Latest / The Restaurant Guys / Storytellers of The Donn of Tiki Documentary | Max Well and Alex Lamb

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Storytellers of The Donn of Tiki Documentary | Max Well and Alex Lamb · The Restaurant Guys

• 0:42
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Hello everybody and welcome.
• 0:43
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: You are listening to the Restaurant Guys.
• 0:46
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: I'm Mark Pascal and I'm here with Francis Shot.
• 0:48
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Together, we own stage left in Captain Lombardi restaurants.
• 0:51
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: We're here to bring you the inside track on food, wine, and the finer things in life and tiki cocktails because our guests and cocktails today.
• 0:57
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Our guests today are Alex Lamb and Maxwell.
• 0:59
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: They have put together an amazing movie, a documentary on Don Beach, on the Beach Comer, but they'll be joining us in a little bit.
• 1:05
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: But, uh, what do we have to talk about before that, mark?
• 1:07
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: I want to tell people about something that happened more, mostly to you.
• 1:12
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Uh oh.
• 1:13
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: at a, an event we went to, so you and I went to an event.
• 1:17
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: We went to somebody's restaurant who we were planning on having on the show.
• 1:22
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Okay.
• 1:23
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Oh, and yeah, Francis said, oh, oh yeah.
• 1:28
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: We who we, who we were planning on having on the show and we wanted to go, we frequently like to go to the person's restaurant before we have them on the show.
• 1:36
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: So we have something, something to talk about.
• 1:38
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Well, we went to this person's restaurant.
• 1:40
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Nice person.
• 1:41
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: A nice person, and had a lovely, lovely meal.
• 1:43
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Yeah.
• 1:43
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Lovely meal.
• 1:44
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Okay.
• 1:45
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: And.
• 1:46
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Uh, you know, everything went pretty well.
• 1:48
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: The food was very good.
• 1:49
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: We en, we enjoyed ourselves and he, this person lived a restaurateur's nightmare.
• 1:57
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Oh yeah.
• 1:57
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Okay.
• 1:57
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: So he's supposed to be on the show a couple days later and he lives a restaurateur's nightmare.
• 2:02
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Oh yeah.
• 2:03
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: We're in a car on the way home and we get a phone call from the restaurant.
• 2:08
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: And there's a frantic mare d on the phone says, excuse me.
• 2:12
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Excuse me.
• 2:13
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Was the person who was allergic to pine nuts, did they eat the cookie?
• 2:19
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Did they eat the cookies?
• 2:21
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Any of the cookies?
• 2:21
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: And so now I don't know that this is what's going.
• 2:23
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: I'm allergic to pine nuts.
• 2:24
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Very allergic to pine nuts.
• 2:25
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: And I don't know any of this is going on, but the, the, uh, Julie is, was with us.
• 2:29
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: We took her and, and she's like, uh, yeah, hold on.
• 2:32
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Um.
• 2:33
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Francis did you?
• 2:33
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: So she knows what has been said in her ear, but we don't.
• 2:35
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: It's just, Francis, did you eat the cookie tonight?
• 2:37
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: And I was like, oh yeah, I loved them.
• 2:38
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: I had two.
• 2:42
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: It's like, oh yes he did.
• 2:43
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Why?
• 2:43
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: I'm like, that is made entirely of pine nuts.
• 2:45
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Oh, it's they're ba, they're not pinoli cookies, but they're basically pine nut.
• 2:49
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Ridden.
• 2:50
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Yeah, probably flour.
• 2:51
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: And they were delicious, lemme tell you.
• 2:52
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Oh goodness.
• 2:53
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Well, sure.
• 2:53
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: It's a unfamiliar flavor, right?
• 2:55
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Well, and so look, you serve a million meals.
• 2:56
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: You know, everyone will make a mistake sooner or later anyway.
• 2:59
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: But the mistake was, this is the nightmare though.
• 3:01
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Oh, it's a nightmare.
• 3:02
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Okay.
• 3:02
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Remember, this is somebody who's supposed to come on our show in a couple of days.
• 3:05
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Right.
• 3:05
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: And they don't know that we're not dicks.
• 3:06
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Right?
• 3:06
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Right.
• 3:07
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: We're not, they don't know that we're not using their name in the podcast.
• 3:10
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: They don't know that we're gonna, we might tell the story, but anonymously other than, Hey.
• 3:14
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: We just poisoned that guy.
• 3:16
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Yeah.
• 3:16
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: And you know what's funny?
• 3:17
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: So the kind of allergic that I am is, I don't go into anaphylactic shock or anything like that, but I, I, I suffer severe and prolonged six hours of gastrointestinal distress where it's bad, right?
• 3:29
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: And it doesn't come on right away.
• 3:31
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: And it, and it takes five hours to hit.
• 3:32
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: I've only, I've been hit like four or five times in my life.
• 3:34
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: I know when it's gonna come and I'm driving the car home.
• 3:37
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: I know what's coming in four hours.
• 3:39
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Oh, goodness gracious.
• 3:40
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: And uh, so we drive the whole staff home.
• 3:41
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: We drop, we drop Rudy off, and, and it came that night and I was, I was very sick and you know.
• 3:46
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: I mean, the moral of the story is number one, mistake's gonna happen even in the best of places.
• 3:51
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Um, and, you know, did I call the restaurant and say, you're a jerk, and how dare you, and you know, I'm gonna sue you or anything?
• 3:58
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Mm-hmm.
• 3:58
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: No, I mean, mistakes, I, it wasn't dangerous.
• 4:00
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: And by the way, I think it was great that they called, so I wasn't wondering.
• 4:05
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: At one o'clock, what in the morning, what had happened?
• 4:07
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: I think they handled that very well.
• 4:09
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Mm-hmm.
• 4:10
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Um, and you know, but it also goes to show that, you know, I think that restaurants handle allergies and food sensitivities pretty well right now.
• 4:18
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: what we do when, when, when allergies come into the restaurant, when someone says they're allergic.
• 4:23
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: It goes on the ticket.
• 4:24
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Everyone is notified, the busboy is notified everyone, but the code check girl knows that there's this allergy in this position on this table, and we treat it with, and sometimes with new young people in the restaurant, they don't get how serious we are.
• 4:38
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Well, and then you have the, the, the old school.
• 4:41
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Mentality of, oh, they're not really allergic, they just don't like that thing.
• 4:44
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: One of the reasons people have that mentality is because look, if you don't want, if you don't like some food.
• 4:51
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Don't, don't tell people you're allergic to mushrooms, even though you're not, because you're afraid they're gonna sneak a mushroom by that.
• 4:58
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: You want it treated as if it's a, a health related issue.
• 5:01
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Right?
• 5:02
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Because a lot of people will tell us, oh, I'm allergic to butter or something, and then they get to dessert and they order that.
• 5:07
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: And you say, I thought you were allergic to that.
• 5:08
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: And they're like, oh, well no, I like, sometimes I like it.
• 5:10
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: It happens a lot, a lot that, that, that happens so much more than, people would realize that, that somebody tells us they're allergic to something the problem is, is a disservice to, and, and it's desensitizing.
• 5:21
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Restaurant staffs from people who really do have an issue.
• 5:24
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Sure.
• 5:24
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Because you see, you see 10 times someone told you they were allergic to something and then they betray by the end of the meal.
• 5:30
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Mm-hmm.
• 5:30
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Or the third visit, they're not really, and that really bugs you.
• 5:33
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: But what had happened in this restaurant, and I, and I saw it happen.
• 5:37
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Was, they were not super busy when we first got there.
• 5:41
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: And, and the beginning of the meal, everything was, was very smooth.
• 5:44
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: And they did actually tell us about something that there was a pie nuts in.
• 5:48
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: And we continued through the meal.
• 5:50
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: But what happened was the place got very busy.
• 5:52
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Mm-hmm.
• 5:53
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: And the staff that was there got a little bit overwhelmed.
• 5:56
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: it was just a little more than the staff could handle.
• 5:58
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: And they were just teetering, service wise.
• 6:01
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: And that's when the problem with the cookies happened when people were at their limits already in, in from a service perspective.
• 6:09
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: That that's what happened.
• 6:10
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: But I do, I do have to say that, I really respect that they called us.
• 6:14
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Mm-hmm.
• 6:14
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: And I really respect that all the way down to whoever figured it out and said.
• 6:18
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Wait a second.
• 6:19
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Wasn't there a pine that allergy on Table 35?
• 6:22
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Oh my God.
• 6:23
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: And, and they didn't go, don't tell anybody.
