Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Coco Maya’s Coco Bongo Highball: Going coastal Yucatan all the way through Puerto Rico
The perfect “first drink of the night” — or day
Coco Bongo Highball
Rob McShea
The last time I met with Rob McShea, he was showing me how to smoke a cocktail using a cloche at Louisiana Purchase. Now I’m visiting him at the newly opened Coco Maya in Little Italy for a more tropically minded lesson. “The concept here is Latin-Caribbean,” he says. “And we’re going to go coastal Yucatan all the way through Puerto Rico, and some of the Latin-Caribbean islands,” he adds, speaking over the buzz of the crowded bar. “That’s the chef’s menu, and I formulated a [cocktail] menu along with that.”
The menu “is broken into three sections; the Direct menu is going to be all of our spirit-forward drinks; the Cane cocktails are your tropical, fun stuff… and then we go into the Agave section.” Once there, McShea points his finger at the Coco Bongo Highball, which he considers the perfect “first drink of the night” — or day — cocktail. “It’s coconut-infused tequila, a little bit of Jamaican rum, and CBD-infused Recess on top,” he explains.
Keeping with the Latin-Caribbean theme, it’s named after a club in Cancun. “I just wanted to have lots of coconut,” he says. “Coconut usually goes sweet, so I used a spirit called Doctor Bird. It’s a Jamaican rum, it’s very funky so it balances everything out, so it’s not this ‘suntan lotion’ kind of drink.” This particular rum is easy to remember because it shares its name with the national bird of Jamaica. “If you drink it by itself, you’ll get this really wicked, weird, funky taste to it. It’s definitely different, because most people think rum, and they’re like, ‘Oh, college, Captain Morgan,’ you know? But it’s really nice, and it really lends itself to cocktails like this, where, without it, it’d be really sweet.”
To give the highball a bit of fizz, he opts for something a little more special than soda water. “This company called Recess, they make canned CBD cocktails. A word they use is ‘adaptogens,’ which makes you relax… but it’s not THC, so it doesn’t get you high. But it will make you feel nice,” he explains. “You won’t, like, go out and eat a pizza or anything after… but I wouldn’t judge you if you did.”
Humor aside, he continues, “I just wanted to add a new dimension to the cocktail, and CBD is kind of a fun thing to add to it. There’s also a very subtle coconut flavor to their product, so it’s not in your face.” McShea hopes to dissociate from the public’s old days of drinking Malibu rum. “This is a more adult way to enjoy a nice, coconut-y, fantastic drink.”
Coco Maya
- Coco Maya’s
- Coco Bongo Highball
- 1 oz coconut infused tequila
- 1 oz Jamaican Rum
- .75 oz coconut syrup
- .75 oz fresh lime juice
- Recess Coconut CBD
- Add all ingredients (except Recess) to mixing tin with ice. Shake and strain over fresh ice in a Collins glass. Top with Recess. Garnish with dehydrated lime wheel and banana leaf.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Coco Maya’s Coco Bongo Highball: Going coastal Yucatan all the way through Puerto Rico
The perfect “first drink of the night” — or day
Coco Maya’s Coco Bongo Highball: Going coastal Yucatan all the way through Puerto Rico
The perfect “first drink of the night” — or day
Coco Bongo Highball
Rob McShea
The last time I met with Rob McShea, he was showing me how to smoke a cocktail using a cloche at Louisiana Purchase. Now I’m visiting him at the newly opened Coco Maya in Little Italy for a more tropically minded lesson. “The concept here is Latin-Caribbean,” he says. “And we’re going to go coastal Yucatan all the way through Puerto Rico, and some of the Latin-Caribbean islands,” he adds, speaking over the buzz of the crowded bar. “That’s the chef’s menu, and I formulated a [cocktail] menu along with that.”
The menu “is broken into three sections; the Direct menu is going to be all of our spirit-forward drinks; the Cane cocktails are your tropical, fun stuff… and then we go into the Agave section.” Once there, McShea points his finger at the Coco Bongo Highball, which he considers the perfect “first drink of the night” — or day — cocktail. “It’s coconut-infused tequila, a little bit of Jamaican rum, and CBD-infused Recess on top,” he explains.
Keeping with the Latin-Caribbean theme, it’s named after a club in Cancun. “I just wanted to have lots of coconut,” he says. “Coconut usually goes sweet, so I used a spirit called Doctor Bird. It’s a Jamaican rum, it’s very funky so it balances everything out, so it’s not this ‘suntan lotion’ kind of drink.” This particular rum is easy to remember because it shares its name with the national bird of Jamaica. “If you drink it by itself, you’ll get this really wicked, weird, funky taste to it. It’s definitely different, because most people think rum, and they’re like, ‘Oh, college, Captain Morgan,’ you know? But it’s really nice, and it really lends itself to cocktails like this, where, without it, it’d be really sweet.”
To give the highball a bit of fizz, he opts for something a little more special than soda water. “This company called Recess, they make canned CBD cocktails. A word they use is ‘adaptogens,’ which makes you relax… but it’s not THC, so it doesn’t get you high. But it will make you feel nice,” he explains. “You won’t, like, go out and eat a pizza or anything after… but I wouldn’t judge you if you did.”
Humor aside, he continues, “I just wanted to add a new dimension to the cocktail, and CBD is kind of a fun thing to add to it. There’s also a very subtle coconut flavor to their product, so it’s not in your face.” McShea hopes to dissociate from the public’s old days of drinking Malibu rum. “This is a more adult way to enjoy a nice, coconut-y, fantastic drink.”
Coco Maya
- Coco Maya’s
- Coco Bongo Highball
- 1 oz coconut infused tequila
- 1 oz Jamaican Rum
- .75 oz coconut syrup
- .75 oz fresh lime juice
- Recess Coconut CBD
- Add all ingredients (except Recess) to mixing tin with ice. Shake and strain over fresh ice in a Collins glass. Top with Recess. Garnish with dehydrated lime wheel and banana leaf.