Celebrate the Piña Colada’s 70th Anniversary With 4 Recipes With a Twist

On a recent relentlessly humid summer evening, I ducked into the Commodore II on the Lower East Side of Manhattan to grab what I’d been told was one of the best piña coladas in all of New York City. Named after the bar’s original location in Williamsburg, the Commodore is a made-to-order piña colada with an amaretto float that promises respite from whatever problems or inclement weather awaits outside the watering hole’s wood-paneled doors. We’re not in sunny Puerto Rico, where many claim the drink originated. We’re in the city that stays up all night and wants a frozen cocktail with no artificial flavors and unique spins on originals that make its residents feel special, like we’re reinventing classics for the first time.

Summertime heat, waves crashing on a beach, and the smell of sunscreen all come flooding to your senses when you get that first taste of the icy, creamy coconut cocktail. This year marks 70 years since the beverage’s invention, though the origin story remains contentious. Legend says that Puerto Rican pirate Roberto Cofresí was the first to create the rum-and-coconut drink, sharing it with his crew to inspire morale. More widespread is that it was first mixed at the Caribe Hilton Hotel. They claim that in 1954, bartender Ramón “Monchito” Marrero decided to experiment with the flavors of pineapple juice, coconut cream, and rum until he perfected a recipe for what we now know as the piña colada. Another bartender at the Caribe Hilton, Ricardo Garcia, claims he created the cocktail two years earlier. And just down the road in Old San Juan, the Barrachina Restaurant also claims to have been the birthplace of the piña colada, crediting bartender Don Ramon Portas Mingot for concocting the frozen drink.

The Rebirth of the Piña Colada

However the drink began, it’s been a mainstay in cocktail culture ever since. All the way up on the East Coast, the Commodore still relies on the old-fashioned technique of blending one batch of piña colada at a time. Sure, it may take a minute for a frosty glass to appear in front of you, but that’s because there’s no crank-lever slushy machines around. Unsurprisingly, whatever bar you’re steered to with a renowned piña colada probably wouldn’t have one. The incessantly churning frozen-drink machines actually destroy the harmony of the flavors in a piña colada, often turning the sweet notes syrupy and souring the creamy elements.

Hanging out in Florida and Long Island, Commodore II co-owners Taylor Dow and Chris Young made core bonding memories while sipping piña coladas. And they knew they had to make their own mark on the classic drink when they decided to open their bar. Their signature piña colada, “which the rest of the menu was essentially built around,” says Dow, checks all the boxes. Made to order, with their own homemade coconut cream and an amaretto float that’s meant to “smooth out the sweetness in the drink,” Young says. “We often see people sit up at the bar all night ordering one after the other.”

Further south in New Orleans, the piña colada is a go-to for locals, but the drinks are far from formulaic. The Frenchmen Hotel boasts a tiki bar that opened a year and a half ago—the appropriately named Tiki Tock. Beverage director Patrick Williams looked to his own favorite flavors to create the Tally Me Banana, the bar’s rendition of a piña colada. “It was the last recipe I built for Tiki Tock, but it’s been our number-one best seller since we opened,” Williams says. He had to include his effusive love of a cognac-based banana liqueur, the Giffard Banane du Bresil, into the classic cocktail. “Banana has a great affinity for pineapple and coconut. It really enhances those flavors.”

Deeper in the French Quarter is Manolito’s, a bar that celebrates the intersection of Cuba and New Orleans history. The piña colada at Manolito’s is also made to order. Although they don’t mess with the golden ratio of ingredients for their version, they do put their own spin on the drink. Bar owner Konrad Kantor tells Esquire that they make their own signature coconut cream. “It’s stupid easy to make it. We make a simple syrup with canned Thai coconut milk,” Kantor says. The recipe also uses whole chunks of pineapple rather than juice. Kantor feels that the subtle texture enhances the drink. He keeps the recipes as simple and fresh as possible to avoid any chemical or artificial flavors. Two remixes of the piña colada on the menu are the Lime in the Coconut, which adds lime rather than pineapple to the mixture, and the Miami Vice, which layers a strawberry daiquiri and the piña colada together into one delightful sip.

