heading to venus

3/4 oz Tamarind Syrup (*)
3/4 oz Cinnamon Syrup
3/4 oz Lime Juice
3/4 oz Grapefruit Juice
2 dash Fee's Molasses Bitters (optional)

Shake with ice and strain into a tall glass with or without 2 oz soda water. Fill with crushed ice and garnish with Tiki intent including citrus peels (see text below) and freshly grated nutmeg.
(*) A 1/2 pound of tamarind concentrate makes a quart of syrup (when dissolved with hot 1:1 simple). 1/8 of that container (1 oz by weight) will make 4 oz tamarind syrup. Tamarind concentrate can be found in Indian supermarkets.
Last summer, I created a mocktail that was the two syrups and two juices above for a guest. A short while later, I knew that I had hit a magical tropical combination for that drink ticket asked for not only another round of that same mocktail but could their dining companion have it with booze? The drink with booze gained an amber rum component and took the form of a Jet Pilot that I called the Final Countdown when it hit the Yacht Rock Sunday menu (and later the main menu). To name the mocktail version, I took a line from that Europe song and dubbed this one the "Heading to Venus." The little Tiki man that I garnish with is a lime wedge pre-notched for a glass rim. In the notch, I insert a long snake-like forked tongue, and to the wedge, I add a pair of clove eyes.

jungle jim

1/2 oz Passion Fruit Syrup
1/2 oz Chai Tea Syrup
1/2 oz Honey Syrup
3/4 oz Lemon Juice
3/4 oz Lime Juice

Shake with ice, strain into a Collins glass with 3 oz soda water, and fill with ice. Garnish with a mint sprig and an orange peel snake.
A few weeks ago at Loyal Nine, I received a drink ticket for a mocktail and I scanned the room to figure out which seat it was. Often it is a lady or a teenager, but this time it was a 4-5 year old guest sitting with his parents at the chef's counter. One of the servers had already communicated that this kid was awesome, so I knew I had to make this special. I will post the first drink I made for him (which is one of my mocktail standards these days) later, but I needed something for his followup drink to out-do the first one. I based the flavor combination off of Don's Special Daiquiri which pairs honey and passion fruit syrups with lime juice. Instead of its rum, I opted for a bit of chai tea syrup and soda water, and I split the citrus into equal parts lime and lemon. For a garnish, I went tropical with a citrus peel snake that I mastered from making Cobra and other Tiki drinks at home. The cool part was that the snake sprang out a bit when the ice was jostled with the straw!