Rate Your Cocktail: Tiki or Not?
Tiki isn’t binary. It’s measured on a sliding scale from Not Tiki At All (a glass of scotch, neat, drunk in a large leather chair in a cold, drafty library) to Very Tiki Indeed (e.g. a Zombie served in a pineapple, garnished with a parrot, carved out of coconut, sipped on a deserted island in the South Pacific). Between those two extremes lie an ocean of drinks with varying levels of tikiness. To help you measure just how tiki your cocktail is, we came up with a point system. Anything over zero has a little tiki in it (a Martini garnished with a paper umbrella, for example), but anything over seven points is most definitely tiki. If what you’re drinking scores over twelve, head to city hall and change your name to Trader Vic Jr.
Drink is served in some sort of fruit:
4 points
Drink is served in a glass made to look like something that is not a glass:
4 points
Drink is garnished with a paper umbrella:
1 point
Drink is made with rum:
3 points
Drink is made with three different rums:
6 points
Drink is garnished with an animal made from either plastic or fruit:
3 points
Drink is garnished with a live animal:
19 points
Drink is sipped on a beach:
5 points
Drink is sipped on a desert island:
8 points
Drink is sipped while wearing a shirt adorned with tiki totems or tropical flowers:
1 point
Drink is made with an obscure syrup:
4 points
Drink is made with an obscure syrup made by the drinker:
6 points
Drink is on fire:
4 points
Drink is sipped out of an elaborate straw:
1 point
Drink is sipped while jungle drums play in the background:
2 points
Drink is sipped while the drinker is playing jungle drums:
6 points