Let's Tiki's Sightings

This new addition to the menu really hit the spot, and helped me to quickly forget how cold this spring has been. This refreshing cocktail had great blend of rum, spices, and citrus. Unlike, your standard, run of the mill cocktail; a good tiki cocktail has a great amount of depth and offers a bouquet of flavors in every sip. The Jet Pilot at Foundation fits this definition perfectly, and sent my taste buds to paradise.

Foundation's version of this Kahiki classic is similar to the original. It has Bourbon, pomegranate, passion fruit, and lemon flavors. The combination of passion fruit, pomegranate, and bourbon was new to me and it was spectacular. The passion fruit give a nice touch of sweetness, and the pomegranate give a touch of sour. The bourbon rounded the drink out nicely with an oaky flavor. It was the perfect combination. This smooth drink is a symphony for your taste buds that goes down very easy.

Our bartender, Michael, told us that this drink made the menu by popular demand. It started out as one of their specials, and after it came of the list customers kept asking for it. So piranha fans your drink is now a standard on the menu. After one sip I could tell why this was a popular request. The blend of rum, ginger beer, and citrus was great. The spicy sweet flavor of ginger beer blends really nice with rum and citrus.

The menu described the mai tai as, "our signature blend of three Cruzan Rums (Estate Dark, Black Strap, and Coconut) and fresh tropical juices." I was excited to see that they use Cruzan rum! With my first sip I could taste coconut from the coconut rum, pineapple juice, and some orange juice. The coconut was a fun twist to a chain resturant mai tai. There was also a slight hint of lime juice. I don't think the estate dark or black strap rums were actually used in the cocktail. There wasn't any molasses or oaky flavors that would normally come with those darker rums. Also, the color of the drink didn't suggest those rums were in there. I'm guessing a white rum was used instead, because the coconut flavor wasn't strong enough for that to be the only rum. The dark rums were probably too much for the average customer.

This cocktail tasted more like just rum and pineapple. There was a hint of almond syrup though.

This is a great Tiki drink and you get to keep the mug!

This is no ordinary beer. It is Hacker Pschorr with Cruzan Banana Rum and Pineapple Juice.

This delicious drink is the National Cocktail of Brazil. It is made with fresh limes, sugar, and cachaça. Cachaça is a distilled spirit made with fresh sugar cane. It is similar to rum, but rum is generally made with molasses. Try one! It's great.

The Red Robin Mai Tai was cute looking. They poured a lot of Grenadine in the bottom of the glass to give it a cute smile and floaded some dark rum at the top to give the little Mai Tai man a hat. Unfortunately, the cute look was the best part of the Mai Tai. It was very sweet, weak and just tasted a lot like pineapple juice and Grenadine. So, as I suspected I don't need to ever have one of those again. At least the Mai Tai was cute looking. I realize they need to cater to a main stream audience. Oh well.

A delicious but sweet Mai Tai. They sure are huge though!