Stock up on coconut for Miss B’s Caribe Welcome

Ask for the Caribe Welcome at Miss B’s Coconut Club and the bartender will whip and dump a creamy white concoction into a young shaved coconut with Miss B’s logo burnt into the glistening white meat of the vessel.

“We leave some of the meat in the coconut but take the top shell off,” explains Miss B’s bar manager Rob McShea. “For whatever reason, our clientele likes to play with the meat. It’s very labor intensive to pull all that meat out, so we figured we’d keep it simple and give people what they want. It’s starchy and not very sweet, but people like it.”

This funny feast of coconut meat is really a second act, McShea adds. The main attraction to the Caribe Welcome is what the edible vessel contains.

“The first thing you’ll get is obviously two different kinds of coconut flavor,” he says, explaining the Caribe Welcome. “The apricot brandy balances out with the lime juice for a tart flavor. It also balances out all the flavor-forward aspects of the coconut in general. Usually when you drink something coconut, it’s overwhelmingly coconut — but this particular drink keeps a nice balance to it.”

McShea says the Caribe Welcome in form and content is purely Caribbean and has as much to do with tiki culture as coconuts have to do with the hollow plastic Easter Island moai heads filled with a thousand juices, a jungle of straws and umbrellas, and a day-after headache-in-waiting.

“We wanted to stay true to the recipe because we are a Caribbean-influenced bar,” he says. “We didn’t want to go the grass-skirt route of the Polynesian. This recipe is an example of what drink-making in the Caribbean is all about — spirit plus lime juice plus sugar. That’s what we’re about here.”

Miss B’s Caribe Welcome

• 1 1/2 oz. white rum
• 3/4 oz. apricot brandy
• 2 oz. fresh coconut water
• 1 oz. coconut cream
• 1/2 oz. fresh lime juice
• 1 young coconut

Pour wet ingredients into ice-filled cocktail tin, quickly shake, and pour (“whip and dump”) into coconut, add fresh ice, and garnish with orchid.