• 6:25
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Right.
• 6:25
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Don't tell the chef, we'll get fired.
• 6:26
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: They the culture of that organization.
• 6:28
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: So kudos to that chef.
• 6:29
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Yeah.
• 6:29
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: The culture of that organization is when you make a mistake, you fix it and you run at it.
• 6:33
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: You don't run away from it.
• 6:34
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: And they did.
• 6:35
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: And the best restaurants do that when there's a problem.
• 6:37
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: they run at the problem, not away from the problem.
• 6:39
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: good job.
• 6:39
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Yeah.
• 6:39
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: And so, so that speaks to me of, of an organization with a great culture.
• 6:42
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Mm-hmm.
• 6:43
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Uh, no harm, no foul.
• 6:44
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Everything's good.
• 6:45
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: and I wanna go back.
• 6:46
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: You're okay?
• 6:46
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Yeah, for sure.
• 6:47
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Absolutely.
• 6:47
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: For sure.
• 6:48
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: Anyway, we'll, we'll be back in just a moment.
• 6:50
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: We're gonna talk about Tiki All Things Tiki in just a moment.
• 6:52
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: So if you're feeling rummy stick with us.
• 6:55
  the-restaurant-guys_2_05-22-2025_143547: You can always find out more@restaurantguyspodcast.com..
• 6:59
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Hey there everybody.
• 6:59
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Welcome back.
• 7:00
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Our guests today are Alex Lamb and Maxwell.
• 7:02
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: They're the director's, editor and cinematographer of an amazing new film called the Don of Tiki, the mostly true story of Don the Beachcomber.
• 7:11
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: we love this film.
• 7:12
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: We saw it in previews.
• 7:13
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: It's not out in wide distribution yet, but it will be shortly.
• 7:16
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: You've gotta check it out.
• 7:17
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: We couldn't be happier to welcome you guys to the show.
• 7:19
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Hey guys, welcome to the show, Alex Max.
• 7:21
  Alex: Thank you so much for having us.
• 7:22
  Alex: Yeah, happy to be here.
• 7:24
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Yeah, this is a tremendous documentary'cause I, I think that most people know there's a story behind Tiki.
• 7:30
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: It's obviously a, a fantasy story, but it really comes down to one or two guys who started the whole thing and invented it out of whole cloth.
• 7:38
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: And the story of Don the Beachcomber is pretty wild de.
• 7:44
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: How, how did you come to making a documentary part of the definitive documentary about this guy?
• 7:50
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Um, about which there's so much history and so much legend and so much bullshit.
• 7:56
  Max: Well,
• 7:56
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: I.
• 7:56
  Max: thanks, we'll take definitive.
• 7:58
  Max: That sounds good.
• 7:58
  Max: Yeah.
• 7:59
  Max: Um, you know, we didn't set out actually to make a Dawn Beach film when we started., We did this project originally, um, starting in 2020 when everything was kinda shut down for COVID.
• 8:10
  Max: Alex had the idea to do a short piece on a couple of the tiki bars in la.
• 8:15
  Max: Uh, we thought, you know, we'd probably be able to get in'cause nobody was there and you know, they're visually interesting.
• 8:21
  Max: There's a little bit of history.
• 8:23
  squadcaster-ed0d_2_05-20-2025_110108: Yeah.
• 8:23
  Alex: Um, then the more people we talked to, the more, you know, everyone was like, well, you know, there's these stories about Dawn Beach and it really all started with him.
• 8:31
  Alex: And, and the stories were just fascinating.
• 8:33
  Alex: And I knew a little bit about Dawn Beach.
• 8:36
  Alex: We, we went home from a, from a pre-interview we had done and we opened up one of spend Kirsten's books.
• 8:41
  Alex: I.
• 8:42
  Alex: Showed Max is like, here, here's like a chapter about Don Beach.
• 8:45
  Alex: And we were looking at it, we were like, if, if half the stuff is true, you know, this would be an amazing story for a feature length documentary.
• 8:51
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: and almost half of it is true.
• 8:53
  squadcaster-ed0d_2_05-20-2025_110108: yeah.
• 8:54
  Alex: Yeah,
• 8:54
  squadcaster-ed0d_2_05-20-2025_110108: nearly.
• 8:55
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: but the other thing is here was charlatan, a huckster, a, a guy who created obvious fantasy, right?
• 9:02
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: So you knew when you walked into a tiki bar, you weren't walking into an authentic Polynesian, you know, piece of cultural history.
• 9:08
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: So he created a, a, a fantasy.
• 9:11
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: But he, but he, he blended what was true and what wasn't, and it's even his name.
• 9:16
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: You didn't quite know what was real and what wasn't, which just plays into the whole tiki thing.
• 9:21
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: It's, it's incredible.
• 9:22
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Did you find most people had misimpressions and believed stories that weren't true and vice versa as you researched?
• 9:29
  Max: We did.
• 9:29
  Max: Yeah.
• 9:30
  Max: And, and you know, to your point, it's like.
• 9:32
  Max: Uh, Tiki is really a Hollywood creation.
• 9:35
  Max: Don's first, Don the Beachcomber Bar was in Hollywood in 1933.
• 9:39
  Max: And people think of, uh, you know, Polynesia, they think of Hawaii.
• 9:43
  Max: Some people think of the Caribbean, right, with all the rum, but it's just a, a mashup of all of these different things.
• 9:50
  Max: And, and we learned that Don was kind of uniquely suited to be able to do this from his background and his travels around the world.
• 9:58
  Max: yeah.
• 9:58
  Max: Yeah.
• 9:59
  Max: It's, it's this funny thing where people associate it with all these sort of different cultures, but I mean, really Tiki is Hollywood.
• 10:05
  Alex: You know, I, I think one of the things we learned is that it, it tiki the, the genesis of Tiki is really kind of autobiographical to Don.
• 10:13
  Alex: Um, he was sort of the only person at that time who could have come up with this thing.
• 10:17
  Alex: 'cause he had done the traveling when he was in his twenties.
• 10:19
  Alex: He learned.
• 10:20
  Alex: How to make a planter's punch in the Caribbean.
• 10:23
  Alex: He, he had run rum with his brother, so he had an in with the rum industry and knew how to sell rum to a generation of people who really weren't that interested in drinking rum.
• 10:35
  Alex: And until he created these cocktails, um.
• 10:39
  Alex: He also, he had collected all these things on his travels that he was using as props in, in films, uh, in the 1930s.
• 10:47
  Alex: So he just kind of threw a bunch of stuff on the wall and, you know, the tiki bar was born.
• 10:53
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: I just wanna put out that you said he had run rum and I don't think that everyone's gonna realize that a rum runner was a person who ran from the law during prohibition with rum.
• 11:03
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: So he had a colorful start, you know, in crime.
• 11:06
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Well, one of, one of the things that you point out in the movie that I thought was really terrific is so he gets one of those very first liquor licenses coming out of Prohibition, right?
• 11:16
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: And his bar is ready to go with, with spectacular cocktails that have all been planned out.
• 11:22
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: And, you know, it's, it's pretty clear that there's no way that he could have just opened.
• 11:30
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Yeah.
• 11:30
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: at full go.
• 11:31
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Here's the way he opened, right?
• 11:33
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: The first week out, coming out of Prohibition here, here's my five-year-old real, I made it yesterday.
• 11:37
  Max: Right.
• 11:39
  Max: Yeah.
• 11:39
  Max: And you know, Don, he created well over 60 cocktails, you know, and so for people in the restaurant and and beverage industry, you know, to open a, a place and have a menu with 60 cocktails on it, like that doesn't happen overnight, obviously.
• 11:54
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Well, 60 original cocktails that no.
• 11:57
  Max: cut, right?
• 11:59
  Max: Yeah.
• 11:59
  Max: So he had been doing this for at least a couple of years before, before prohibition was lifted.
• 12:06
  Alex: Yeah.
• 12:06
  Alex: That's kind of our, our evidence that, that he had to have had a speakeasy before.
• 12:11
  Alex: You know, obviously there's not gonna be any record of that, but just logistically, it would've been impossible for him to open his door the day after prohibition without having like, you know, tested these cocktails out.
• 12:24
  Alex: And where did he have liquor the day after prohibition?
• 12:27
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: exactly.
• 12:28
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Legal.
• 12:28
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Now this
• 12:30
  Alex: Yeah.
• 12:32
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: said, you mentioned earlier, you said that.
• 12:35
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Background had uniquely qualified him to be the only one that could be him.
