Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale.

Jim Backus gave us so much. The wardrobe. The voice. The go-ahead to still sleep with a teddy bear when you’re married. It’s about time someone paid him back. Frankie’s Tiki Room offers the Thurston Howl as its ode to the tycoon of Gilligan’s Island — although there’s no Lovie chaser that we know of.

In grand Frankie’s tradition, the Howl combines eight different ingredients to fill the glowering, dice-eyed tiki mug. Appleton Special rum is mixed with Tanqueray Rangpur gin, brandy, ginger syrup, cinnamon syrup, papaya nectar, pineapple juice and grapefruit juice in a deft display of Polynesian mixology wizardry.

“This one is kind of like my baby. I love this drink. I tried to have fun with the name, because it’s the Thurston Howl and you think, ‘Well OK, an old man and his gin,’ ” Frankie’s manu maven Allison Hartling said. “So I had to throw gin in there — and actually gin was popular in a lot of drinks in the ’40s and ’50s anyway. Then bringing in all the other syrups and trying to doing something unique and different that stood out from the rest of the drinks as well, so they aren’t boring rum-pineapple.”

Those spice undertones with the cinnamon and ginger are subtle, but they’re a definite presence. You don’t usually think of tropical cocktails as spicy, but it adds a nice wrinkle. It’s jaunty enough that it makes us want to dress like some distant Kennedy relative from the ’40s and go on a three-hour tour with a few bags stuffed full of unmarked bills and a wary indulgence of the egghead on the boat who swears he’s made some remarkable breakthroughs in the field of coconut-generated electricity.

By Jason Scavone

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