Barefoot Bar & Grill's Barefoot Blockbuster

Customers call Barefoot Bar & Grill bartender Serena Mappa the human drink dictionary.

“After I make something once, I seem to remember it forever,” she explains. “I wasn’t good at math in school, but for some reason, I’m good with recipes. Once I make a cocktail, it sticks with me.”

And this dictionary also comes with pictures – the kind she keeps safely stored in that database she calls her brain.

“I’m not as good with people’s names, but I will remember what they drink,” she says. “If they were at the bar the week before or the year before and they sit down at the bar, I can remember their face, I can remember what they’re drinking – and I can usually call it out to them.”

Graduating from small college towns in Ohio and weathering the Windy City nightlife, Ohio native Mappa is glad to have come to the sun and fun of San Diego’s cocktail scene. Today, Mappa is serving up a breakfast special – served as part of the Barefoot’s “Sunday Fun Day” brunch menu – the Barefoot Blockbuster.

This tall drink of tropic flavor is a throwback to the Barefoot’s inaugural 1962 cocktail menu – but the drink itself is nothing to throw back. Because of its layers, it’s easy to forget that the Blockbuster is a potent cocktail. The drink itself serves up a bit of a wallop up front, to serve as a healthy reminder, though, Mappa says.

“It’s what you would expect from an island resort – a fun, fruity, tropical drink – and it encompasses all of that,” she says. “But it also has a nice little punch to it with the Meyer’s on top.”

Kitchen Proof: With more layers than a coral barrier reef, the Barefoot Blockbuster is a long slow glide into the warm and exuberant taste of the tropics — the rum, liqueur and schnapps coursing like warm currents in the bright lagoon of banana and pineapple.

HOW TO MAKE IT:

Pour the first five ingredients into a cocktail shaker with ice:

• ¾ Oz of Peach Schnapps

• ¾ Oz of Midori Melon Liqueur

• 1 Oz of Banana Puree,

• 3 Oz. of Pineapple Juice

• 1 Oz. Meyer’s Dark Rum

Shake, pour into a pint glass, top with rum, garnish with a pineapple and maraschino cherry, and count the waves that come ashore between now and sundown…