The Lioness doesn't taste like tiki so much as sneak into the genre sideways — cognac and peach liqueur where you'd expect rum and orgeat. It's credited to José "Popo" Galsini, a real bartender who jumped ship from a Japanese liner in 1928 and spent roughly six decades working Southern California bars, best known for the 1967 competition-winning Saturn. By 1964 he was pouring at the Palms In The Jungle, a tiki-themed restaurant built into Dutton's Jungle Gardens zoo in Anaheim, and the Lioness dates from that stretch of his career. The recipe survived because Jeff "Beachbum" Berry tracked it down and published it in Total Tiki; Difford's Guide credits that book directly.
A tiki drink that forgets to smell like tiki — brandy and stone fruit standing in for rum and syrup.
A Real Bartender, A Half-Lost Bar
Galsini isn't a Difford's invention: his life is independently documented — a Daily Beast profile traces his career from the Palm Springs Tennis Club through Kelbo's, the Outrigger, and finally the Saloon in Laguna Beach, where he worked until his death in 1982, and Beachbum Berry rediscovered his glassware and recipes in the 1990s. The Palms In The Jungle itself also turns up independently in tiki-history archives — a mid-century Anaheim restaurant literally built around a jungle attraction, where Ray Buhen of Tiki-Ti fame also tended bar.
What's thinner is the Lioness specifically: the proportions on record trace to a single chain — Galsini to Berry's Total Tiki to Difford's Guide's write-up — and we didn't find a second, independent recipe source republishing it. Treat the man and the bar as documented history, and the exact pour as one well-sourced reconstruction rather than a recipe confirmed by multiple period sources.
The Spec
This build follows the Total Tiki/Difford's proportions as published: a cognac base, equal parts falernum and peach liqueur for spice and stone fruit, and fresh lime to keep the whole thing from reading as dessert.
Cognac, not rum
Swapping the tiki genre's default base for brandy is the whole trick here — it reads closer to an aperitivo sour than a rum punch, which is exactly why Difford's files it under both categories. Any solid VS or VSOP cognac works; there's no call for anything rare.
What the peach liqueur is doing
Crème de pêche brings stone-fruit sweetness that falernum's clove-and-lime spice can lean against, so the drink lands closer to a brandied peach tart than a straight sour. Skimp on the lime and it tips sweet fast — the citrus is doing real balancing work, not just garnish duty.
Bottom Line
The Lioness rewards a real, documented bartender's instinct for cross-genre drinks — cognac's warmth, peach's roundness, falernum's spice, and just enough lime to keep it honest. It's a quieter, more grown-up glass than most of the tiki canon, and worth pouring on that strength alone.