• 12:39
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: What was his background that that uniquely qualified him to be the, the dawn of Tiki?
• 12:44
  Max: So he, he grew up in East Texas.
• 12:46
  Max: Uh, his family was kind of in the, in the oil fields there in East Texas, and there's a little bit of.
• 12:52
  Max: Question about whether they actually found oil themselves.
• 12:56
  Max: Um, we know that they had a boarding house and a lot of the guys who worked in the oil fields lived there.
• 13:02
  Max: So it is maybe a bit like the gold rush thing, right?
• 13:04
  Max: Like the people who actually did well were the ones who sold the shovels.
• 13:08
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Yeah.
• 13:09
  Max: so at, at some point they had a little bit of money and they gave don an option when he was, of age that he could go to college or he could travel around the world.
• 13:20
  Max: And so he took his share of the family money he traveled around the world twice.
• 13:25
  Max: you know, he was through the South Pacific, so that was Hawaii.
• 13:29
  Max: Tahiti, the Cook Islands, Australia, New Zealand.
• 13:33
  Max: He made his way to China, India, and then all through the Caribbean.
• 13:37
  Max: So, and you know, this is in the 1920s, so this is rare at that time.
• 13:42
  Max: Right.
• 13:42
  Max: This is not something people are doing often.
• 13:45
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Well, and and importantly, he didn't do it in a first class cabin either.
• 13:48
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: He really got to get his hands dirty.
• 13:51
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Can you tell us about that?
• 13:53
  Max: Yeah, so he had a, there was a family member, uh, of Don's, I think it was a cousin of his dad's who had a, uh, a ship that they were trying to get from Los Angeles to Australia.
• 14:05
  Max: And so Don took a job on board as the, the super cargo, he was kind of in charge of.
• 14:12
  Max: Keeping track of the crew from port to port, and also making sure that the stuff on board the ship ended up where it was supposed to be.
• 14:19
  Max: So he was working, you know, I mean, he was a, came from this very blue collar background and traveled around that way.
• 14:25
  Max: And then he worked on board some other commercial ships.
• 14:28
  Max: So he wasn't, you know, it wasn't like he was sailing around the world on a yacht.
• 14:32
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Right.
• 14:32
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Well.
• 14:33
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Importantly, that meant that he got to work with people of a lot of different cultures and hang out with, and have dinner with and party with or, you know, uh, with all, all these people of all these different cultures at different places he came from and on the ship, hard work.
• 14:45
  Max: Yeah, it was, and, and those connections that he made in those early years proved to be very fruitful because he, over decades after that, continued to import, uh, things from, from all of these other places.
• 14:58
  Max: Right?
• 14:58
  Max: So that was carvings and art.
• 15:01
  Max: Uh, and jewelry and artifacts Yeah.
• 15:03
  Max: And stuff like that.
• 15:04
  Alex: One of the things that we didn't go super deep into in the documentary, but it, it's kind of funny, is that when everybody started copying him after his bar was really successful, they would buy decor from Don'cause he had all these connections.
• 15:17
  Alex: So he would, he would get all this stuff from the South Pacific and then sell it to his competitors so they could open up tiki bars.
• 15:24
  squadcaster-ed0d_2_05-20-2025_110108: Yeah.
• 15:25
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: So let's get to there.
• 15:26
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: So he does, he does these travels around the world.
• 15:28
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: He's got a unique perspective on things.
• 15:29
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: He comes back.
• 15:30
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: And then how does, how does it begin?
• 15:33
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: How does the Tiki begin with his first bar in Holly?
• 15:36
  Max: he starts working in Hollywood.
• 15:38
  Max: his brother, his older brother, Hugh, is working in the silent film industry at that time.
• 15:44
  Max: Don gets connected in the Hollywood community there and he starts working as a technical advisor on some of these South Seas films, which are really popular in that era.
• 15:53
  Max: And, you know, he's able to not only supply some of the, the props and the set dressing, but he also was brought on to kind of consult, So he, we don't know exactly how he found this spot, but there's a little spot that opens up the MCC hotel.
• 16:12
  Max: McCadden Hotel.
• 16:13
  Max: Hotel.
• 16:14
  Max: It was formerly a tailor shop.
• 16:15
  Max: Is that right?
• 16:16
  Max: I think it was a tailor shop.
• 16:17
  Max: Yeah.
• 16:17
  Max: And so that space opened up and Don rents it out and he just starts decorating it, you know, so he's got all this, he's got bamboo and, and this kind of flotsam and jet some, and then.
• 16:30
  Max: he and his brother, both at that time during prohibition, were running rum.
• 16:35
  Max: Right.
• 16:35
  Max: They were involved in the, in the illegal, illegal liquor trade.
• 16:39
  Max: So he had the
• 16:40
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Allegedly.
• 16:41
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: It was allegedly, allegedly New Jersey, allegedly.
• 16:44
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Yeah.
• 16:45
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Go ahead.
• 16:45
  Max: Yeah.
• 16:46
  Max: So we know that, that he had access to the booze at that point.
• 16:50
  Max: He had this collection of stuff and, and I don't know why he exactly decided to do this, but he just.
• 16:57
  Max: for it.
• 16:58
  Alex: Yeah.
• 16:58
  Alex: And, and it's also important, uh, historically to realize that at that time in the 1930s, RUM was not a popular drink with people in the us but because.
• 17:10
  Alex: Of the unavailability of other liquors that people wanted.
• 17:14
  Alex: You know, it was kind of the safest thing to drink because you were getting it from places that were legally allowed to produce it.
• 17:20
  Alex: So it, they had regulations, they weren't making it in a bathtub or, you know, moonshine, so
• 17:27
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: So you were, you were less likely to go blind if you drank.
• 17:29
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Yeah.
• 17:30
  Alex: You're much less likely to go blind.
• 17:31
  Alex: And because Don knew about this mixology, he knew how to make rum palatable for an American.
• 17:38
  Alex: A guest or at, at his restaurant, at his, at his bar.
• 17:42
  Alex: So again, it's, it's just very unique to his specific knowledge and his specific experiences that led to him opening this place.
• 17:52
  Alex: I.
• 17:52
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: What I found so cool about this whole tiki culture is right.
• 17:56
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: It's got this basis in reality and this, it kind of spins out into fantasy at the same time.
• 18:03
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: And you, you have some things that are completely real and factual and, and on the money and some things that are just made up completely.
• 18:12
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: That's fantasy.
• 18:13
  squadcaster-ed0d_2_05-20-2025_110108: Yeah.
• 18:14
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: He comes out with this beautiful dreamland of here's, here's tiki and, and it's its own thing and enjoy it.
• 18:22
  Max: Yeah.
• 18:23
  Max: And you know, here we are nearly a hundred years later and it's quite popular now and, and I think that's really kind of the lasting appeal is that sort of that element of, you know, you walk into a dark space and turn a corner and you're sort of transported to another time or another place and.
• 18:40
  Max: You know, it kind, it's sort of different things for different people, but that sort of fantastical escapist element I think kind of has long lasting appeal.
• 18:49
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: So with that first bar, is that where he came up with all of the cocktails, with the majority of those cocktails?
• 18:55
  Alex: we believe
• 18:55
  Max: so, yeah.
• 18:56
  Max: there were things that were added to the menu.
• 18:58
  Max: Yeah.
• 18:58
  Max: Over the years.
• 18:59
  Max: But most of the drinks he had in those early days, so that was like 32 to 37.
• 19:06
  Max: They moved into a bigger space across the street in 1937.
• 19:12
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: So he had a, he had a real problem with people trying to steal those drinks, right?
• 19:16
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Those, these, his own creations,
• 19:18
  squadcaster-ed0d_2_05-20-2025_110108: he did it.
• 19:19
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: you know, every great restaurant, every great bar has that issue, right?
• 19:23
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: People are gonna steal your best people and people are gonna try and get your recipes and try and do what you're doing.
• 19:28
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: It's happened to us, we get it, it's out there and people are like, oh, let me, I can shortcut this, this transaction.
• 19:35
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: So
• 19:35
  squadcaster-ed0d_2_05-20-2025_110108: Oh yeah.
• 19:36
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: why don't you tell us some of the things he did
• 19:38
  Alex: Yeah, he, he had a big problem with people stealing his bartenders, um, offering them more money to go work for them.
• 19:46
  Alex: And a lot of them would, and, and at first they knew how to make the drinks, so they were stealing his bartenders and because of that, they were stealing his, his cocktail recipes.
