Editor’s Note: In this summer’s seventh annual “Evening of Tiki” series, Hollywood’s The Spare Room hosts a rotating monthly lineup of guest bartenders serving Angelenos their inventive cocktails with an island spin. We caught up with Yael Vengroff, The Spare Room’s bar director, at the start of the series, who shared one of her most recent concoctions and its inspiration with Life & Thyme.

My best friend, mentor and hero John Lermayer passed away on June 6. He had flown out to guest bartend our tiki nights twice in the seven years we have been doing this. I took this drink from his last menu and reworked it into something completely different, while still retaining the spirit of his original cocktail.

The drink we are both riffing off is a little-known seventies classic called a Golden Cadillac, which is a low-ABV, decadent dessert cocktail you typically don’t find these days. It tastes like ambrosia salad. The original drink contains white cacao and Galliano, which I kept in this recipe. I subbed out the orange juice for mango and used Grand Marnier as the base to give this one some more oomph.