Brandon Reynolds Ristaino, previously with Del Monte Speakeasy in Venice Beach, and wife Misty Orman-Ristaino first boosted Santa Barbara’s cocktail scene with The Good Lion. The couple added Test Pilot tiki bar to the Funk Zone to start September, drawing inspiration from tiki titan Don the Beachcomber, who first started mixing drinks in Hollywood in the ’30s.

The space houses a curved copper bar under palapa-style lanterns, a cushioned lounge with reclaimed wood walls, ship’s steering wheels, and tiki idol art. The cocktail menu was a good mix of classics and modern originals. I gravitated towards the signature Test Pilot Cocktail ($10), a play on Donn Beach’s original test pilot cocktail featuring a house rum blend, clove, citrus, bitters, and absinthe foam riding on a lime raft under a cocktail umbrella. The original recipe called for a light Puerto Rican rum and dark Jamaican rum. Brandon Reynolds Ristaino opted for “mellow, nice-bodied, slightly funky” Appleton Reserve Blend; Cana Brava, a lightly aged Cuban-style rum “with dry grassy and vegetal notes” distilled in Panama; and his favorite Demerara overproof rum, the Hamilton 151, for a “kick in the pants.”

Brandon Reynolds Ristaino explained drink’s genesis, saying, “Our inspiration for the cocktail was that of our entire bar program, which was to take all that is great from the Golden Era of tiki cocktails and modify the recipe(s) for today’s drier palate. In tasting the the Test Pilot in it’s original 1941 form, we thought it was not quite right due to a change in palate between the drinkers of the ’40s and the drinkers of today, so we modified the recipe. In running through countless versions and modifications of the original, we decided that the drink was tasting flat, a bit sweet, and unbalanced. We must have tasted the drink hundred’s of times before our head bartender, Jon Jarrett, came up with the brilliant idea of removing the Pernod from the recipe and in its place, adding an absinthe foam. This led us to our final version that we are quite proud of that is a bracingly dry but balanced rum punch base with a light, airy, and candy-like absinthe foam in a hollowed out lime husk as a garnish. This allows our guests to alter the sweetness of the drink according to their own palate.”