The Fay Wray comes from Matthew Belanger, head bartender at Donna, the Williamsburg, Brooklyn cocktail bar. Both Punch and Difford's Guide independently credit him as the drink's creator and Donna as its home, though neither source pins an exact year — Belanger was already behind Donna's bar by the mid-2010s, and the bar closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, which brackets the drink's debut somewhere in that stretch. The name nods to Fay Wray, the actress who spent 1933's King Kong screaming in a giant ape's fist; none of the sources explain the specific reasoning behind pairing her name with a banana-and-rum tiki drink, so we're not going to guess at one. What every published version agrees on is the build: gold rum and Cognac for backbone, banana liqueur and a small pour of funky rhum agricole for depth, and fresh lime to keep it from turning into dessert.
Strong, but balanced and fruity — an unexpectedly fresh take on tiki.
PunchA Modern Brooklyn Tiki Drink
Donna opened in Williamsburg in the early 2010s and built a reputation on a tropical-leaning drink list that took tiki structure seriously without leaning on kitsch. The Fay Wray is one of its better-traveled exports — it shows up, with only minor variation, on Punch, Difford's Guide, and a handful of independent bartender blogs, which is about as close to a settled record as a 21st-century craft cocktail gets.
The actress connection is the one part of the story that's stated everywhere and explained nowhere. Fay Wray's most famous role — being carried up a fictional skyscraper by a giant ape — has an obvious tropical-adjacent, jungle-adjacent flavor to it, and a banana-forward rum drink makes for a tidy pun if that's what Belanger intended. No interview or write-up spells out the joke, so treat any reading of it as a guess, not a documented fact.
The Spec
This build follows the recipe as published by Punch and Difford's Guide: equal 3/4 oz pours of gold rum, Cognac, banana liqueur, and lime juice, rounded out with a quarter-ounce each of rhum agricole and demerara syrup. It's a short, stiff drink dressed up as a long one — the crushed ice reads tropical, but the pour underneath is a nightcap.
Two sugarcane spirits, two different jobs
The gold rum carries the drink's base sweetness and body. The rhum agricole, distilled from fresh cane juice rather than molasses, is a much smaller pour doing a much louder job — its grassy, vegetal funk is the thing that keeps this from tasting like a banana milkshake with a rum float.
Cognac instead of a second rum
Where an older tiki formula might reach for a second, darker rum to add depth, this one reaches for Cognac instead. It brings the same raisiny, baking-spice warmth without doubling down on rum's flavor profile, and it's the ingredient doing the most to make the drink read as a modern reinvention rather than a period piece.
Shaken, then dumped, not strained
The published technique shakes everything hard over ice, then pours the whole thing — ice and all — into the serving glass rather than straining it. It's a small thing, but it's the difference between a clean tropical drink and one that still has a little shaker-ice grit and citrus oil clinging to it when it lands.
Bottom Line
The Fay Wray earns its spot on Difford's tiki/tropical list honestly: real bar, named bartender, a build that's been reprinted enough times to trust. Whatever joke is buried in the name, the drink itself doesn't need it — banana, rum, and Cognac carry the thing on their own.