Bergeron, Victor “Trader Vic” (1902–1984), was arguably the most famous—and inarguably the most financially successful—celebrity mixologist of the mid-twentieth century. From the 1940s through the 1970s Bergeron made millions as a restaurateur, recipe book author, and seller of bottled tropical drink mixes. After Donn Beach, Bergeron was the second great pioneer of post-Prohibition “tiki” drinks—and the creator of that category’s best-known drink, the Mai Tai (Beach’s widow Phoebe disputes this claim). See tiki and Mai Tai.
Bergeron was born on December 10, 1902, in San Francisco, to a French mother and a French Canadian father. A sickly child, he lost a leg and a kidney to tuberculosis before dropping out of high school. After a series of short-lived jobs selling everything from paint to tires, in 1934 he finally found success as proprietor, bartender, and chef of an Oakland barbecue shack called Hinky Dink’s. A 1937 visit to Don the Beachcomber’s, Donn Beach’s popular South Seas–themed Hollywood nightspot, inspired Bergeron to jump on the tiki bandwagon, and in 1938 he turned Hinky Dink’s into Trader Vic’s. Unlike Beach’s other imitators, who stole his secret bespoke recipes by poaching his bartenders, Bergeron drew on his own culinary skills to create original tiki drinks, most famously the Fog Cutter, Scorpion, and Mai Tai. See Fog Cutter.
By the time Bergeron died in 1984, he’d opened more than twenty Trader Vic’s restaurants across North America, Europe, and Japan. The chain has survived into the twenty-first century, but unfortunately none of his eight lively, insightful books are still in print (his Bartender’s Guide remains a classic of its kind).
See also Beach, Donn.
Bergeron, Victor J. Frankly Speaking: Trader Vic’s Own Story. New York: Doubleday, 1973.
By: Jeff Berry