Tiki Drinks

A collection of rum-based cocktails, tiki drinks were invented in the 1930s by the New Orleans native Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt, a drifter who had spent much of the previous decade traveling throughout the Caribbean and South Pacific. In 1933 he opened a small bar in Los Angeles named Don the Beachcomber, which featured newly invented fruity cocktails in a setting that was decorated with souvenirs from his travels. Loosely Polynesian themed, the bar was the first of many tiki bars that multiplied across the United States over the next several decades.