Shake It Up

In 1970, when I left Los Angeles, I had no reason to look back. I was headed north to UC Santa Cruz, which was-at that moment-the hottest, hippest campus in the country. The day before I left, I realized there was one thing I would miss: Damon’s Steak House on Central Avenue in Glendale. Damon’s had been there since 1937, a date that was disconcerting because the restaurant felt like a late-1940s bar. It looked like two GIs had returned from the Pacific campaign in World War II and opened the bar they remembered from Fiji. There were palm fronds, fish nets, glass floats, coconut halves, tiki gods, fake orchids and an emphasis on rum drinks. There were decent steaks, stuffed baked potatoes and grandmotherly waitresses who called you “Hon” and pretended to take your order. However you ordered your steak, it arrived medium rare. The servers recommended the mai tais instead of red wine, and they were right. These cocktails were sweet, but after the initial sugar shock, they had a sensual and addictive quality. Damon’s mai tai was my first legal drink, and I knew I couldn’t leave L.A. without the recipe.

So the morning before my departure for Santa Cruz, I felt completely decadent walking from the sunlit parking lot into Damon’s narrow, dark bar. I was the only customer, but the bartender smiled and pretended it was completely normal to order a serious rum drink before noon. He slid the mai tai, garnished with a pineapple chunk on a toothpick spear, to a stop before me. I sipped and explained why I was there. I tipped the then-princely sum of five bucks and walked out with the recipe recorded on a napkin. I was ready to leave L.A.

Northern California was colder, and as I grew older, rum and sugar made less sense. I switched to dark beers and bourbon and stayed with them even after I moved back to Los Angeles in ’81. I might have stayed with those drinks forever if I hadn’t been reintroduced to the pleasures of rum almost two decades later. In 1987 I was dropped into Nicaragua for several months to cover the making of the Universal/Alex Cox movie “Walker,” a wonderful disaster on many levels. The local rum, Flor de Cana, benefited from a lack of technology. If you simply crushed sugar cane and distilled it without the industrial capitalist overlay of pasteurization, preservatives or additives, the product was much more intense. It was like a single malt Scotch for the masses. You could be deep in the jungle and hear the whirr of a battery-run blender deconstructing Flor de Cana with some tropical fruit no one could name, and the result was beguiling.

Back in L.A., faced with the prospect of the annual block party in my Beachwood Canyon neighborhood, I remembered Damon’s mai tais. They’ve been a staple of our summer parties for 14 years now, and they’ve had something to do, I think, with an increasingly amicable neighborhood vibe.

That first year I remember trying to persuade my neighbor James to try one. James is a tall, dignified fellow in his 70s, and he told me that no, he really didn’t like sweet drinks. I handed him one and left to tend the barbecue. Hours later I ran into James sipping his third mai tai. “These are very refreshing,” he said solemnly.

Damon’s Mai Tai (circa 1969)

Serves 2

2 ounces light rum

2 ounces dark rum

2 ounces orgeat syrup (almond/sugar syrup)

2 ounces pineapple juice

2 ounces freshly squeezed orange juice

1 lime 2 tablespoons curacao

Pineapple chunks, lime slices and maraschino cherries for garnish (optional) Pack a cocktail shaker with ice. Add rum, orgeat syrup, pineapple juice and orange juice. Shake to mix. Divide mixture into two tall old-fashioned glasses. Squeeze the juice of 1/2 lime into each glass. Float a scant teaspoon of curaao over each glass. For optional garnish, spear lime slice, pineapple chunk and maraschino cherry onto toothpick.

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Lou Mathews last wrote for the magazine about his grandmother’s salad dressing.