum" Berry (born ) is an American restaurant owner, author, and historian of
tiki culture Tiki culture is an American-originated art, music, and entertainment movement inspired by Polynesian, Melanesian, and Micronesian cultures, and by Oceanian art. Influential cultures to Tiki culture include Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia ...
, particularly the drinks associated with the tiki theme. In addition to researching and reconstructing lost recipes, he has invented and published his own cocktail recipes.


Career

Berry describes himself as a "professional bum". He is a graduate of the
UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...
film school, and he worked as a journalist and screenwriter in
Hollywood Hollywood usually refers to: * Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California * Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States Hollywood may also refer to: Places United States * Hollywood District (disambiguation) * Hollywood ...
for many years. He did several Disney rewrites and directed a TV movie starring
Olympia Dukakis Olympia Dukakis (June 20, 1931 – May 1, 2021) was an American actress. She performed in more than 130 stage productions, in some 60 films, and in approximately 50 television series. Best known as a screen actress, she started her career in the ...
. But he came to realize that he "liked making drinks more than making movies" and decided to focus on his real passion: tropical drinks. Berry fell in love with tiki culture as a child in 1968, when his parents took him to a Chinese restaurant in the
San Fernando Valley The San Fernando Valley, known locally as the Valley, is an urbanized valley in Los Angeles County, Los Angeles County, California. Situated to the north of the Los Angeles Basin, it comprises a large portion of Los Angeles, the Municipal corpo ...
in the
Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...
area. He loved its faux-Polynesian decor and was fascinated by the elaborate cocktails that were served. He later explained, "It was this weird, mysterious adult thing that was a part of the whole exotic fantasy world.... drinks would come with all kinds of elaborate garnishes. It had a huge impression on me, and that became my favorite place to go." By the 1970s the tiki craze, which had been launched by
Donn Beach Donn Beach (born Ernest Raymond Gantt; February 22, 1907 – June 7, 1989) was an American adventurer, businessman, and World War II veteran who was the "founding father" of tiki culture. He is known for opening the first prototypical tiki bar, Do ...
and
Victor Bergeron Trader Vic's is a restaurant and tiki bar chain headquartered in Emeryville, California, United States. Victor Jules Bergeron, Jr. (December 10, 1902 in San Francisco – October 11, 1984 in Hillsborough, California) founded a chain of Polynesia ...
in the 1930s, was fading; formerly popular with celebrities and trend-setters, tiki-themed restaurants forty years later were regarded as "tacky". As Berry explained in a 2010 interview, "the fad entered middle-age, and became something your parents did." But as an adult Berry still loved the style, as did his wife Annene Kaye, a former bartender. He particularly wanted to know how to make the elaborate, exotic drinks associated with the theme. Owners and bartenders of the tiki era held their drink recipes as closely guarded secrets; Beach kept the actual recipes secret even from his bartenders, telling them to use one ounce from Bottle A and a quarter ounce from Bottle B. As a result, low-quality imitations of classic drinks like the
Mai Tai The Mai Tai ( ) is a cocktail made of rum, Curaçao liqueur, orgeat syrup, and lime juice. It is one of the characteristic cocktails in Tiki culture. History Victor J. Bergeron claimed to have invented the Mai Tai in 1944 at his restaurant, ...
and the
Zombie A zombie (Haitian French: ; ; Kikongo: ''zumbi'') is a mythological undead corporeal revenant created through the reanimation of a corpse. In modern popular culture, zombies appear in horror genre works. The term comes from Haitian folkl ...
had become common. Berry and Kaye set out to rediscover or reverse-engineer the original drinks that were served at now largely defunct icons like
Trader Vic's Trader Vic's is a restaurant and tiki bar chain headquartered in Emeryville, California, United States. Victor Jules Bergeron, Jr. (December 10, 1902 in San Francisco – October 11, 1984 in Hillsborough, California) founded a chain of Polynes ...
and
Don the Beachcomber Don, don or DON and variants may refer to: Places *Don (river), a river in European Russia *Don River (disambiguation), several other rivers with the name * Don, Benin, a town in Benin * Don, Dang, a village and hill station in Dang district, Gu ...
as well as surviving tiki palaces like Mai Kai,
Tiki Ti The Tiki Ti is a Polynesian-themed tiki bar on Sunset Boulevard, in the Los Feliz district of Los Angeles. Established in 1961 by Ray Buhen, the Tiki Ti's only employees, Mike Sr. and Mike Jr. Buhen are also the sole owners. The establishment is ...
,
Tonga Room The Tonga Room & Hurricane Bar is a restaurant and tiki bar in the Fairmont San Francisco hotel in Nob Hill, San Francisco, California. Named after the South Pacific nation of Tonga Tonga, officially the Kingdom of Tonga, is an island c ...
and Bali Hai. He bought out-of-print drink recipe books and collected memorabilia like placemats, menus, and coasters. He searched out old-school bartenders and persuaded them to share their secret recipes with him. At first Berry's research was just a hobby. He and fellow enthusiasts would gather at backyard luaus hosted by Otto Von Stroheim; the parties proved a strong influence in keeping tiki culture alive and helping to inspire the "tiki renaissance" of the early 21st century. Berry began to compile the recipes he found through his research into scrapbooks for friends. He published his first book, ''Beach Bum Berry's Grog Log'', in 1998. The book has been called "pivotal" for popularizing the tiki theme as well as giving bartenders the recipes they needed to attract a new generation of customers. The Tonga Hut, Los Angeles's oldest tiki bar, offered customers a Grog Log Challenge: to drink, within a year, all 78 cocktails whose recipes are printed in the ''Grog Log''. Two years later Berry wrote the chapter on tropical drinks, called "Mixologists and Concoctions", in Sven Kirsten's influential ''The Book of Tiki''. Tiki-themed bars and restaurants began to come back into style. Soon researching, writing, and giving talks about tropical drinks was his main activity. In 2015 he commented, "All these neo-tiki bars were opening up all over the world... and between 75 and 90 percent of their menus were all recipes I had found." The recipes in Berry's books are mostly for classic drinks, some of which had never been published before and required years of sleuthing to discover. They also include historical information about the originators of tiki such as Beach and Bergeron, as well as important early contributors to the tiki renaissance such as Von Stroheim and Kirsten. His fourth book, ''Beachbum Berry's Sippin' Safari'' (2007), includes what he believes to be Beach's original recipe for the Zombie, which had never been written down except in code. He spent a year and a half researching how to make the perfect
Daiquiri The daiquiri (; ) is a cocktail whose main ingredients are rum, citrus juice (typically lime juice), and sugar or other sweetener. The daiquiri is one of the six basic drinks listed in David A. Embury's classic ''The Fine Art of Mixing Dri ...
. Some of his rediscovered classic drink mixes are marketed by Trader Tiki. In 2014, he and Kaye opened a tiki-themed restaurant and bar, Beachbum Berry’s Latitude 29, in the
French Quarter The French Quarter, also known as the (; ; ), is the oldest neighborhood in the city of New Orleans. After New Orleans () was founded in 1718 by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, the city developed around the ("Old Square" in English), a ...
of
New Orleans New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 at the 2020 ...
. He said operating the restaurant is "the first time I've worked set hours since 1985." In 2021, Jeff Berry partnered with rum importer Ed Hamilton to release "Beachbum Berry's Zombie Blend" rum.


