Waikiki, Hawaii · 1957
Blue Hawaii
The reason there is a paper umbrella in your drink.
- Created by
- Harry Yee, Hilton Hawaiian Village
- Tastes like
- Pineapple and citrus, light and sweet — and unmistakably blue
- Glass
- Tall glass or hurricane
- Garnish
- Pineapple wedge, cherry, and a paper parasol
Ingredients
- 3/4 ozlight rum
- 3/4 ozvodka
- 1/2 ozblue curaçao
- 3 ozpineapple juice
- 1/2 ozfresh lemon juice
- 1/2 ozsimple syrup
Method
- 1.Shake everything with ice until well chilled.
- 2.Pour into a tall glass filled with crushed ice.
- 3.Garnish with the pineapple, the cherry, and the parasol. The parasol is historically load-bearing here.
In 1957 a sales representative from Bols walked into the Hilton Hawaiian Village and asked head bartender Harry Yee to build something around their blue curaçao. Yee took a few days with it and came back with this. He named it for the 1937 Bing Crosby song — the Elvis film came four years later, in 1961, and took the name from the same place.
Yee's larger contribution to the drinking world is the garnish. He had been finishing drinks with a stick of sugarcane, and guests kept chewing it and abandoning the pulp in the ashtrays. He switched to a small paper parasol, and the entire industry copied him.
It is the most photographed drink in tiki and the least respected, which is roughly what happens to anything that photographs that well.
On the record
A Blue Hawaii is not a Blue Hawaiian. The Hawaiian adds cream of coconut and comes out opaque and pale; this one stays clear and vividly blue. Bars mix the two up constantly.
Thatch note
Blue curaçao is orange liqueur with food coloring in it. It tastes like curaçao. The color is the joke, and the joke is the entire point of ordering one.