Mai Tai creator and restaurateur Victor Bergeron well-documented his original secret formula: His recipe from 1944 is a delicious blend of 17-year-old rum, lime juice, orange curacao, simple syrup and orgeat for a subtle flavoring of almond. When Vic's Tahitian friends sipped his new creation, they said "Mai Tai Roa Ae" - Tahitian for "out of this world, the best." So Vic named his drink "Mai Tai," and the rest is cocktail history. The recipe has changed throughout the years using younger rums and various fruit and citrus juice measurements - you can find these other versions of the Mai Tai posted around the Internet. There is even a Trader Vic's Mai Tai mixer available in some stores. But nowhere will you find a formula for the "World Famous" $9.50 caramel-colored cocktail currently served at the 30 Trader Vic's restaurants that dot the globe. Why not? Because the secret ingredient in the current recipe is a concentrated syrup that is only available for commercial use at the restaurant chain! And so that's the first formula we need to duplicate to get the exact flavors of the restaurant version into our home clone. I secured some of this "secret" concentrated mix, and figured out how to clone it using a super-sweet simple syrup solution plus orange and almond extracts. That's your first step. After that, simply add lime juice, lemon juice and dark rum, plus the syrup to a glass full of crushed ice; apply the proper garnishes; and you will have recreated two refreshing servings of one of the world's most famous cocktails.

Source: "Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 3" by Todd Wilbur.