What Jacoby’s Tiki Bar learned taking over Canberra bar, Highball

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH BACARDÍ

What’s the best tiki bar in Australia? Well, we haven’t taken a vote — and there’s some good ones — but the greatest, if you ask us, is Jacoby’s Tiki Bar in Enmore.

Step inside the door, past the curtains, and you’re anywhere but Sydney — it’s escapism in the form of a bar. The detail of the room is spectacular — some Lynchian reinterpretation of a mid century tiki bar — and the rum-inspired drinks are about as good as tiki drinks get.

The team from Jacoby’s — with the help of their friends at Bacardi — recently visited Canberra and took over the bar at that city’s preeminent rum establishment, Highball CBR. Below, bartender Tama Harris talks about what they learned, their advice on crafting rum drinks, what tiki is all about, and more.

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TAMA: Yeah, I’m Tama. We’re in Jacoby’s Tiki Bar, the bar I work, which is in Enmore, next to Newtown. It’s mainly a rum bar.

BOOTHBY: Can you describe the place for anyone who hasn’t been here?

TAMA: It’s a very, very Polynesian kind of escapism-styled bar. How can I describe it? A lot of rum cocktails, a lot of flowers, a lot of fire, and a great date spot.

BOOTHBY: So your bar went to Canberra. Tell us what was the reason for going down there?

TAMA: We did. Bacardí sorted out our whole trip. We got paid to go down and work in another rum bar in Canberra, and introduce our cocktails there, which is pretty cool. And it was a good way to share rum bars across states and say, hey, if you’re ever in Sydney, come to this bar where we work, these are the kind of drinks we do.

BOOTHBY: Can you describe what that bar was like?

TAMA: It was fantastic. It’s called Highball CBR — I couldn’t tell you where it was. It’s somewhere in Canberra! It’s a massive rum bar, had a little DJ set, a whole outdoor area, a lot of music, a lot of people. There was a great energy in there and they had a lot of rums as well.

Jacoby's Tama Harris and Highball's Riley Ferguson. Photo: Boothby

BOOTHBY: Have you been to Canberra many times before?

TAMA: Only once when I was in primary school for the classic Questacon, Parliament House trip.

BOOTHBY: What did you think about the bar?

TAMA: Man, the nightlife was crazy. We were there on a Thursday night. It was awesome. There was a whole strip of bars, one minute walk from each other. And all of them are so different, man, everyone was going out. It was Thursday. Places were full. It was good fun.

BOOTHBY: What did you love about Highball?

TAMA: The staff there were pretty cool. We got a little weird. But a fun thing that we did there — that we don’t do here — is we were spitting fire across the bar; we had a lot of overproof rum and lot of cocktails we’d light up and just fire-breathe all over the place. It wasn’t pretty at first, but it was good fun.

BOOTHBY: You’ve been working here for three years, so you know your way around a rum cocktail or two. What’s the trick to mixing rum cocktails? What’s the key there?

TAMA: A good rum cocktail? The key is to find the balance but also to know the rum in the first place. Going back a bit, there’s three kind of pioneers of rum: you’ve got the Spanish, the British and the French styles. Each category has its own profiles and you have got to know a little bit about that to work with it. The British style rums, for example, they are more full-bodied, with a lot of flavour, quite robust. They work in stiffer drinks or mixed drinks.

The Spanish style of rum is a lot lighter and clearer, and like Bacardí, very good with citrusy drinks and a good foundation for a lot of rum cocktails. And the French style, they make their rum a little different, where they ferment and distill the sugarcane juice rather than molasses. And it results in more of an earthy, grassy kind of flavour of rum. That’s just good for really funky and different cocktails. Eventually you find what works and what doesn’t.

BOOTHBY: You do a lot of tiki cocktails here, how do you get the balance in tiki cocktails right? Because there’s often a lot of ingredients...

TAMA: Man, where regular cocktails have four or so ingredients, I feel like tiki has more like 15. There’s so much stuff going in there. We’ve got a lot of syrups, a lot of flavours, a lot of fresh fruits and a lot of unique ingredients. A lot of it is trial and error. We have had some late nights making up some cocktails here, but it is good fun.

BOOTHBY: You’ve got Bacardí Carta Blanca and Bacardí Ocho on the table there — what’s your go to cocktails for them?

TAMA: The Pina Colada with Bacardí, but there’s also a coconut Bacardí rum — it’s fantastic — so I’d use a half-half blend there. But the Ocho here might be my favourite with just a regular Mojito. You can’t go wrong with that. It’s a bit more punchy. It works really well with the mint and the soda. It’s fantastic, yeah.

BOOTHBY: What are you going to make for us today?

TAMA: I’ll make you an Old Cuban with this. That’s a bit different and a bit fun. It’s quite a classic drink, where you would make a Daiquiri with a rum like this Bacardí Ocho, except you’d add mint inside the tin. You’d shake it up, pour it out — you top it with prosecco, a little mint garnish and it’s fantastic.

BOOTHBY: What’s the point of tiki and tiki bars?

TAMA: The point of tiki is escapism. You’ll notice in our bar, we’ve got no windows, we have our curtains closed and you’re in here and once you enter our whole idea is to take you away from Sydney for a second, put you in some island.

BOOTHBY: Why do guests appreciate that?

TAMA: I guess it’s a little vacation in the middle of the week. You go after work, you’re in your suit, you’re tired, whatever, and you come here and you’re not here anymore, you know? You’re in a tiki bar, there’s funky music, there’s Pina Coladas going for $12 — it’s good fun.