Piña Colada

The piña colada — Spanish for 'strained pineapple,' after the fresh-pressed, strained pineapple juice it's built on — was born in San Juan in the 1950s, though two landmarks still argue over the honor. The Caribe Hilton credits bartender Ramón 'Monchito' Marrero, who is said to have spent months around 1954 perfecting it at the hotel's Beachcomber Bar; the Barrachina restaurant in Old San Juan, marked by a bronze plaque, claims its own bartender Ramón Portas Mingot created it in 1963. What's certain is that the drink's signature smoothness was made possible by a local invention: in the early 1950s, University of Puerto Rico agriculture professor Ramón López Irizarry developed an easy method to extract coconut cream and blend it with cane sugar — the cream of coconut later sold as Coco López. The dispute hardly matters to Puerto Ricans, who in 1978 made the sweet, creamy drink their official national cocktail, an emblem of the island's rum and coconut.

Cold, thick, and frothy, it tastes like a tropical milkshake: lush coconut cream up front, bright pineapple tang behind it, and the warm rum humming underneath without dominating. It is sweet and creamy enough to feel like dessert, with a cooling slushy texture that vanishes too quickly under the Caribbean sun.

Blending with ice both chills and aerates the drink, while the fat in cream of coconut emulsifies with the rum and juice into a stable, velvety body that won't separate. The pineapple's acidity balances the heavy sweetness of the coconut, and the crushed ice gives the signature frozen, slushy texture.