• 19:54
  Alex: So then he started.
• 19:56
  Alex: Codifying his, his recipes.
• 19:58
  Alex: Mm-hmm.
• 19:59
  Alex: Um, in numbered bottles.
• 20:01
  Alex: So, you know, his bartenders of sort of the next generation of bartenders.
• 20:05
  Alex: All they knew was.
• 20:07
  Alex: A zombie is this many ounces of this, this many ounces of this number, this many ounces of this mix.
• 20:13
  Alex: But they didn't know what any of those things actually were.
• 20:15
  Alex: Don was the only one who handled any of that stuff.
• 20:18
  Alex: So then people started stealing as bartenders and they would be like, you have mix number two?
• 20:24
  Alex: Without mix number two, I can't make a zombie.
• 20:26
  Alex: And he sort of halted it right there.
• 20:28
  Alex: It, it's amazing that it worked because it would've been such a major operation to try to pull off and.
• 20:35
  Alex: He did.
• 20:36
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: I heard the rumor.
• 20:37
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: I don't know if this is true, that he used to go in the kitchen alone and lock the door and no one was allowed in the kitchen.
• 20:42
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Uh, so they couldn't even reverse engineer what he put into Don's mix number one, Don's mix number two, Don's mix number.
• 20:47
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Or three.
• 20:48
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: And the, the, the rumor I heard the urban legend I heard was that he, he used to actually sometimes throw stuff out in the kitchen so people couldn't measure like what was missing so that he could make the drink the, the mixes, but.
• 21:02
  Alex: It's very, it's very likely that could be true.
• 21:05
  Alex: There's no way of us knowing, but I wouldn't put it past him.
• 21:07
  Alex: Absolutely.
• 21:08
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Well this led to, and we're skipping ahead and I want to come back and, and touch the middle of his career.
• 21:12
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: 'cause it's fascinating involving lovers and mobsters and, you know, all annulments and marriages and all kinds of crazy stuff.
• 21:20
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: But in the end, that secrecy led to.
• 21:24
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: The tiki almost disappearing because in the eighties when people didn't care anymore, and these old bartenders, there were very few people who knew how to make these things.
• 21:33
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: And it was Jeff Berry who's in your film, who exhaustively went and interviewed these people all around the world and clawed back those recipes for the mixes from the brink of oblivion.
• 21:43
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: And Jeff's in your, in your, uh, film and, and, uh, your conversations with him are amazing.
• 21:49
  Max: Yeah, Jeff Beachbum Berry, you know, he's a, he has an amazing place himself in New Orleans, latitude 29, which is an excellent bar and restaurant.
• 21:57
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Yes,
• 21:58
  Max: so in the early, uh, like mid nineties, Jeff Berry and a, and a few other people in that time, I.
• 22:04
  Max: They sort of became fascinated with this thing that was almost completely gone.
• 22:08
  Max: Right.
• 22:09
  Max: By the eighties, there were almost no tiki bars left at all
• 22:12
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: and not written down.
• 22:13
  Max: and not written down.
• 22:14
  Max: Right?
• 22:14
  Max: Right.
• 22:14
  Max: And so they started going to these places.
• 22:17
  Max: You know, there were a couple of old Chinese restaurants here in LA where the, they would go and they, the bartenders would have a couple of these like tropical cocktail drinks on here.
• 22:27
  Max: And so Jeff became fascinated with this and he started talking to these guys and saying, you know.
• 22:33
  Max: What, what goes into this exactly?
• 22:35
  Max: How do you make that, what's it, what kind of rum is that?
• 22:36
  Max: And, and you know, there's the classic example of, uh, Ray U and from Tiki T, which has been there since 1961 here in la and the, the response was always, it's Roman fruit juice, which is basically true, right?
• 22:50
  Max: But, um.
• 22:51
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: But I ain't telling you.
• 22:52
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Yeah.
• 22:53
  Max: But, but Jeff kind of, uh, befriended some of these guys and slowly started whittling away and figuring out what went into some of these drinks and there, and he, he still had to piece some of this stuff together because he would, he would know, okay, it's, it's these three things and Don's mix number three.
• 23:10
  Max: And nobody knew, even the guys, the bartenders who worked at Don's, restaurant in the thirties and forties, like.
• 23:15
  Max: They didn't know.
• 23:16
  Max: Right.
• 23:17
  Max: So there was a little bit of reverse engineering.
• 23:19
  Max: Yeah.
• 23:20
  Max: And, and slowly, slowly he whittled away and, and got to the, to the bottom of these things.
• 23:26
  Alex: started becoming known as the, the guy, uh, that was collecting all this stuff.
• 23:31
  Alex: And as bartenders would pass away, their families would, would send these notebooks of, of their, their father or their grandfather to Jeff.
• 23:40
  Alex: Um, and he was able to kind of start to piece it together.
• 23:43
  Alex: And Rosetta Stone it.
• 23:44
  Alex: Like this guy says that in this drink, he puts cinnamon and he puts grapefruit, or, you know, uh, that's actually, that's actually a bad example.
• 23:52
  Alex: 'cause that I think Jeff had to reverse engineer.
• 23:55
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Yeah.
• 23:55
  Alex: taste.
• 23:56
  Alex: Yeah.
• 23:56
  Alex: But you know, Don Don's, the Don's mix that's in the zombie is cinnamon and grapefruit.
• 24:01
  Alex: And once he kind of cracked that code by seeing, you know, something in one guy's recipe and something in another guy's recipe, and you can kind of Rosetta stone it together once you have all this information, was the first guy to put together a 1934 zombie that didn't taste like crap.
• 24:17
  Alex: And
• 24:18
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Yeah.
• 24:19
  Alex: we were like, oh, this must be what it tasted like, you
• 24:21
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Well, it's, people don't realize that how important the historian is to, to creating and recreating these cocktails and this movement.
• 24:32
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: The historians are the people who chronicled these things and then brought them all back together, and like you said, Rosetta, stone it together.
• 24:39
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: A little piece from here, a little piece from there.
• 24:41
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Will that.
• 24:41
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: That adds together and, and makes sense.
• 24:44
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: And you had, and at the same time you have a guy who made a lot of crap up.
• 24:49
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: So you gotta throw out the trash.
• 24:52
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Yeah.
• 24:52
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: And, and match the things that are, that are truly correct.
• 24:54
  Max: Yeah.
• 24:55
  Max: He did not make it easy.
• 24:56
  Max: No.
• 24:57
  Max: there were other challenges because sometimes the recipes sort of morphed over time, you know, so the, the official recipe in 1934 was maybe different than the official recipe in 1953.
• 25:08
  Max: Right?
• 25:08
  Max: Right.
• 25:08
  Max: So you have to kind of go through and,
• 25:10
  Alex: and look at that.
• 25:11
  Alex: And it's still a challenge today'cause RUM is different today.
• 25:15
  Alex: You know, like we don't know that.
• 25:17
  Alex: Uh, you know, Meyer's Rum today tastes the way that it tasted in the thirties.
• 25:21
  Alex: Um, Marie King told, Marie King told us.
• 25:24
  Alex: It, it actually, you know, it probably tasted more the way that Caruba tastes today.
• 25:30
  Alex: which is why you kind of have to start then changing these recipes again to make it palatable or to try to make it taste like what we think it might've tasted like, but over, you know, at the end of the day, there's not really any way to ever know for sure exactly how these.
• 25:44
  Alex: Cocktails tasted in 1933.
• 25:47
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Here's what you guys have done.
• 25:48
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: And what Jeff Berry did and Dale Degraf did, is I remember that I got a hold of the gentleman's companion when I was bartending.
• 25:55
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: We were bartending together at another bar in the eighties, and I also looked at the old Mr.
• 26:00
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Boston book and which, you know, in the 1950s, the Mr.
• 26:03
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Boston guy was a great book.
• 26:05
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: By the way.
• 26:05
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: We were at the Far Hills Rummage Sale.
• 26:07
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: I remember the day Francis found it, and he said, guess what?
• 26:10
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: I just bought for 25 cents.
• 26:12
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Yes.
• 26:14
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: But, but no, but here's the thing that the cocktail revolution hadn't happened yet.
• 26:18
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: And I remember we tried to make some of the drinks outta that book and we were like, these drinks taste like crap.
• 26:25
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Yes.
• 26:25
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Those people didn't know what they were talking about.
• 26:27
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Not realizing that I had to Rosetta stone it.
• 26:29
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: And that ingredients changed.
• 26:31
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: And, you know, with the Mr.
