The Blue Hawaii is one of the few tiki-era drinks that is actually from Hawaii. In 1957, Harry K. Yee — the longtime head bartender at the Hawaiian Village in Waikiki, the resort that later became the Hilton Hawaiian Village — was asked by a rep for the Dutch distiller Bols to build a drink around their blue curaçao. Yee's answer was this: rum and vodka lengthened with pineapple juice and sweet-and-sour, dyed lagoon-blue by the curaçao. It predates the Elvis movie of the same name, which arrived four years later and made the drink permanently famous.
Yee's Times obituary also credits him as among the first bartenders to garnish Waikiki drinks with paper umbrellas and Vanda orchids, so the whole visual language of the Hawaii cocktail runs through his bar. One point of order before we pour: the Blue Hawaii is not the Blue Hawaiian. The Hawaiian is a blended blue piña colada made with cream of coconut. The original Blue Hawaii is lighter, shaken, and served tall over ice — and it's the one worth making first.
At a glance
1 cocktail
5 minutes
Easy
Ingredients
For the cocktail
- 3/4 oz light rum
- 3/4 oz vodka
- 1/2 oz blue curaçao
- 3 oz pineapple juice
- 1 oz sweet-and-sour mix (or 1/2 oz fresh lemon juice + 1/2 oz simple syrup)
Garnish
- Pineapple wedge
- Paper umbrella — this is the drink that earned it
Equipment
- Cocktail shaker
- Tall hurricane or highball glass
To serve
- Over plenty of ice, ideally somewhere with a view of water
Method
- Fill the glass with ice. A tall glass packed with ice keeps the drink cold to the bottom and shows off the color — half the point of a Blue Hawaii is looking at it.
- Shake everything. Combine the rum, vodka, blue curaçao, pineapple juice, and sweet-and-sour in a shaker with ice. Shake hard for 10 to 15 seconds — pineapple juice needs a real shake to get that light froth on top.
- Strain and garnish. Strain into the ice-filled glass. Notch the pineapple wedge on the rim and plant the umbrella. No umbrella, no Blue Hawaii — house rule.
- Virgin version. Skip the rum and vodka, keep everything else, and add a splash of blue curaçao syrup (the zero-proof kind sold for shave ice and sodas) or simply more pineapple and a little extra lemon. The color is the experience for kids, and this delivers it.
Notes from a local cook
Blue curaçao is just orange liqueur in costume. It tastes like triple sec; the blue is pure theater. That means quality matters less here than in a margarita — a mid-shelf bottle is fine. What matters is fresh pineapple juice if you can get it, because it's most of the glass.
Keep the pour honest. The original is a relatively light drink — about an ounce and a half of spirit stretched over a tall glass of ice and juice. Resist the urge to double the booze; a heavy Blue Hawaii goes from beach-day refresher to syrupy headache fast.
Know your blues. Ordering tip for the islands: if the menu says "Blue Hawaiian" you're getting the creamy blended coconut version; "Blue Hawaii" should get you the shaken original. Plenty of bars use the names interchangeably, so if it matters to you, ask whether there's cream of coconut in it.
Where to try the real thing
The natural pilgrimage is the drink's birthplace: the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Waikiki, where Yee tended bar for more than three decades and where the resort's poolside bars still pour his drink within sight of the lagoon. Beyond that, you won't have to look hard — the Blue Hawaii turns up on beach-bar and luau menus all over the islands. Order it somewhere with a sunset and it makes considerably more sense than it does on paper. See our guides to Oahu dining and Hawaiian luaus.
