Last week we started an infusion of vodka with five pounds of fresh longan from Hilo. Longan = dragon’s eye in Chinese. So when people ask is that a jar of eyeballs, we can say yes, it’s a jar of tasty dragon’s eyes!

Now that the infusion is ready, we sampled it out to our ever-so-willing alcoholic test subjects beloved patrons and the consensus is: we liked the taste but couldn’t get over the smell. The longan taste is very subtle, with hints of honey and peeled grape. But despite my two hours of peeling and deseeding the five pounds of fresh fruit, the infusion retained an unpopular muskiness, that one patron said smelled like feet.

So we proudly present a fresh, new cocktail, for the adventurous podophiliacs out there.

Dragon Feet Cocktail:

• 2 oz Dragon’s Eye Infused Vodka
• 1/2 oz Domaine de Canton Ginger Liqueur
• 1/2 oz Cointreau
• Splash of Sprite
• Splash of Fresh Orange Juice
• Topped with a fresh mint leaf
• Shaken and served over ice

Perhaps my next attempt will be with dried longan.

@mouseymike just couldn’t get enough of the Dragon Feet cocktail this past Saturday!

This month’s theme for Mixology Monday is Flores de Mayo – Floral Cocktails. A big mahalo to Dave at The Barman Cometh for hosting this month’s MxMo.

Our beloved singer bartender, Cory Nomura, invented this simple cocktail that features Kai Vodka’s newest flavor, Coconut Pandan. Pandan is one of my favorite scents, which can be found flavoring all those tasty green South-east Asian desserts. Also known as screwpine, it has a characteristic grassy aroma with floral and nutty overtones. It perfectly compliments coconut and coconut milk.

King Coconut:

• 1 oz Kai Coconut Pandan vodka
• 1 oz Crown Royal Canadian Whiskey
• Splash of Sprite

Serve over ice on rocks glass

We’ve already gone through a whole bottle of Kai’s Coconut Pandan Vodka at Wang Chung’s. The coconut pandan infused vodka leaves a unique floral and nutty aftertaste, as it softens the bite of the woodsy whiskey with a flavor reminiscent of Amaretto without the heavy sweetness.

Ginger beer is one of the only beers I can drink since I’m allergic to alcohol. And it’s oh so delicious. Spicy and refreshing without the overt sweetness of ginger ale.

The easiest way we’ve found to integrate homemade ginger beer at the bar is with a rich ginger syrup. Thanks to @kyleepuu and @codyonizuka for supplying several pounds of local hawaiian ginger from the farmer’s market. Look at the GARGANTUAN ginger modeling with @kyleepuu!

We’ll start with making the rich ginger syrup with a recipe courtesy of @dr_joey, Hawaii’s legendary mixologist:

For the ginger syrup reduction:

• 1 lb of fresh local hawaiian ginger
• 32 oz sugar
• 64 oz water

Wash the ginger with the skin on, and then pound the ginger with a textured meat mallet to open up the ginger. Place the ginger under a broiler until golden brown and then flip to get both sides the same way. This caramelizes the sugars in the ginger for extraction during the reduction process.

Once the ginger is nicely toasted, bring the 64 oz of water to a boil, and add the sugar and ginger. Keep it boiling until the mixture reduces to 32 oz. Strain out the ginger and let cool, place the cooled ginger syrup into a clean bottle and keep refrigerated.

The added depth of caramelized ginger makes this rich ginger syrup AMAZING!

To make the ginger beer, we add 1 oz of rich ginger syrup to 3 oz of soda water.

And one of the perfect drinks to showcase ginger beer is the Dark ‘N Stormy.

Dark ‘N Stormy

• 2 oz Gosling’s Black Seal Rum
• Top with ginger beer
• Top with a dash of Angostura Bitters
• Served over ice with a lime wedge

We’re happy to join in on the monthly online cocktail party known as Mixology Monday. This month’s MxMo is hosted by Filip of Adventures in Cocktails, and the theme he chose for is Niche Spirits.

“June’s theme will be “favorite niche spirit”, so any cocktail where the base ingredient is not bourbon, gin, rum, rye, tequila, vodka etc would qualify. So whether you choose Mezcal or Armagnac get creative and showcase your favorite niche spirit.”

Here at Wang Chung’s, we’re going to feature an original cocktail created by one of our patrons, Tanis. It’s called “Ginger ‘N Maryann” and features Domaine de Canton Liqueur.

“Domaine de Canton is a French ginger liqueur comprised of eau-de-vie and VSOP and XO Grande Champagne Cognacs, which themselves are produced using fresh Tahitian vanilla beans, Provencal honey and Tunisian ginseng. The ginger comes from fresh, baby Vietnamese ginger and adds a wonderful flavor profile to this unique distilled spirit.”

We love using fresh juices here, and what makes this cocktail unique is that we use locally fresh squeezed pineapple juice from Govinda’s. If you’ve never tried fresh squeezed pineapple juice, the first thing you’ll immediately notice is the thickness followed by the super fresh flavor. It’s a life-changing experience. Govinda squeezes gallons and gallons of fresh juices every morning, and do so without pasteurization and destroying the flavors and enzymes in the juices. The shelf-life is so much shorter, but the flavor and quality is unbeatable, and we all deserve to have the best tasting cocktails with the best ingredients!

Ginger ‘N Maryann

• 1.5 oz Domaine de Canton Liqueur
• 1.5 oz Cointreau
• 1 oz fresh lime juice
• top with fresh pineapple juice
• Serve over ice in Collins glass, garnish with lime wedge