Kitsch is one of those terms that, despite having an abstruse definition, has been applied liberally, often damningly, by aesthetic theorists and critics throughout art history. In the U.S., many of these distinctions are arbitrary, snobbish and prioritize the cuisine and beverages of certain countries and populations over others, while some center on the quality of ingredients - a filet versus an Arby’s Meat Mountain sandwich, for example.Īnd for years, tiki cocktails - which, as spirits writer Robert Simonson wrote for Punch, were, “not too long ago, a comic-pathetic relic of 20th-century drinking history” - fell into low-class territory due to their “unabashed kitsch.” It’s a space wherein most people have opinions about what qualifies as high and low culture, and how.
While the art world is typically the place where you’ll find the definitions of “kitsch” and “camp” debated with serious academic underpinning, the world of food and beverage is arguably equally stratified. For many years after, “serious drinkers” - the craft beer connoisseurs, oenophiles and cocktail purists - wouldn’t be caught dead with a paper umbrella in hand.īut slowly over the last decade, American cocktail bars have returned tiki drinks to their menus, while dedicated tiki bars, with hula skirt-clad tables and surf-rock soundtracks, are popping up at a consistent rate.
Tiki cocktails have a long history in this country, dating back to the 1930s before going decidedly out of fashion in the early '60s. Big Bucket strawberry drink mix wasn’t on the menu. Both incorporated top-shelf rum, fresh lime juice and simple syrup. The Red Herring had two, and with them they’d make the perfect daiquiri - both the frozen slushie version that most of us think of when we see the item on a menu, and a classic version served on the rocks in a V-shaped cocktail glass. “90 percent of craft cocktail bars, or cocktail bars in general, they might not even have a blender in-house,” I remember beverage director Clay Livingston telling me at the time. Their drinks list was absurdly comprehensive, advertising 100 classic cocktails - a term more often applied to a Manhattan than a mai tai. These absurd drinks were a ray of sunshine.Īs I tried bar after bar, I found a home that winter at a now-shuttered place called The Red Herring. It was December 2016, a season of personal discontent the weather as icy as the current political reality and the fall-out from my long-term relationship. “I’ll have the daiquiri,” I’d say, closing slim cocktail menus at bars all across Louisville, Kentucky, glancing down the line of bar stools where men in blazers nursed Old Fashioneds. I fell in love with them - the kind served in exaggeratedly curvaceous glasses, topped with delicate paper umbrellas - during a winter in bourbon country. While many have referred to these sorts of cocktails as kitschy, I would argue rather that American cocktail culture has been camped, and I’m here for it.įor me, it all goes back to the tiki cocktail. I’ve also seen cocktails served in those plastic bears that are typically filled with honey nowadays a drink can come from almost any container, from lab beakers to the mouth of a ceramic shark.Ĭurrently, we’re in the midst of a marked resurgence of drinks so emblematic of over-saturated Americana that to some they verge on the cringeworthy or, as cocktail writer Sarah Baird wrote in 2015, are “an exaggeration of bad taste” like mai tais, piña coladas, or “a beer boot cocktail that slushes together mezcal, gin and an upturned pony of Miller High Life.” Likewise, last summer, spiked Capri Sun knock-offs were big - boozy, colorful and served in clear plastic drink pouches (which I was delighted to find can be bought in bulk). They look like the Juicy Juices that are passed out during kindergarten snack time, except Junzi Kitchen’s version are built from imported Vitasoy boxed juices with minibar-size bottles of booze sticking out of the top next to the slot for the little plastic straw. In May, New York City’s Junzi Kitchen began advertising juicebox cocktails, a nod to innocence paired with a knowing adult wink.
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