By Laura Medina
Tiki No's Toasted Marshmallow
If you want a "cool" drink, a cool drink that not only cools you down, it's really cool that it's hip, as in retro-hip.
If you ever get fatigued by the pretentious and the pompous and not refreshing and keeping up appearances, hide out at Tiki No because it's a yes.
One of the last remaining tiki bars in Los Angeles, the "No" stands for North Hollywood, the increasingly hipster suburb of North Hollywood where hipsters go for bigger space and cheaper rent. This is where influencers, hipsters, and industry insiders go hide out, from the blazing Valley sun and paparazzi.
This is a place to let your hair hang down because the staff and patrons don't care, just be nice and cool like the cocktails.
What's fancy without the pretense? Fun.
The bartenders over at Tiki No, wouldn't call themselves "mixologists," but they sure know how to whip up the Mid-Century Modern cocktails that "Mad Men" would call home.
Immediately after World War II, your granddads left the Pacific and returned home with the taste for the South Pacific Tropics and their refreshingly sweet tropical fruit juices, mixed with strong rum, splashed over crushed ice. That mentality is called "Tiki" after the South Pacific straw huts. These Tiki drinks were the original smoothies before they were called smoothies. Tiki drinks are nothing more than smoothies with alcohol. Something that today's juicers are doing after work, taking today's pressed juices topped with vodka or rum or tequila after a long hard day of pressing and squeezing.
Tiki drinks were all the range in the Fifties, especially Hawaii was annexed as a state then flamed out in the late Sixties, when Baby Boomers no longer call it their drinks or their mentality.
Thanks to "Mad Men," and the fatigue of "keeping up appearances," people who just want to relax, are returning to Tiki drinks and culture, where you can wear your Hawaiian Parrot shirt and nobody cares.
At Tiki No, they removed the tacky, overly-sweet pre-mix syrups and make everything from scratch, even the syrups are made from scratch. Sneakily healthy...yum.
Since Tiki cocktails represent the South Pacific Islands...with volcanoes, it's super fun and entertaining to watch your bartender set your rum cocktail....on fire!!!
Toasted Marshmallow
They set the made-for-two date cocktail in a bowl, the Scorpion Bowl, on fire.
Don't worry. The rum used will flame out then cool down, making it fun for you all to sip and guzzle or suck them dry.
What's even cooler...If you look closer, you'll notice their menu list the classic cocktails in chronological, history time line with the locations where the drinks were first invented. Cool trivia. They don't do that on their site, https://www.tikinola.com/menu. You need to personally go there, yourself, to glaze.
Alrighty, knowing they're in hipster-ifying North Hollywood, Tiki No also invented their own cocktails. That, they too, also list in chronological order and where, there at Tiki No.
The Toasted Marshmallow is their own cocktail creation...
Toasted Marshmallow
Overproof Rum-St. Croix, Fluffed Vodka, Licor 43, Falernum, Fresh Apple and Lemon Juice, Cinnamon.
In the dark setting, shielded from the sun, the heat, the social pressure, and the camera glare, people can't help but relax and chill, letting their hair down. This is where influencers in the know, get off the grid and recharge on alcoholic smoothies.
Tiki No takes the tacky out of Tiki, making it hip again!
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