Don’t let the kitschy glasses with their totem pole faces fool you. While Test Pilot is indeed tiki-inspired, this new Funk Zone hotspot is not mired in the Polynesian motif of yesteryear. “We didn’t want it to be a classics bar,” said Brandon Ristaino, who owns this establishment as well as The Good Lion on State Street with his wife, Misty. “We wanted to modernize the drinks, clean them up, dry them out. In some, we switched out the rum.”
Take the bar’s titular cocktail. It’s based on the original served by Don the Beachcomber — who opened the first tiki bar ever in Hollywood back in 1933 — but the Ristainos’ version is garnished by a lime peel husk that contains a licorice-sweet absinthe foam dusted with clove. “You can add as much or as little as you’d like to the drink,” Brandon explained. “It adds body, texture, sweetness to the drink. I like my drink dry, so I just eat the foam on its own.” And the bar’s name holds more allure, too. It’s not too obvious, said Misty; it’s a conversation piece, and it “suggests, ‘Let us be your pilot.’”
Test Pilot landed in the space occupied for more than a decade by Reds and was extensively remodeled by Carpinteria’s Brothers of Industry. Though it doesn’t feature lightning effects cued to drink orders, the design subtly evokes the sea, particularly with a chandelier of ships’ wheels. “We’re big on spatial honesty,” said Brandon. “We did this in a port city near the beach.” The couple also delights in maritime and Prohibition tales, and they relish that their building once served as a brig for drunken sailors back in the day — what’s now the liquor storage room still has cell bars on its windows, in fact.