Tropical Bar Book: Drinks & Stories

by Charles Schumann

Book Overview

Divided into chapters on daiquiris, rum drinks, tequila and mescal drinks, fruit punches, and non-alcoholic drinks, the recipes in this book include swimming pool coladas, West Indian punch and frozen matadors, as well as more common concoctions.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1556700652
• ISBN13: 9781556700651
• Release Date: January 1989
• Publisher: Stewart, Tabori, & Chang
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 1.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 14.2" x 11.6"

Customer Reviews

Bar book for the literate

The Tropical Bar Book contains more than 150 tropical mixed drink recipes and over a dozen stories about drinking by such authors as Graham Greene, Malcolm Lowry, Jane Bowles and Ernst Hemingway. The book is also filled with historical anecdotes about rum, the Prohibition Era, and the European conquest of the Caribbean Islands, and plenty of useful advice about how to stock a bar and mix the perfect daiquiri. The color illustrations by Gunter Mattei add to the aesthetic appeal of this very interesting and unusual bar book. My only criticism of this fine book is that the recipes are really intended for serious bartenders, serious entertainers and those in need of serious sedatives. Some of the recipes make very large quantities, such as the two recipes for Fish House Punch which yield nearly 10 liters. Even the single drink recipes turn out very potent drinks -- some of the daiquiri recipes call for a full 3 ounces of rum and cointreau. I find myself using the recipes as guides and cutting the liquors with larger proportions of fruit juice, water or syrups. Infrequent drinkers with small builds will not be able to handle more than about half a cocktail made from these recipes. The recipes are also quite elaborate, often calling for several different liquors. Glancing at the recipes on pages 90-91, of the six recipes, four call for 3 to 4 liquors and a fifth calls for five different liquors. Overall, this book is a very enjoyable reading experience. It is as much a coffee table book or literary anthology as it is a book of cocktail recipes.

A fun, very entertaining book

This is a fun book. I read it while living in Puerto Rico so I could run out and get the all ingredients and mix up any drinks immediately. My friends and I came to love this book. We used it extensively (especially on Friday nights). I also enjoyed the snippets of fiction and art work woven through the book that tie it all the drink recipes together. It's difficult to make a bar book entertaining to read but the author succeeds 100%.

As it says... and more !

Stories of writers from all over the world in their "drinking" sprees, detailling with an excellent narrative and wonderful drawings (by Günter Mattei) the making of drinks and what these writers drank. As we say in French, it is the "petite histoire" behind their stories (of the writers and the drinks).