• 26:32
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Boston, the book itself changed.
• 26:34
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Um, but so, and we will come back to the middle'cause the fascinating middle of the story after the break.
• 26:39
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: But just in the end, Don Beach passed away in the eighties.
• 26:43
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: And that was before the renaissance of, of tiki culture.
• 26:47
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: what's the state of, of, of the Tiki drink today?
• 26:50
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: I mean, it's amazing.
• 26:51
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Yes.
• 26:51
  Max: It is amazing.
• 26:52
  Max: Yeah.
• 26:52
  Max: So Don, I mean, Don's.
• 26:55
  Max: kind of blew up in the thirties and forties and you kind of look at fifties and sixties and it's such a mainstream American pop culture phenomenon by you get, by the time you get to that point.
• 27:05
  Max: Right?
• 27:05
  Max: You've got the tiki, the enchanted tiki room at Disneyland, 1963.
• 27:10
  Max: And then, yeah, I mean by the, you know, he died in 89 and at that time Tiki was almost completely dead.
• 27:16
  Max: Had he lived another.
• 27:18
  Max: or eight years, he would've started to see it come back a little bit.
• 27:21
  Max: So it's kind of ironic that he, he missed that.
• 27:24
  Max: Yeah.
• 27:24
  Max: But today it's, it's really
• 27:27
  Alex: huge again.
• 27:30
  Alex: And the, the craft cocktail movement I think was really helpful because when craft cocktails started coming back and people started really caring about recipes again, they started rediscovering tiki and rediscovering these, these cocktails the way they should be, you know?
• 27:45
  Alex: Um.
• 27:46
  Alex: I would say, you know, like a 1944 ma Thai compared to like a 1980s Ma Thai is world of difference.
• 27:54
  Alex: Right.
• 27:54
  Alex: Right.
• 27:54
  Mark: No sour mix in 1940.
• 27:56
  Mark: Well, is it, is it ever more important to have real juice than in a tiki cocktail?
• 27:59
  Mark: Yeah.
• 27:59
  Mark: Yeah, right.
• 27:59
  Mark: Is that, is there any drink in the world that needs to have real juice more than a tiki cocktail?
• 28:05
  Max: And you look at some of these recipes that might have 7, 8, 9, 10 ingredients and it's fresh juices, it's, it's, you know, freshly made syrups, all of the
• 28:13
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Grenadine or, you know, grenadine for 30 years was one of the most disgusting things you could drink,
• 28:19
  Max: Yeah, absolutely.
• 28:20
  Max: Yeah.
• 28:21
  Max: Yeah.
• 28:21
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: so.
• 28:22
  Max: are making it the right way again, right?
• 28:24
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: So why?
• 28:25
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Yeah, we, we started our cocktail program in 1993 and we, in 1994, we made our own Grenadine.
• 28:31
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: 'cause it was the only way to get, you know, grine.
• 28:34
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: 'cause you had to, and our Grenadine is awesome by the way.
• 28:36
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: But, um, if you wanna come to stage left and have a drink, it's pretty awesome.
• 28:40
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: But So why did Tiki die?
• 28:42
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: What was the demise of Tiki from the seventies into the eighties?
• 28:46
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: What killed it?
• 28:47
  Alex: I think there is combination of things.
• 28:49
  Alex: One, is it, it was, you know, it was everybody's mom and dad's generations thing.
• 28:55
  Alex: Nobody wanted to go to these places that, you know, were popular for their parents.
• 29:01
  Alex: I think also the 1980s was kind of a, you know, A time when a lot of ev everyone wanted things fast and quick.
• 29:09
  Alex: They didn't necessarily care about how good it was.
• 29:13
  Francis: Right.
• 29:13
  Alex: and that's sort of what I think happened to cocktails in general, but also to the tiki tiki bar with without good cocktails is not gonna be a very fun experience.
• 29:22
  Mark: Well, it got a little dfi, right?
• 29:24
  Mark: You, you used the Disney reference before.
• 30:53
  Mark: that's kind of what happened to it.
• 30:55
  Francis: the cocktail recipes, got TV, dinner.
• 30:56
  Francis: Right, right.
• 30:57
  Francis: It was really just fruit and rum became Bacardi white rum, which is basically the vodka of rums, you know?
• 31:03
  Francis: And so it wasn't, it wasn't a flavorful and interesting thing.
• 31:06
  Francis: Alright, so listen, stick with us everybody.
• 31:07
  Francis: We're gonna come back on the other side of the break and we're gonna talk about gangsters rum running World War ii, the end of World War ii, dissolved marriages, betraying lovers.
• 31:16
  Francis: It's gonna be a great time.
• 31:17
  Francis: Don't go away.
• 31:18
  Francis: We'll be back in just a moment.
• 31:19
  Francis: You're here at the restaurant, guys.
• 31:20
  Francis: Of course, you can always find out more@restaurantguyspodcast.com.
• 31:25
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Hey everybody.
• 31:25
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Welcome back.
• 31:26
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Our guests today are Alex, lamb and Maxwell.
• 31:29
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: They're the directors, editor and cinematographer.
• 31:31
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Of the dawn of Tiki, the mostly true story of Dawn, the Beachcomber.
• 31:35
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: It's an extraordinary film.
• 31:36
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: You really should go see it, even if you're not a cocktail nerd like we are.
• 31:40
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: It's super fun.
• 31:41
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: and I wanna get into everything you now have to cache what I promised with my mouth, everything before the break.
• 31:47
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Well, also, one of the things we have to set up after the show is the screening we're gonna do in New Brunswick for this movie.
• 31:53
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Absolutely.
• 31:53
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: At one of the theaters here.
• 31:55
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: and the huge party we're gonna have afterwards with lots of tiki cocktails.
• 31:59
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Alright, so, but before we get into the meat of the matter, your film is fun and it's a melange of like, interviews with old folks who are still alive, who were there interviews with the, the new, rejuvenators of the cocktail like Jeff Berry and, and all the other folks.
• 32:14
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: but you, you made a really interesting choice in that, in the voice of Don Beach, you, you have an animation, you tell us what that is about.
• 32:23
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: It's the most shocking and interesting and fun thing.
• 32:26
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: And tell us about that recording that you found.
• 32:27
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Yeah.
• 32:28
  Max: Sure.
• 32:29
  Max: So when we were doing our research, we came across this interview that Don had given a few years before he died.
• 32:35
  Max: I think it was 86 was the interview.
• 32:36
  Max: And it was a, it was a transcript, right?
• 32:39
  Max: So we had the, the paper version and we thought, okay, if it's a transcript, there must be a recording somewhere.
• 32:44
  Max: I.
• 32:44
  Max: and we were able to track it down and when we finally got permission to use it in the film, you know, we heard it for the first time and it was this cassette tape that was recorded in 1986.
• 32:55
  Max: So it wasn't in great condition.
• 32:57
  Max: We were a little concerned, um, but our, our sound editor was able to bring it back so.
• 33:03
  Max: it was so delightful just to hear Don's voice and hear him kind of telling his stories and we thought, oh, this is fantastic.
• 33:11
  Max: But we didn't want to just have a, you know, shot of a reel to reel tape player spinning in a dark room, which is kind of this like documentary trope, you know?
• 33:20
  Francis: Yep.
• 33:21
  Max: we needed a strong visual Alex had the idea to, to have Dawn presented as a stop motion puppet, basically.
• 33:31
  Max: So
• 33:32
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Amazing.
• 33:32
  Max: It, it was a brilliant idea.
• 33:34
  Max: We weren't sure if it was going to work or if we could have the budget to do it, but we, we finally figured it out.
• 33:40
  Max: We have some friends that we've worked with before who do stop motion and they were willing to work with us a little bit, and it also allowed us to kind of create this fun version of Don.
• 33:51
  Max: So the, the, the puppet was sculpted originally by Kevin Kidney.
• 33:55
  Max: Kevin and Jody do a lot of work with Disney, and he's got this really fun, whimsical.
• 33:59
  Max: Uh, Approach.
• 34:00
  Max: So Don is there on screen sitting in his 1930s bar,
• 34:04
  Mark: you make him one of the narrators of, of the story, which, which really I think brings us all in and brings us into to who Don is and who he was.
• 34:14
  Francis: And it's a freaking puppet.
• 34:15
  Francis: It's a.
• 34:16
  Francis: And honestly, it's really, it's in keeping with the whole fantasy of Tiki.
• 34:21
  Francis: It, it, it was brilliant.
