Mr. Bodi Hai

Taste

Coffee and banana lead on the nose, roasty and a little funky before the tropical fruit even registers. First sip is rum-forward with a rich, aged warmth, then the coffee liqueur's bitterness and the banana's sweetness trade off, tied together by the toasted macadamia orgeat's nutty backbone, it genuinely tastes toasted, not just sweet. Pineapple and lemon keep the whole thing from getting too heavy, cutting through what could otherwise be a dessert-adjacent drink. Angostura ties it off with a little baking spice on the finish. An unusual combination on paper, coffee and banana and nuts and rum, but it holds together properly.

Origin

Mr. Bodi Hai is a modern riff on the Mr. Bali Hai, a tiki classic created not long after San Diego's Bali Hai Restaurant opened on Shelter Island in 1954, where it became the house's own drink. The restaurant, and the cocktail, took their name from "Bali Ha'i," the song from the 1949 musical South Pacific, about a beautiful island glimpsed from a distance but never quite reached, exactly the vibe a tiki bar wants. The Mr. Bali Hai recipe drifted over the decades, a well-documented 1970s version runs dark Jamaican rum, light Puerto Rican rum, coffee brandy, pineapple, lemon and sugar syrup. Mr. Bodi Hai keeps that coffee-and-tropical backbone but adds banana liqueur and swaps in a toasted macadamia orgeat, a newer spin on an old tiki house drink rather than a historic recipe in its own right.