The best tiki bars and rum cocktails in London

You get a different angle on rum history at Merchant House on Bow Lane (there’s a sister venue too on Fleet Street), which claims to have the largest selection in London, some 300 bottles. Here, the cocktail list doubles as a colonial history lesson. Ale & Vice is an 18th-century-style Jamaican rum and beer flip, while the Empire Old Fashioned comes in six different expressions. It also includes a beer while you wait, which is thoughtful of them.

But you can overthink these things. Rum is the party fuel of choice at Trailer Happiness on Portobello Road, which is a bit like falling into an incredibly naff lounge bar where it’s always 1974 and the rum is really good. On a good night, Sly Augustin will whip you up a flaming Zombie or the house Hell in the Pacific (secret ingredient: pomegranate molasses). “Over the past three years or so rum has become really fashionable again,” says general manager Nick Cornes. “It’s partly because there are a lot more interesting rums out there. And partly because people are getting into the escapism and fantasy of it all. The Tiki experience came from people wanting to step into a room that transported them into another space and time.”

Tiki is the school of rum drinking dreamed up by another former bootlegger, Don the Beachcomber, and his rival Trader Vic Bergstrom in California in the 1930s and 1940s (the London branch of Trader Vic’s is under the Park Lane Hilton). It revolves around Chinese food, Polynesian iconography, Caribbean spirits and lashings of kitsch escapism/cultural appropriation, according to taste (the repurposing of the gods of indigenous peoples as novelty partyware isn’t particularly 2017). And yet no one doubts Don and Vic’s way with a cocktail — and when made properly, creations such as the Zombie, the Mai Tai, Three Dots and a Dash and (my favourite) the Cobra’s Fang are highly complicated symphonies of flavour. At Every Cloud in Hackney, Felix Cohen disavows the faff and outlandish garnishes but does do a Ten Rum Mai Tai. “Sun’s out, rum’s out,” he says. “The natural sweetness of aged rum and the dryness of lighter styles means it’s perfect to mix in with fruit for long summer numbers, plays well with bitters, absinthe and syrups in more Tiki style serves and holds up well for Sundowner Old Fashioneds too. Daiquiris will never go out of style but there’s some more complex sunshine-appropriate drinks around; my favourites are the Jungle Bird and Old Cuban for a more sophisticated (and boozy) take on the Mojito.”

He’s not the only bartender to cite the Jungle Bird as a go-to summer serve — a previously unloved rum, Campari and pineapple cocktail, first invented in Kuala Lumpur in 1978 and latterly unearth by the Tiki historian Jeff “Beachbum” Berry. “The Jungle Bird has been coming up on so many menus — I’ve been really pleasantly surprised about that as it’s the first drink I learned how to make and it hasn’t had a lot of love down the years,” says Connor Bloomfield, of the bar Discount Suit Company in the City.

You get a sense of rum as a modern spirit at Tienda Roosteria, the taco joint at the Curtain in Shoreditch where it jostles with piscos and mezcals on a Latin-forward list. The Bump and Rind is the sort of drink you could sup all summer: golden rum, apricot brandy, melon vinegar and citrus.

“We’re at a stage where cocktails are fun, and rules are constantly being bent,” says beverage director Jenny Willing. “Our Agava Lava is a riff on a piña colada, a classic rum cocktail. Tapatio Blanco tequila lends the same clean vegetal notes as some white rums while Del Maguey Vida Mezcal adds the same toasted spice you find in aged rums. A splash of Plantation OFTD Overproof Rum set alight in a lime husk keeps the garnish as fun as you can find on any piña colada.” That’s the other thing rum is good for — setting things on fire.