• 34:23
  Francis: It's brilliant.
• 34:24
  Francis: Yeah.
• 34:24
  Max: Yeah.
• 34:25
  Max: And we kind of went with an older style, you know, a lot of people sort of remember like the Rudolph, the reindeer
• 34:31
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Yeah, yeah.
• 34:32
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Yeah.
• 34:32
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: That's, that's the feel for sure.
• 34:33
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Rudolph, Rudolph Red Knows Reindeer, Dave and Goliath my Sunday mornings, who's not?
• 34:37
  Alex: The other thing that, you know, max did as a, as a director of photography for that is.
• 34:43
  Alex: We lit him, we lit the puppet the exact, with like, sort of the exact same setup we were using for all of these bartenders that we were interviewing in real life.
• 34:51
  Alex: So that when, when you see the puppet, everything aside from him being a puppet feels exactly the same as how we shot everything else so that it feels that much more real, even though, you know, it's obviously not, but your brain does start to trick you as, as you're watching and you're, you're just like, well, this is Don.
• 35:08
  Alex: It's his voice.
• 35:09
  Alex: And
• 35:09
  Francis: Yeah.
• 35:10
  Francis: Yeah,
• 35:10
  Alex: in this peacock in his bar.
• 35:13
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: he is.
• 35:13
  Alex: like Jeff Berry's in his bar, and Marie King's in her bar, and you know, why, would it not be Dawn?
• 35:19
  Mark: when we do the documentary of the restaurant guys, we're definitely gonna have you guys shoot that because it was amazing
• 35:26
  Francis: and hopefully you can have an animatronic figure'cause we're not that hot.
• 35:31
  Francis: So, alright, so let's go back to Don.
• 35:33
  Francis: So World War II comes, oh, it's 1939, and what, what happens to him in the war?
• 35:40
  Francis: In the war is great.
• 35:42
  Francis: There should be a film or a television series about this.
• 35:45
  Francis: So tell us about the World War II years.
• 35:47
  Max: Yeah.
• 35:48
  Max: So Don, well Don was actually looking at opening a, a place in Hawaii and he had taken out a lease on a space in 1941 and he.
• 36:00
  Max: out of that lease because, uh, obviously Pearl Harbor happened.
• 36:03
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Yeah.
• 36:04
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Timing.
• 36:04
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Yeah.
• 36:05
  Max: So, he knew that he was gonna be enlisted.
• 36:07
  Max: He was unmarried.
• 36:08
  Max: He had no children.
• 36:09
  Max: So, he knew at that point General Doolittle, who was a major at the time when, when Dawn knew him.
• 36:16
  Max: they were aware of Don's unique skillset, right.
• 36:19
  Max: So he wasn't out there.
• 36:21
  Max: Boots on the ground.
• 36:22
  Max: Right.
• 36:22
  Max: They, they.
• 36:23
  Max: Had special purpose in mind for Don.
• 36:26
  Max: And so he was setting up these officer clubs and, was requisitioning, you know, liquor and cigars and everything he could find.
• 36:35
  Max: So he, hotels?
• 36:36
  Max: Yeah, hotels.
• 36:37
  Max: He, he ends, he goes to North Africa and then he ends up in Italy and most of his time in the war is spent in Italy.
• 36:42
  Max: And he really makes it, uh, you know, he, he does everything he can to give.
• 36:47
  Max: The guys there on the ground, sort of the Don the Beachcomber hospitality, which is world famous.
• 36:53
  squadcaster-ed0d_2_05-20-2025_110108: Yeah,
• 36:53
  Mark: That's amazing.
• 36:55
  Mark: I mean, he creates these basically, which is his life story.
• 36:58
  Mark: He creates these little oasis in places where they just don't belong.
• 37:04
  Mark: Right?
• 37:04
  Mark: In these, in these deserts of hospitality, in war torn Europe and, and all of a sudden you have.
• 37:11
  Mark: The right sheets and you have the right cocktails, and you have the right hospitality, and everybody's dressed a certain way and acting a certain way, and you wouldn't expect that in a, in a war torn country.
• 37:22
  Max: Right.
• 37:23
  Max: Yeah, no, I mean that was incredibly rare.
• 37:25
  Max: You know, you think about that environment, you know, Europe and World War ii, that's completely bombed out and, and and Don had, he was very particular, right?
• 37:33
  Max: His attention to detail was extraordinary, I will say.
• 37:37
  Max: And he went to great lengths to really make these places special.
• 37:40
  Max: Yeah, I don't, I don't know that there was anybody who could have done it as well as he did.
• 37:44
  Alex: No, again, it's like, it, it comes back to his, his time traveling the world and kind of, you know, gathering rummaging and gathering and trading with people in his twenties.
• 37:54
  Alex: And now, you know, here he is in World War II doing the exact same thing and war torn Europe.
• 37:59
  Alex: It, it, it's like everything is just so perfectly suited to this guy in his, his past.
• 38:06
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: So his narration of this is pretty amazing.
• 38:08
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: You know, it's funny when you said that he, when he was first on the ship, he was the chief steward trying to, and he had to make sure that everything got to where it was supposed to go.
• 38:15
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Strikes me that for most of his life, he tried to make sure that things didn't get to where they were supposed to go, and they got to him.
• 38:21
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Uh, so he, so he winds up part of the narration where he's, they give him a bunch of gold because obviously there are no currencies that are worth anything there.
• 38:28
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: So he goes with a bunch of gold strapped to him tell, and a pistol and, and a truck to tell the story.
• 38:34
  Max: Yeah, so the, I, the idea is, uh, you know, he, he finally, well, he, he was actually, when he was traveling to Northern Europe, his ship, um, they got hit by a couple of subs and he was in the hospital for a while.
• 38:45
  Max: He finally reconnects with, uh, Doolittle in, uh, Casablanca, I think.
• 38:50
  Max: Yep.
• 38:50
  Max: And then,
• 38:51
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Which seems appropriate, just so you know.
• 38:53
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Yeah.
• 38:53
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Yeah.
• 38:53
  Max: Yeah, exactly.
• 38:55
  Max: And then he sort of gets this assignment.
• 38:56
  Max: He, you know, they're gonna drop him off in Italy and so yeah, like you said, he is got gold bars strapped to his body, he's got his 45 and a Jeep and they say, okay, go ahead and don the being this incredibly resourceful guy.
• 39:12
  Max: He goes around and he makes friends with the locals and he's got one other guy working with him who kind of helps
• 39:18
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: So.
• 39:19
  Max: Yep.
• 39:19
  Max: And he's able to pull together, you know, food and booze and cigars and yeah, these incredible spaces.
• 39:26
  Max: I mean, he, I, I wish we had more time in the film to explore hi his adventures, during World War II because.
• 39:33
  Max: He does have some amazing stories.
• 39:35
  Alex: Yeah.
• 39:35
  Alex: And his translator said, the first thing that Don said when he met him was, or maybe it was the second thing.
• 39:41
  Alex: Maybe the first thing was, I'm, I'm Don, I'm Don Beach.
• 39:44
  Alex: Uh, but the next thing he said is, do you know where there's a barbershop where I can get some wax or my mustache?
• 39:49
  Alex: Like that was his concern when he arrived.
• 39:52
  Francis: I love it.
• 39:53
  Francis: I love it.
• 39:54
  Francis: Well, so you gotta be the man.
• 39:56
  Francis: You gotta look like the man.
• 39:57
  Max: Oh yeah.
• 39:57
  Max: He looked the part always.
• 39:59
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: I'm gonna say he had a significantly better time in World War II than my father who was pinned down by Japanese machine gunfire.
• 40:05
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: It was if my father had only had hospitality skills, you know what I mean?
• 40:10
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Um, so, so he goes through World War ii.
• 40:12
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: He's quite successful.
• 40:13
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: The war ends.
• 40:14
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Um, I'm sure he made a profit for himself while he was doing all this for the Army,'cause that's the kind of guy he was.
• 40:19
  squadcaster-ed0d_2_05-20-2025_110108: Yeah.
• 40:19
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: so what happens after World War II and you know, he is, had some problems with the bars.
• 40:24
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: He initially started up, he got muscled out by the mob to his initial places.
• 40:28
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: And what has happened to his brand when he comes back?
• 40:30
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: What does he do when he comes back?
• 40:32
  Alex: well he, and, and you know, without going into all the details, basically his wife before he left for the war, sort of ends up with ownership of the bars and restaurants.
• 40:44
  Alex: So when he comes back,
• 40:45
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Hold on.
