Episode #2453 – South Sea Satellite
China Gourmet was a really kitschy place in West Orange NJ. They were there for many years. About 10 years ago I decided to go after waiting too long to go with someone who enjoyed my enthusiasm. It had been a long day, I was in traffic for over 3 hours to visit a potential client and it was too late to cook and too hot to eat at home (my house did not have central air conditioning). So, I decided to treat myself to what I thought would be a pleasant dinner. It did not turn out that way. The music on the radio was 1980s music, same old stuff you have been hearing from the past 30 years you hear in every supermarket. Not even the decent stuff, just the same old Madonna and Michael Jackson. Three songs, 3 minutes of commercials, 3 more songs I dreaded to hear a 10,000th time, etc. Meanwhile the man taking phone orders was yelling at someone on the phone in Chinese, except every other word was a vulgar curse word in English. He would then hang up, go to the kitchen to yell at the cook and the waitress came over to place my drink order. I knew this was not going to be good given his mood since he was mixing the drinks too. Here was my blog entry from my old WordPress blog in 2014:
The waitress, friendly enough, delivered 3 menus. One in English and Chinese, one smaller one, all in Chinese, and a wine list. I was happy to see on the main menu a full page dedicated to Tiki Drinks, even if half of it was a large illustration. It lead me to believe we were in for some serious authentic tiki drinks. The drink I ordered seemed like it had quite a punch, but maybe that is because the drink was not properly mixed. It certainly did not contain the ingredients it claimed to on the menu. I’ve seen this before, the guy running the cash register is also making drinks between tasks. They must think that you just mix any rum in with fruit juice and it will fly. If the the customer orders a different drink, just add less juice, a splash of soda, maybe light rum instead of dark rum. But there is no consistency and they really all taste the same. Not the only thing misspelled on the menu (including “unions”), the “Mai Thai” they claimed to be the best. However, I wanted something different I normally would not mix at home. So I got something called the Satellite which listed fresh lime juice, rum brandy (whatever that is, unless they forgot to put a comma after rum and brandy), coconut milk and perhaps something else, I can’t remember. It tasted like light rum with Rose’s lime juice, and when I brought some up from the straw it looked almost completely clear, just slightly cloudy. No taste of coconut, certainly no fresh lime juice as there was no pulp, and of course the drink was 75% ice.
This seems like a really interesting cocktail, and I did have it at Chan’s Dragon Inn some years later, but I never got the full experience of it. Here is the recipe as close as I can come, if you know of this drink or have seen it anywhere else, please let me know.
SOUTH SEA SATELLITE
- 1/2 ounce fresh lemon juice
- 1/2 ounce fresh lime juice
- 1.5 ounces light rum Rum
- 1/2 ounce falernum
- 1 ounce coconut cream
- Garnish with umbrella & cocktail cherry.
