Memory, Mai Tais, and Managing a Myth

Mai Kai general manager Corey Starr on how to pilot the past into the future

In 2011, I was part of a panel discussing rum history at the Hukilau, an annual Florida tiki fest. The panel took place at the Mai Kai Polynesian Restaurant, and featured a group of people you either very much want to drink rum with, or very much do not, depending on how much work you need to accomplish the following day: Jeff Berry, Martin Cate, Stephen Remsberg, and Ian Burrell.

The bar and restaurant was opened by brothers Jack and Bob Thornton in 1956 and gained instant renown for its drinks and extravagant tropical design—not only the Polynesian fantasia interior (an erupting volcano, two waterfalls, pineapple-shaped bar stools), but outdoor gardens planted with 400 species of exotic plants, which were regularly cycled through a greenhouse to keep them looking fresh and perky.

The drinks borrowed heavily from Don the Beachcomber’s oeuvre, with favorites like the Zombie, Barrel O’ Rum (an adaptation of Don’s Rum Barrel), and the Mystery Drink, served by a “mystery girl” amid the sounding of gongs in a bowl cascading with fog from dry ice.

I’d like to report it was a memorable evening, but I recall much of it only dimly, as if through a fog of dry ice. One thing I do remember: my presentation involved mixing rum with gunpowder and lighting it on fire to demonstrate an alleged early test of spirit proof. This was cause for concern, given it took place in the heart of a faux Polynesian village of huts hung with droopy thatch. But I was assured by management that everything was fire-resistant—fire played a central role in the evening floor show, after all.

The Mai Kai closed abruptly in late 2020—not from fire but from flooding that resulted from roof damage. The place would be closed for several months for repairs, management said. Maybe as long as a year.

Four years and $20 million later, it reopened last November. The closure brought significant changes and upgrades to the six-decade-old building—for one, the grand cantilevered porte-cochère was converted into a new outdoor bar called the Bora Bora—but the place is still instantly recognizable as a tiki classic.

Last week I chatted with Corey Starr, an alumnus of Chicago’s Three Dots and a Dash and Austin’s Tiki Tatsu-Ya, who was brought in as beverage manager to oversee the reopening. It was very much a trial-by-fire situation, he said. He had just a few weeks to revise the cocktail list—ensuring nearly 60 drinks were not only delicious but could be made with some modicum of efficiency—as well as hire and train nearly three dozen bartenders to staff the three bars on the premises.

Three months ago, Starr was promoted to general manager. I figured he’d have some lessons to impart from the trail-by-fire reopening. I wasn’t wrong.

Working with six decades of drinks history is both blessing and curse.

Starr found it both an honor and a bit of a burden to make drinks with six decades of history behind them. He had access to notebooks documenting how fabled Mai Kai bartender Mariano Licudine (1907–1980) concocted many of the drinks he invented. But Starr was running a bar, not a museum, and these had to be adapted for current tastes and ingredients without going too far astray.

“I’ve been doing the tiki thing for, I don't know, almost 15 years,” Starr says, “but I learned more in my first two months here.”

Society’s tastes change. History doesn’t.

Some of the classic drinks might be considered too sweet by modern standards—the sugar would have been dialed back if made at Three Dots. But habits and memories are powerful.

“I like to think I have a really good palate when it comes to this stuff. But I have to think about the consumer here more than before. I may think I have the best Black Magic recipe, but it may not be what’s best for the Mai Kai and our clientele.”

Tread carefully when tinkering with memories

“There are so many expectations here compared to anywhere else I’ve worked.” And that’s made harder by the fact that memories aren’t always reliable.

“People's memories of the place are different than what it actually was, just because of what this place does to people.”

He heard from many guests that they remembered it always being freezing inside. But when he asked Kern Mattei, who’s been with the restaurant for decades, he was told it was never that cold. Still, memories are stubborn.

Even small changes—like where guests are dropped off by a cab or rideshare—can upset longtime patrons if they don’t match up with their recollections.

Capturing the past is no easy task

The Mai Kai is a special-occasion kind of place. People come for graduations, anniversaries, birthdays that end in zero. Those events can add as much flavor to a drink as a house-made tincture.

“Maybe the last time you were here was 10 years ago, and you were in a different place in your life. Or it was just a magical evening,” Starr says. “If you’re here on a normal Tuesday, it’s not going to match that—it's not like your 50th anniversary.”

Make do with what you’ve got

Starr said one key difference from previous bars—where he could create drinks freely—was that crafting cocktails at the Mai Kai felt more like coloring within the lines than starting with a blank sheet.

Some of those restrictions came from partnerships the restaurant had entered into, which affected both the spirits he could use and the glassware.

Take tequila, for instance. “I’ve made tiki-style drinks with tequila at other bars,” he says, “but here it was more of a challenge, because we’ve got multiple tequilas that we have to use, some of which I’m unfamiliar with.”

You can’t just celebrate the past—you have to look to the future

The Mai Kai isn’t a museum—it’s a fully functioning restaurant, bar, and floor show that needs to turn a profit to pay off that $20 million investment. And while preserving the past is essential, the place can’t be frozen in time.

It’s not enough to elicit a single “oh, my!” from first-time visitors. The culinary and drinking experience has to evolve to remain relevant—especially in an era of elevated expectations—to bring guests back for a second, third, or fourth visit.

One of Starr’s current goals is to make the Molokai Bar more of a destination in its own right. “Traditionally, it’s been kind of a place to stop by for happy hour, then go to the show, and then maybe have a drink on the way out when the band’s playing,” he says. “We want to make it its own experience—keep the classic drinks on the menu, but really elevate some of the other cocktails.”