• 40:46
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: His wife backed by the mob,
• 40:49
  Alex: Yes.
• 40:49
  Alex: Right,
• 40:50
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: as
• 40:50
  squadcaster-ed0d_2_05-20-2025_110108: right.
• 40:51
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: and the tell in the movie, and you should see the movie so you can get the, the background of all this.
• 40:54
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: And as we say, in New Jersey, allegedly backed by the mob.
• 40:57
  Alex: Allegedly, allegedly.
• 40:59
  Alex: Um, but yeah, so he, when he comes back, um, you know, they're sort of like, we don't really need you.
• 41:06
  Alex: When you were off in the war, we were doing fine.
• 41:08
  Alex: Um, and he can't open it on the beach comer in his name because they legally own it.
• 41:13
  Alex: So he moves to Hawaii, which is not a state yet.
• 41:16
  Alex: And the contract says, because it's not a state, he can open a on the beach comer there.
• 41:21
  Alex: So he goes to Hawaii in the forties you know, kind of sets up camp there.
• 41:26
  Alex: Mm-hmm.
• 41:27
  Alex: And
• 41:27
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: I think becomes more important than he ever has.
• 41:30
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Right?
• 41:30
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Yeah.
• 41:30
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: That's,
• 41:30
  squadcaster-ed0d_2_05-20-2025_110108: yeah.
• 41:31
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: I think so much of his legacy is around that Hawaii time of his life and, and what he creates.
• 41:38
  Max: It is.
• 41:39
  Max: And he, you know that that early trip he did around the world, you know, that that was such a formative experience for him.
• 41:44
  Max: And so he wanted to kind of get back to the tropics again.
• 41:49
  Max: You know, Hawaii to him was this magical place.
• 41:52
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Me too, by the way.
• 41:53
  Max: Well, I mean, anybody who goes there really, right?
• 41:55
  Max: How do you not love Hawaii?
• 41:57
  Max: so yeah, he goes up there and he opens, uh, he builds these three or four buildings to start, and this is 46, I think.
• 42:05
  Max: you know, a year or two after he gets back, yeah, he has his down the Beachcomber location in Hawaii and he starts really working with the, the Hawaiian people there.
• 42:14
  Max: to bring that element into the hospitality.
• 42:17
  Max: So you think about traditional Hawaiian music and dance and, and all that stuff.
• 42:24
  Max: You, you weren't necessarily gonna get that experience in Hollywood or Chicago.
• 42:28
  Max: I.
• 42:29
  Max: But Don kind of made that his mission to incorporate that into the, the Hawaiian version.
• 42:34
  Alex: Yeah.
• 42:35
  Alex: And not just Hawaiian, you know, when he was opening his places, the entertainment, like the dancing music, it, it was very, he wanted it to be Polynesian.
• 42:44
  Alex: Um, and he tried to include as many of the Polynesian cultures authentically as he could by bringing people from those islands who knew the song, knew the dance, and.
• 42:55
  Alex: allowed them to do their thing and, and he sort of just stood back and, let it be a draw to his restaurants.
• 43:03
  Mark: Antique just continues to evolve as this amalgam of different cultures and, and part fantasy and part reality, and it continues to grow like a, like a snowball rolling down a hill.
• 43:16
  Mark: I.
• 43:17
  Max: Yeah.
• 43:17
  Max: Yeah, it does get bigger and you know, so Trader Vic, who we haven't talked about at this point, but he kind of got his start in the late thirties and, and that is expanding, right Don?
• 43:26
  Max: The beach comer on the mainland continues to expand.
• 43:30
  Max: yeah, I mean through the forties and fifties it just keeps getting bigger and bigger.
• 43:33
  Alex: Yeah.
• 43:34
  Alex: A
• 43:34
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: So.
• 43:34
  Alex: like GIS coming home from the war, you know, spent a lot of time in Polynesia and you know, wanted to experience that when they came back.
• 43:43
  Alex: So they start popping up everywhere, like in the Midwest and,
• 43:46
  Max: south Pacific, the, the book.
• 43:47
  Max: So it's kind of this perfect storm of interest from the general populace in the South Pacific
• 43:52
  Francis: and there ain't nothing like a dame.
• 43:53
  Francis: Um, but, um, the, talk to us about the don.
• 43:57
  Francis: Don the beach comers in the continental United States and Victor Bergeron who had trade re vix, who was the big competition at Don the beach comer.
• 44:05
  Francis: So you have three basic forces in the tiki world, right?
• 44:09
  Francis: You have the real Don beach, with Don the beach comer in Hawaii.
• 44:12
  Francis: You have the don the beach comers that were stolen from him by the mob and his ex-wife.
• 44:17
  Francis: And you have the, the trader Vix.
• 44:19
  Francis: What's going, how do you distinguish those three parts of that universe?
• 44:22
  Max: It is a, yeah, good question.
• 44:24
  Max: I mean, I, I will say there were a lot of sort of other players in there too.
• 44:28
  Max: Um, Steve Crane was a big one.
• 44:29
  Max: Steve Crane's, luau and, and a few other places.
• 44:32
  Max: But Don, the, Don the Beach, Gomer Chain and Trader Vic, those ones kind of really lasted more than most.
• 44:38
  squadcaster-ed0d_2_05-20-2025_110108: Yeah.
• 44:39
  Max: I will say Trader Vic really, uh, probably had better food, right?
• 44:44
  Max: I mean, he, he had a, he had a really excellent palate, and so I think, yeah, the Trader Vic experience was, was, I mean, they were excellent cocktails
• 44:52
  Alex: for cocktail nerds.
• 44:53
  Alex: You know, trader Vic really started experimenting with other things besides rum.
• 44:57
  Alex: Yeah.
• 44:57
  Alex: Uh, following Don's, you know, Don sort of took the planter's punch and was like, well, maybe I'll mix rums to make this rum more palatable.
• 45:05
  Alex: I'll add this rum, make it a little darker, a little brighter.
• 45:09
  Alex: Um.
• 45:10
  Alex: Trader Vic sort of took what Dawn did to the Planter's Punch and was like, well, maybe I'll, I'll add some gin or sherry to this drink, you know?
• 45:19
  Alex: Um, and, and really kind of reinvented what Dawn had already reinvented.
• 45:25
  Alex: So put, he definitely put his stamp on it and, brought a lot to the table.
• 45:30
  Alex: It, he wasn't just.
• 45:32
  Alex: A copy of Don.
• 45:33
  Alex: He, he definitely brought his own sort of flare to the entire thing, and I think that's why Don and Vic stand out the most historically.
• 45:41
  Alex: Yeah.
• 45:42
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: So I, I really wanna take this back to the, the original Don.
• 45:46
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: And the story is amazing and the film is amazing and you, you get to a lot of things that, that we simply don't have time to talk about here.
• 45:54
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: But one of his very first marketing moments and it, it's when you realize that, that Don's gonna change the world, right, is when he said.
• 46:05
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Two zombie limit.
• 46:06
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: No one can have more than two zombies, right?
• 46:09
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: And everybody's like, well, I can have three zombies.
• 46:11
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Why can't I have three zombies?
• 46:13
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: I'm a, I'm a man, aren't I?
• 46:14
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: I can, I can have three zombies.
• 46:16
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: You can't tell me.
• 46:17
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Uh, it's just genius.
• 46:19
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Yeah, I was genius.
• 46:20
  Max: One of, one of the things we learned during this film is that Don was an absolute master of these kind of marketing gimmicks.
• 46:28
  Max: Right.
• 46:28
  Max: And, and the.
• 46:29
  Max: The limit too on the zombie is maybe the most well-known example of that, but yeah.
• 46:34
  Max: Well, to be fair, the original zombie had four ounces of rum in it, so more than two might've been a bad idea anyway, but you know, that got so many people to go into the bar and, and take that as a challenge.
• 46:46
  Max: Right, right.
• 46:47
  Max: And, and I think that that marketing gimmick combined with the fact that it was a good drink, and then you had all these kind of like Hollywood people sort of there drinking those and endorsing it in that way.
• 46:58
  Max: I mean, it just took off.
• 47:00
  Max: You know?
• 47:00
  Max: He also, he also, uh, when he was in Hawaii, he had this, um, restaurant in the tree house.
• 47:07
  Max: So in the middle of the international marketplace, which he helped build, they had this restaurant that was the smallest restaurant in the world capacity of two.
• 47:15
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Most exclusive restaurant in the world.
• 47:18
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Right.