Impact

M. Carrie Allan of ''
The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...
'' described Berry's work in researching and reconstructing lost recipes as that of a "cocktail archeologist." Wayne Curtis, historian and author of ''And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails,'' dubbed him "the Indiana Jones of tiki drinks." Berry calls himself a "tropical drink evangelist." Steven Kurutz of ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' said, "Mr. Berry’s lasting contribution may be in salvaging tropical drinks from decades of bad bartending." The ''Australian Bartender'' noted, "It's hard to overstate this guy’s importance for tiki bars: Jeff Berry literally wrote the books on tiki."


Publications

* * * * * * *


Drink creations

Although Berry's books have primarily chronicled the sometimes "lost" recipes from historical bartenders of the past such as Beach, Bergeron, Tony Ramos, and
Harry Yee Harry K. Yee (September 26, 1918 – December 7, 2022) was an American bartender from Honolulu, Hawaii, who was credited with having helped to spread tiki culture during the mid-twentieth century, both in Hawaii and in the continental United States ...
, Berry has also invented and published some of his own cocktail recipes. Examples that have appeared in other bartender guides, drink apps, or tiki websites include the
Ancient Mariner ''The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'' (originally ''The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere''), written by English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1797–98 and published in 1798 in the first edition of ''Lyrical Ballads'', is a poem that recounts the ...
, Bum’s Rush, Castaway, Hai Karate, Restless Native, Sea of Cortez, Hula-Hula, and Von Tiki.


See also

*
List of bartenders This is a list of notable bartenders. A bartender (also known as a barkeep or a mixologist) is a person who serves alcoholic beverages and other drinks behind a bar, typically in a licensed bar (establishment), establishment. Bartenders A * To ...


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Berry, Jeff 1958 births Living people 21st-century American historians 21st-century American male writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers American bartenders American male non-fiction writers Tiki culture UCLA Film School alumni