This is yet another Trader Vic original and its his most popular creation after the Mai Tai, and closely related to the Scorpion. The drink was first served in the 1940s at Trader Vic’s in Oakland, California.

The drink is very citrus forward and even with the addition of the favorite Tiki drink sweetener, orgeat, the Fog Cutter is definitely on the tart side, more like a sour than a tiki drink. It soon became immensely popular and thanks to this the original recipe has been tweaked in numerous ways like dialing down the lemon and changing brandy to pisco, as they do at Smuggler’s Cove, a tiki bar in San Francisco.

When making this classic, remember that Mr. Bergeron wrote in his Trader Vic’s Book of Food & Drink from 1946 “This is delicious but a triple threat. You can get pretty stinking on these, no fooling.” In the Trader Vic’s Pacific Island Cookbook from 1968 he explained that the drink should be served with straws (and two aspirin).

The Fog Cutter is said to be one of the very first tiki drinks that was served in a tiki mug. Ever since its inception in the 1940s the drink has been served in a signature mug adorned with a hula girl. In his Bartender’s Guide from 1947, Victor Bergeron even pictured the Fog Cutter hula girl mug along with specific glasses for all the different types of drinks in his book, 30 different glasses and mugs in total.

THE DESIGNER
The tiki mug used for this Fog Cutter is not Trader Vic’s. Instead it’s a mug, designed by Stella Bodey in the late 1950s, called the Island Chief. Bodey was very influential in the development of Tiki mugs, working for Spurlin Ceramics in Lynwood, California where she made most of her designs between 1957-1959.