Devour the Desert
A Palm Springs Food & Culture Journal
The Local Flavors |Palm Springs Tiki, Part Two: The Man Who Invented Donn Beach aka “Don The Beachcomber”
Donn Beach liked to tell a good story.
This was fortunate, because he had a lot of them.
One of his favorites concerned a choice his father supposedly offered him: money for college, or money to travel around the world. Donn chose the world, naturally, and embarked on what became an unusually long trip. He wandered through the Caribbean and elsewhere, picking up stories, recipes, bits of folklore and, apparently, whatever else he thought might come in handy later.
It is a wonderful story.
It is also a Donn Beach story, which means we should probably enjoy it without insisting too strongly on the paperwork. The problem with Donn's biography is that Donn himself was one of its principal authors.
The Local Flavors | Palm Springs Tiki, Part One: Why the Desert Needed an Ocean
There is something slightly unhinged about ordering a tropical drink garnished with a paper umbrella while standing in a place that receives fewer than five inches of rain a year.
Palm Springs has never been particularly bothered by this contradiction.
For roughly three-quarters of a century, this desert city has cultivated one of America's more improbable fantasies: a Polynesian island dropped into the middle of the desert.
Bamboo. Blowfish lamps. Rum drinks with names that sound like warnings. Flaming torches beside mid-century glass and steel.
It shouldn't work.
It does. But only if you’re able to suspend disbelief.