Three Dots and a Dash

You find it by following the tiki torches down an alley between Hubbard and Illinois — there’s no sign, only neon blue light and the logic of the crowd ahead of you. Inside, salvaged idols from the original Trader Vic’s preside over a bamboo-and-white-onyx bar, and skull-shaped punch bowls roll out of the kitchen on a schedule. The bar is named for the Don the Beachcomber drink from the 1940s — rum, honey, allspice, Angostura — and McGee’s version is both faithful and improved.

McGee left The Whistler to build this with Lettuce Entertain You, and the pedigree shows in how seriously the rum program is organized. Six thousand drinks a week in the first year was not an accident; it was the result of a tiki concept executed without the irony that usually undermines the genre. The Zombie is limited to two per customer, as the original recipe demands. Order one and understand why.