Jeff Berry (mixologist)

[3] Berry fell in love with tiki culture as a child in 1968, when his parents took him to a Chinese restaurant in the San Fernando Valley in the Los Angeles area.

He later explained, "It was this weird, mysterious adult thing that was a part of the whole exotic fantasy world.... drinks would come with all kinds of elaborate garnishes.

"[2] By the 1970s the tiki craze, which had been launched by Donn Beach and Victor Bergeron in the 1930s, was fading; formerly popular with celebrities and trend-setters, tiki-themed restaurants forty years later were regarded as "tacky".

The book has been called "pivotal" for popularizing the tiki theme as well as giving bartenders the recipes they needed to attract a new generation of customers.

[10][11] Two years later Berry wrote the chapter on tropical drinks, called "Mixologists and Concoctions", in Sven Kirsten's influential The Book of Tiki.

[12] His fourth book, Beachbum Berry's Sippin' Safari (2007), includes what he believes to be Beach's original recipe for the Zombie, which had never been written down except in code.

[14][15] M. Carrie Allan of The Washington Post described Berry's work in researching and reconstructing lost recipes as that of a "cocktail archeologist.

"[5] Wayne Curtis, historian and author of And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails, dubbed him "the Indiana Jones of tiki drinks.

"[1] Steven Kurutz of The New York Times said, "Mr. Berry’s lasting contribution may be in salvaging tropical drinks from decades of bad bartending.