Is This The Original Mai Tai Recipe?

Many claim that Don the Beachcomber was the true originator of the Mai Tai. But the stories don't match up.

Don's widow, Phoebe Beach, claims Don created the drink in 1933 but there is no record of that on any menu and the Mai Tai recipe she and Arnold Bitner share is nothing like the Trader Vic's Mai Tai. There is a possibility that Don, who had spent time in Tahiti, had picked up the term Maita'i roa a'e and created his own drink with the same name before Trader Vic's.

If that were to be true, one would assume he would have named the drink Maita'i roa a'e or Maita'i and not the butchered spelling of Mai Tai. Seems extremely unlikely that both Don and Vic would end up misspelling the saying on their own and in an identical way.

That leaves us with the QB Cooler origin story, which I also doubt, but that will be left to another day and another video.