3 dots and dash series#

For me to interpret a modern mai tai, it has to be true to Trader Vic’s original 1944 recipe.” The 2044 Mai Tai takes the same proportions as the original, replaces the curacao with yellow chartreuse, and uses a special blend of three different unaged rums that Beary will gush about for as long as you’ll sit still. “I’ve done competitions, I’ve been on panels, I’ve traveled all over the world. Beary is in the same camp “I am such a student of the mai tai, and I’ve been making them for eight or nine years,” he laughs. As a bit of a mai tai fanatic myself, I always order the original 1944 version of the mai tai created by Trader Vic himself and am suspicious of variations. Now, the OG banana daiquiri is back on the menu, next to the Idle Hands, a 2018 version of the banana drink with “super banana cordial” and a blend of Barbados and Jamaican rums.Īnother example of “classic beside modern” is the 2044 Mai Tai. Beary took the drink off the menu when he joined but continued to work on creating the ideal banana flavor, using clarification, a centrifuge, and other modern techniques to concentrate tastes without the need to blend in fruit. As Beary puts it, these are “The bangers from every menu across 10 years.”įor example, when Three Dots opened, one of the iconic drinks (and the one that seemed to appear in every single photo) was the banana daiquiri, complete with the adorable banana dolphin garnish.

In some cases, it’s even possible to see the progenitor drink right next to its modern counterpart.

3 dots and dash series#

For longtime fans of the bar, this summer’s celebration menu is a dream - a whole series of Three Dots originals from the entire life of the bar are back on the menu. “We got more comfortable taking more liberties, and as we got better versed in the historic cocktails, we were making modern iterations and that’s when things got exciting for us.” There have always been modern tropical drinks on the Three Dots menu, but over the years, the menu has gotten more and more unique and the bar has developed its own identity. “As we evolve, we can take it so much further,” says Beary. In part, this was because the nation was just being reintroduced to genuine tropical drinks only a very few of the classic tiki bars remained in business, and most of what guests thought they “knew” about these drinks likely came from artificially flavored junk poured over crushed ice at beach bars. “When I took over, Three Dots was very focused on reintroducing some of these really classic tiki and tropical drinks, and trying to reinterpret those in the most accurate and classic way,” explains Beary. This summer, Three Dots celebrates a decade in business, and I sat down with the head mixer himself, Kevin Beary, to discuss the evolution of the bar and his plans for the celebration.īeary, who has been with the bar for eight of its 10 years (the opening tiki guru, Paul McGee, went on to open Lost Lake), describes the changes over the years as a move from faithful replication to its own innovation. Three Dots and a Dash, which started as one of the vanguard spots in the tiki revival, has evolved over the years into one of the nation’s greatest bars, a mecca for rum lovers and a place not only for tropical classics, but also ambitious modern cocktails.