When it came time to develop a menu of creepy cocktails for Bamboo Club’s monthlong Halloween pop-up, the Tremble Club, beverage director and longtime horror fan Dustin Rodriguez knew just what to do. The Long Beach tiki bar — one of the best in Southern California — is riffing on classic cocktails with a few spooky tweaks, some featuring bony plastic skeleton arms or mini pumpkins peeking out from the rims of glasses, others with bat toothpicks or gummy-candy eyeballs.
One of Rodriguez’s most popular concoctions is the Fall of Romulus, paying homage to the most recent “Alien” film as well as tiki legend Donn Beach’s peachy, minty icon: the Missionary’s Downfall.
“The Missionary’s Downfall is a really fresh, bright cocktail — it’s classic tiki,” Rodriguez said. “It’s typically lower-ABV tiki though, which is kind of strange as most of them are pretty boozy. Here at Bamboo Club I can’t be doing those low-ABV drinks, so I beefed it up a little bit.”
He adds extra rum to the mix of fresh mint, peach liqueur and pineapple, then finishes with a gory float made from fresh raspberry, “which keeps it really nice and tart without getting it overly sweet,” Rodriguez said. While spruced up for the season with that red raspberry “blood” and its garnishes, the Fall of Romulus is bright and fruity — making it a perfect year-round cocktail without the addition of its Halloween adornments.
This is also a recipe that requires minimal appliances beyond the cocktail essentials: You can use a jigger to measure the liquids and honey, a metal cocktail shaker to make both the honey syrup and the drink, and any sort of blender to make the raspberry syrup, be it immersion, countertop or food processor.
