Rachel's Mai Tai

Stay on top until you fall in love...

I have been a big fan of the AMC's series Mad Men. Except I only started watching at the start of season two. Tonight I got season one on DVD and am enjoying this show and characters I love when they were first introduced us. I am learning so many things. Sal's is pretty transparently gay. Pete is a horrible horrible person and such a wounded mess. Peggy is annoyingly naive, but not as much as you think. Don Draper's favorite whiskey is Rye, natch.

There is this marvelous scene in the first episode when Don takes Rachel Menken to a fancy Polynesian restaurant and she gets this ridiculous tiki drink. Tiki and Polynesian restaurants were all the rage starting in the late 1940's with Trader Vic's and Don the Beachcomber's restaurants.

Rachel tells Don she wants to stay on top and be in charge of the business, at least until she falls in love...Don disagrees that she will ever be in love.

"The reason why you haven't felt it is because it doesn't exist. What you call love was invented by guys like me to sell nylons".

Wow. I j'dore him.

And Rachel is quite interesting too. So in honor of their fateful meeting at the fashionable Polynesian restaurant, here is the recipe for Rachel's Mai Tai from Trader Vic's Book of Food and Drink. I found this treasure from 1946 in Bonnie Slotnick's Bookstore here in the West Village.

Mai Tai
2 oz rum
1/2 oz Orgeat
1/2 oz Orange Curacao
1/4 oz simple syrup
fresh lime

Hand shake and garnish with half of the lime shell inside the drink and float a sprig of fresh mint at the edge of the glass.

Why, Hello Don! Yes, I'll take a gimlet please!