Cocktail · Spirit-forward
Zombie
Three rums, falernum, absinthe, and a flaming garnish — tiki's final boss.
How to order it: Don the Beachcomber, 1934. Famously limited to two per customer. There's a reason.
Flavor profile
The recipe
- 1 oz white rum; 1 oz dark rum
- ½ oz aged rum (151) float
- ¾ oz lime; ½ oz falernum
- Grenadine, absinthe dash, bitters
- Tiki mug; limit two
The story
The Zombie belongs to Donn Beach, the founding father of tiki, who created it at his Hollywood bar Don the Beachcomber in 1934. Legend says he built it to push a hungover customer through a business meeting; the man later reported it had turned him into a zombie. Beach famously limited customers to two and guarded the recipe in coded notebooks, with ingredients relabeled to foil rival bars, a cipher not convincingly cracked until historian Jeff "Beachbum" Berry's detective work decades later. It endures as tiki's apex predator: three rums, falernum, absinthe, and a house rule that exists for documented reasons.
Adjacent pours