• 47:18
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: That's awesome.
• 47:19
  Max: restaurant in the world.
• 47:20
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: I love it.
• 47:20
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: I love it.
• 47:21
  Max: And so people would go up there.
• 47:23
  Max: I mean, most of the people who went up there were people who were gonna write about it.
• 47:27
  Max: Yeah.
• 47:28
  Max: Right.
• 47:28
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Sure.
• 47:29
  Max: and then people read an article and they make their way out there and, and enjoy all the other spaces.
• 47:34
  Max: Right.
• 47:34
  Max: So
• 47:34
  squadcaster-ed0d_2_05-20-2025_110108: yeah.
• 47:35
  Alex: Seems like brilliant marketing for a lot of people.
• 47:37
  Alex: The magic number is three, but for Don it was two.
• 47:40
  Alex: You know, you, you limit it to two and you're gonna get a lot of press.
• 47:43
  Alex: Yeah.
• 47:45
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Well, you know, I think one of the reasons that this film is so important is, the desert of the cocktail world.
• 47:50
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: I mean, cocktails died in the eighties.
• 47:52
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: They died from the late seventies to the eighties when everybody gave up.
• 47:55
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: It was rebelling against your father's brown drinks and martinis and the mad men culture that was passe, that was unfashionable.
• 48:03
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: And, but the last real cocktail movement created.
• 48:07
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Was the tiki movement.
• 48:09
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Yep.
• 48:09
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: And then that came to an end, and then we had that pause.
• 48:12
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: And then Del Degra resurrected the, the current golden age of the cocktail, which is the golden age of the cocktail.
• 48:19
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: so this is a really important story to, to tell, and it's a story of resurrection and I think you guys did a fantastic job.
• 48:25
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: So, gentlemen, I, I was gonna save this until, mine and Francis' wrap up, but I, but I, but I want you to be here so I can share it with you.
• 48:33
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: So.
• 48:34
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Francis and I met in 1984 in a college dormitory, and the first thing Francis saw when he walked into my dorm room was the tiki bar that I had pulled up out the bamboo and wrought iron tiki bar that I had pulled out of my parents' basement and brought to my college dormitory in 1984.
• 48:56
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Yeah, I went, I went to college with John Belushi right over here, but it was great.
• 49:02
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: It was great.
• 49:03
  Max: Wow.
• 49:03
  Max: What a wonderful dorm room.
• 49:05
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Uh, it was, it was a cool place.
• 49:07
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: I had one of my roommates, had a bad back and slept on the floor, so he took his bed out of the room and replaced it with the tiki bar.
• 49:14
  Alex: Wow.
• 49:15
  Alex: Oh man, that's amazing.
• 49:16
  Alex: That's awesome.
• 49:17
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: It's very important to our story.
• 49:19
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: You guys are fantastic.
• 49:20
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Everyone should go see the film, what's called the Dawn of Tiki, the mostly true story of Don the Beach Comer.
• 49:26
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: You guys are wonderful and thank you for this contribution to cocktail.
• 49:29
  Mark: Thank you gentlemen.
• 49:29
  Mark: We look forward to seeing you here in New Jersey and we will work on setting up a screening here, in New Brunswick with you.
• 49:35
  Max: Fantastic.
• 49:35
  Max: We love it.
• 49:36
  Max: Yeah.
• 49:36
  Max: Looking forward to it.
• 49:37
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Alright, thanks for everything guys.
• 49:38
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: We'll be right back.
• 49:39
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: You're listening to the Restaurant Guys.
• 49:40
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_140109: Restaurant guys podcast.com.
• 49:59
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: Well, that was a ton of fun.
• 50:00
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: Yeah, that was great.
• 50:01
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: The movie, by the way, the movie I enjoyed.
• 50:04
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: A lot.
• 50:05
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: I mean, I really enjoyed the film.
• 50:07
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: Mm-hmm.
• 50:07
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: Yeah.
• 50:07
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: It was, it was, it was great.
• 50:08
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: It was informative.
• 50:10
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: I learned a ton of stuff.
• 50:10
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: I didn know, I learned, I thought I knew a lot about Tiki.
• 50:13
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: Yeah.
• 50:13
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: And also I thought I knew what was bullshit and what was real, and I was wrong about a little bit of that.
• 50:17
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: Very informative, super fun.
• 50:19
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: And that animatronic Don Beach was, was terrific.
• 50:22
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: Fantastic.
• 50:23
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: So, uh, we need to talk a little bit about 1984 again, just, just for a moment.
• 50:27
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: The novel.
• 50:28
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: No, no, not the novel.
• 50:29
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: Oh.
• 50:29
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: When we met in college, like I said, I had this tiki bar Oh, oh yeah.
• 50:34
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: With the wrought iron, chairs and bamboo.
• 50:36
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: Wr You were John Belushi in college.
• 50:38
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: I don't know if anybody knew, but you, you were John, be.
• 50:40
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: It was, but when we talk about.
• 50:43
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: The bullshit tiki.
• 50:45
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: That's what we're talking about.
• 50:46
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: That's it.
• 50:46
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: We're talking about that moment in our lives was exactly, that was the bullshit.
• 50:51
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: Tiki was the, was the fake drinks, but let's be fair, everyone had forgotten by 1984.
• 50:57
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: Mm-hmm.
• 50:58
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: Every Don Beach died that year.
• 51:00
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: Right.
• 51:00
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: And everyone had forgotten about.
• 51:02
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: The, the Tiki cocktail.
• 51:03
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: Mm-hmm.
• 51:04
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: And, and Dale DeGraff was nine years away.
• 51:06
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: well, we were making fake punches and fake tiki drinks and we were doing that for parties.
• 51:12
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: And it was fakey fake.
• 51:13
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: Fake fake.
• 51:14
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: You mean fakey fake?
• 51:15
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: You mean like the blue whale?
• 51:16
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: The blue whale.
• 51:17
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: That's exactly that.
• 51:18
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: We made in a.
• 51:18
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: Garbage can with Country Time Lemonade that came way later in 1986.
• 51:22
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: Country Time Lemonade, blue carousel, and who knows what else was in that damn drink.
• 51:27
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: Yeah.
• 51:27
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: But it was, uh, best drunk out of a red solo cup as I recall.
• 51:30
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: Um, but no, but to be fair, let's.
• 51:33
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: Recognize this, the allure of Tiki that just goes to show you we wanted that.
• 51:39
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: I mean, it is cool.
• 51:40
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: We have friends who have tiki bars in their backyard.
• 51:42
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: Mm-hmm.
• 51:42
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: And they don't necessarily serve authentic multi rum tiki drinks, but in the summertime they put in a Hawaiian shirt, they sit in the backyard, they have some people over.
• 51:51
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: And what's cool about this is we are now creating everything that it once was, but even as a shadow of its former self.
• 51:58
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: Yeah.
• 51:58
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: You know, it's like sex and pizza, even mediocre.
• 52:00
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: It's pretty good than none.
• 52:01
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: But those, those of you who aren't our age, you don't remember the fake Polynesian restaurant of the seventies You'd sit in your little tiki hut with the stuffed parrot and have the poo poo platter and it was a whole cultural.
• 52:14
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: Movement.
• 52:14
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: It was a movement in the wrong direction, but it was a movement.
• 52:17
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: Well, it was just that the quality of what they delivered was crap, you know?
• 52:20
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: Yes.
• 52:20
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: And, but the quality of what you got in a lot of bars back then was crap.
• 52:23
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: For sure.
• 52:23
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: And it's great to see it come back and it's super fun and everybody should just relax.
• 52:27
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: And if you don't get a tiki drink.
• 52:28
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: Exactly right.
• 52:29
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: That's okay.
• 52:29
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: If you wanna get it, you can buy Jeff Berry's.
• 52:31
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: Books.
• 52:32
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: there are lots of great recipes out.
• 52:34
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: Yeah, lots stuff out there that are real and have real ingredients and are delicious.
• 52:37
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: So we're gonna bring the recording of this podcast to a close and oddly enough.
• 52:40
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: We're gonna go to a party tonight with, uh, Jeff Berry in New York City.
• 52:43
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: We're gonna go to a tiki party, so we're gonna go, we're gonna live the dream.
• 52:47
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: I'm Francis Shot.
• 52:48
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: And I'm Mark Pascal.
• 52:49
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: You're the restaurant guys.
• 52:50
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: You can always find out more@restaurantguyspodcast.com.
• 52:53
  the-restaurant-guys_3_05-20-2025_145638: Aloha.