Created Beachcomber Chain of Eateries : Donn Beach; Innovative Restaurateur

Donn Beach, creator of the Don the Beachcomber restaurant chain and the entrepreneur credited with helping bring exotic Hawaiian fare to Americans, has died in Honolulu.

The Honolulu Advertiser reported in its Thursday editions that Beach had died Wednesday at age 81 of cancer.

Born Ernest Raymond Beaumont-Gantt in New Orleans, he changed his name after starting his first restaurant--not in Hawaii but on the mainland.

According to Spence Weaver, a friend and fellow restaurateur, Beach came to the islands at the urging of Matson Navigation Co., whose ships once provided the main mode of transportation to the Hawaiian chain.

In Honolulu “he created a lot of new ways of doing things,” Weaver said. Among them, he added, were the mai tai, a rum and fruit juice cocktail served with chunks of pineapple and sometimes garnished with a tiny orchid.

(Vic Bergeron, founder of Trader Vic’s, another Polynesian-theme restaurant chain, often has been credited with creating the mai tai, but he freely admitted before his death in 1984 that he copied Don the Beachcomber’s South Pacific decor when he opened his first restaurant in Oakland in 1937. Bergeron may also have borrowed Beach’s recipe for the rum drink.)

Beach also created rumaki, a popular hors d’oeuvre, not as a gastronomic treat but as a money-saver.

Artist Herb Kane, another friend, recalled that restaurants were forced at that time to purchase whole chickens for their kitchens and “Beach couldn’t stand all of the chicken livers going to waste.”

Needed a Name

He decided to combine them with bacon and water chestnuts but then needed a name.

“He had a Cook Islands dictionary, Kane said. “He opened it, his finger came down on the word rumaki (a Cook Islands bird), and that’s what he called it.”

The Honolulu Don the Beachcomber’s also was believed the first to produce the zombie cocktail, a powerful combination of various rums and apricot liqueur.

At one time the Don the Beachcomber chain included restaurants in Los Angeles, Chicago, Las Vegas and Honolulu. Many featured Polynesian dancers in addition to the food.

The restaurants and property changed hands over the years and evolved into Don the Beachcomber Enterprises, which was sold in 1972 to Getty Financial Corp.

Beach is survived by his wife, Phoebe. He was an Army colonel during World War II and will be buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.