TK-0006 - Beachbum Berry Remixed, Jeff Berry

Beachcomber’s Gold recipe — which was neither Phoebe and Arnold’s version nor
the Log’s.
Three totally different drinks. With the same name. And the same author.
How to account for this?
As Stephen Remsberg told the Bum, “Don The Beachcomber’s was not
static, and there were variations.” Dick Santiago worked at the Hollywood Beachcomber’s
back when Donn was still running the place. Hank later worked at the
Palm Springs branch, which was opened by Donn’s first wife, Sunny Sund, after
she’d divorced Donn and won all rights to the Don The Beachcomber’s name on
the mainland. Sunny would have had little incentive to change her ex-husband’s
wildly successful formulas, which accounts for Hank’s 1950s Beachcomber’s Gold
remaining unchanged from Dick’s 1930s recipe. But Sunny had sold the mainland
Beachcomber’s franchise to the Getty Corporation by the 1970s, when Stephen
Remsberg obtained the Chicago Beachcomber’s radically different Beachcomber’s
Gold recipe. Getty’s bean-counters may not have had the same qualms as Sunny
when it came to streamlining the Beachcomber’s Gold: with its three different
rums and fresh lime juice, the original would have cost much more to make than
just using one rum and two vermouths basic to every bar.
And Phoebe and Arnold’s recipe? After he lost his mainland restaurants, Donn
moved to Waikiki and in 1948 opened a Beachcomber’s there. By the time he married
Phoebe, his third wife, in 1982, he would have had over three decades to tinker with
his recipes—something he did compulsively, according to several of his ex-employees.
Phoebe’s version of the Beachcomber’s Gold could well be the end result of his
experiments.
Whew. After all that, we need a drink. But not a Beachcomber’s Gold. Frankly,
we’re not in love with any of the three recipes below. The version we like is a
knock-off of the Beachcomber’s Gold called the Gold Cup (see page 51). As Thucydides
used to say after a few retsinas, “Definitive, deshminitive.”
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