Don’t listen to the naysayers. The piña colada isn’t just for vacations or tropical climates. It’s a refreshing treat that you deserve at any time. At L’Avenue at Saks, a French haute cuisine restaurant with locations in midtown Manhattan and Paris, you can find a unique rendition of the piña colada on the menu between the escargots and the dover sole. The Tradewinds, created by bartender Meg Drinkovich, added a bit of her Hawaiian background to the menu. But what makes this drink worthy of fine dining? Thomas Máthé, head bartender, doesn’t use Coco Lopez, the most common coconut cream on the market. “I make a vanilla coco, using unsweetened coconut cream with vanilla syrup added to control the sweetness,” Máthé tells Esquire. He used his past as a barista to create the passion-fruit whipped cream that sits atop the Tradewinds. And there’s a splash of Super Juice of lime that cuts the sweetness with acidity. The flavors create a balance of richness, sugar, and tang in even layers that makes it hard to put down.

Mix It Up

So what are you waiting for? Stop counting down the days until your next vacation to allow yourself to have a piña colada. Life is short. Make it sweet by whipping up one of these creative and delicious renditions.

Tally Me Banana

Kat Kimball

“The star of the Tally Me Banana is the Giffard Banane du Brésil, which is a premium cognac-based banana liqueur and cannot be substituted,” says Patrick Williams.

(By Patrick Williams, Tiki Tock)

Ingredients:

2 oz Real Coco Cream

½ oz lime juice

1 oz pineapple juice

½ oz Rhum JM Blanc

¾ oz Giffard Banane du Brésil

1 oz Ak Zanj dark rum (or Cruzan Aged Dark or Myers’s)

Directions:

Start with 2 oz Real (brand) Coconut Cream. Add ½ oz lime juice and 1 oz pineapple juice. The star of the show is the Giffard Banane du Brésil, which is a premium cognac-based banana liqueur and cannot be substituted. Use ¾ oz. The rhum agricole adds a vegetal, dry, and green-tasting element to the rich base of the tropical drink. It can be substituted for a dry white rum, but avoid if possible. We chose Ak Zanj Dark Haitian rum as the base rum for its baking-chocolate-and-spice notes, but you could substitute a different dark rum. This drink is best flash-blended in a milkshake blender with nugget ice, but if you don’t have those, you could add 1.5 cups of regular ice to a traditional blender. Garnish with some fresh micro-planed nutmeg and an edible flower.

Tradewinds

a glass of beer on a ledge overlooking a city

L'Avenue at Saks

Thomas Máthé used his past as a barista to create the passion-fruit whipped cream that sits atop the Tradewinds. The flavors create a balance of richness, sugar, and tang in even layers that makes it hard to put down.

(By Meg Drinkovich/Thomas Máthé, L'Avenue at Saks)

Ingredients:

½ oz fresh squeezed lime juice

¾ oz pineapple juice (we use Dole brand)

1 oz unsweetened coconut cream (we use Aroy-D brand)

1 oz vanilla syrup

2 oz San Zanj Haitian Rum Clairin

Directions:

For vanilla syrup: Blend together a simple syrup that is 1:1 sugar to water by weight. Combine in a blender until all of the sugar is dissolved. Add the entirety of 1 vanilla bean sliced in half to 1 liter of simple syrup, scraping the seeds out and into the syrup to ensure maximum surface contact. Strain out the mesocarp after 48 hours, retaining as many seeds in the syrup as possible.

For passion-fruit whipped cream: Chinola brand passion-fruit liqueur is the closest on the market to what we make. It’s best to use an iSi whipped-cream dispenser to produce this, which is made of equal parts passion-fruit liqueur and heavy whipping cream by volume, but more traditional whipped-cream techniques work as well.

Build all ingredients in a shaker tin; shake until the tin frosts over. Double-strain into a stemless water glass. Fill with ice. Top with passion-fruit whipped cream and finish with toasted coconut flakes.

Ode to the Commodore

a vase with a straw and a candle on a table

Lucas Walters

Made to order, with their own homemade coconut cream and an amaretto float that’s meant to “smooth out the sweetness in the drink,” owner Chris Young says.

(Inspired by the Commodore)

2 oz rum

1 oz coconut cream

½ oz amaretto

6 oz fresh pineapple juice

½ cup crushed ice

1 pineapple chunk and a maraschino cherry

Directions:

In a blender, blend together the fresh pineapple juice, cream of coconut, rum, and 1 cup of ice cubes. You want a thick but pourable consistency, slightly thicker than a milkshake. Pour into a glass. Using the back of a spoon, carefully pour on top ½ oz amaretto. Garnish with a pineapple chunk and a cherry. Serve immediately.