How Jeff “Beachbum” Berry’s Hunt for a Secret Recipe Led to a Career Detour

During the House Un-American Activities Committee purges of the 1950s, screenwriter Walter Bernstein wrote that he’d escape to Don The Beachcomber’s in Hollywood “and read in the dim light designed for lovers and drink Navy Grogs” to calm his fears of being blacklisted. In the 1960s, Frank Sinatra fled rabid fans to unwind with his favorite tiki drink, the Navy Grog, in a private room at the same Beachcomber’s. The Navy Grog clearly enhanced their lives, but I’ll go them one better. The same drink upended and uprooted mine, giving it an unexpected—but entirely welcome—second act.

My first sip was a revelation. Strong and dry, with layers of teasingly elusive flavor, it instantly became my “usual.”

I was born too late to drink a Navy Grog at Don The Beachcomber’s, but the Beverly Hills Trader Vic’s was still open in the 1980s and serving Vic’s take on Don’s original. My first sip was a revelation. Strong and dry, with layers of teasingly elusive flavor, it instantly became my “usual.” Even after downing untold Grogs, I couldn’t parse the ingredients. But as long as I could order a Navy Grog at Vic’s, who cared? I wasn’t a bartender, I was a screenwriter; my goal was to make films, not drinks.

That began to change in the 1990s, when curiosity finally got the better of me and I went in search of a recipe—only to find that Don The Beachcomber rarely published any because they were valuable trade secrets. The ex-Beachcomber’s bartenders who were still working in Los Angeles confirmed this when I asked them what was in their drinks. Visibly offended by my impertinence, they barked, “Rum and fruit juice!”

There was no internet then, just used bookstores. After scouring their shelves, I finally found a recipe in Trader Vic’s 1972 Bartender’s Guide: 1 ounce each of Jamaican, Puerto Rican, and Demerara rums to 3 ounces of “Trader Vic’s Navy Grog Mix,” whatever the hell that was. A more helpful find, the 1956 Esquire Drink Book, offered a recipe that called for the same rum blend as Vic’s, mixed with 3/4 ounce each of lime juice, grapefruit juice, and sugar syrup. But when I tried this, something was missing. That teasingly elusive flavor still eluded me.

Observing, interviewing, and just plain pestering more veteran tiki bartenders eventually solved the riddle. Esquire specified sugar syrup but Don The Beachcomber’s actual sweetener was honey. And that teasingly elusive flavor in Vic’s version? Allspice. Over the next few years, my “usual” tiki drink, along with the entire genre, became my obsession. I was supposed to be writing scripts, not hunting for lost drink recipes. But eventually my recipe collection became a book, then two books, then three. Concurrently, show business became just business, coldly corporate and jaded. Meanwhile everyone I met in the burgeoning 21st-century craft-cocktail world was the exact opposite: warm, accepting, and fired with creativity.

My Hollywood career fizzled, but my cocktail career sparked …

My Hollywood career fizzled, but my cocktail career sparked. I morphed from Jeff Berry, movie guy, to Beachbum Berry, cocktail guy, as vintage recipes from my books began to appear on the menus of neo-tiki bars opening around the world. Many featured the Navy Grog that I’d pieced together over the years. I was thrilled that my favorite drink was back, and that I’d had anything to do with it. It was my wife, Annene Kaye, who suggested the then-radical but now seemingly inevitable next step: “Why don’t we also open a bar and serve the recipes you found?”

In 2014, Annene and I launched Beachbum Berry’s Latitude 29 in New Orleans. Naturally, one of our opening drinks was the Navy Grog. Ten years later, it still has pride of place on our menu, although we’ve modified the original with our own house rum blend and spice mix.

What’s the recipe, you ask? Rum and fruit juice!

The post How Jeff “Beachbum” Berry’s Hunt for a Secret Recipe Led to a Career Detour appeared first on Imbibe Magazine.