The Piña Colada Index
The Big Mac Index once measured globalisation in burgers. Neat, numerical, absurd. Nearly forty years on, it feels dated. Today, a truer measure is the Piña Colada.
Born in Puerto Rico in 1954, the cocktail was never meant to be universal. Yet it travelled, like the idea of paradise itself, absorbed and distorted by cities everywhere. Order one and the city tells you who it thinks it is.
As Norwegians, we joke that our favourite country is “Abroad.” Vikings once sailed out for rape and pillage; today we travel to steal ideas, then bring fragments home. The Oslo Piña Colada tasted like that: strong on booze, weak on friction, and strangely borrowed. It felt like a sip reverse-engineered from a travel rash — completely missing the point. A copy of a copy, mixed on the periphery of the world’s cultural party. Awkward, yes — but revealing. Oslo wants in, pretends to study the world with hungry eyes, and sometimes gets it almost right. Almost.
In Lisbon it came inside a hollowed pineapple. No garnish, no polish, no apologies. Just local rum, rough and straight. The city in liquid form: cracked tiles, broken elevators, a beauty that never hides its scars. The Piña Colada was crude, delicious, tragic magic — like a tattoo done with a blunt needle in a back-alley tavern. Imperfect, alive. Lisbon doesn’t chase perfection; it pours what it has, shrugs, and dares you to down it.
On a rooftop in Ginza, Tokyo served philosophy. Perfect balance, exact chill, nothing out of place. Bourdain was right: deep waters, violent beauty. Sipping it felt like hentai groomed hairless with a samurai sword — precise, terrifying, fucking unforgettable. It was a sermon in restraint, a reminder that mastery can be brutal. Tokyo does not exaggerate, it does not copy. It simply shows how high the bar can go, and leaves you wondering if you’ll ever measure up.
In Miami it arrived frozen, sugar-heavy, sloshed into a plastic cup. Bass shaking the walls, a pitbull barking on a balcony, silicone titties bouncing symmetrical to the beat. We were kings of a sandcastle. Grotesque, hilarious and overpriced — like a wet t-shirt contest judged by Tony Montana shouting “I always tell the truth. Even when I lie.” The drink had lip fillers, fake lashes, and an OnlyFans account. Miami doesn’t serve cocktails — it serves hallucinations. Loud, trashy, and impossible to ignore. The city doesn’t seek authenticity. It sells spectacle, and does it loudly.
Paris turned the Piña Colada into haute cuisine — fat-washed, crystal clear, stripped of kitsch and mercy, served at the thin end of a whip. It wasn’t a drink, it was discipline. Every note tightened, every edge polished until it obeyed. A turquoise holiday sip beaten into black pulp by Joël Robuchon and Marquise de Sade. This is Paris: gastronomy as domination, the pursuit to make the ordinary extraordinary, detail by ruthless precision. The cocktail wasn’t elevated; it was broken, rebuilt and signed off like a verdict.
Before the war, Kyiv’s Piña Colada was generous and heavy on rum, like a bear hug from Klitschko. Confident, welcoming, proud of its place in the world. Now it’s a clenched fist. A cocktail is no longer leisure — it is defiance. Bars stay open, glasses lifted in blackout. Rum poured like gunpowder, pineapple as absurd as hope. And while Kyiv drinks to stay alive, the rest of the world downs Jägerbombs and hashtags it solidarity. The Piña Colada in Kyiv is not escapism. It is a middle finger raised in the dark: We are still here.
The Big Mac once told us about exchange rates. The Piña Colada tells us about identity. From pineapples in Lisbon to rooftops in Tokyo, from plastic titties in Miami to haute cuisine in Paris, every glass carries a truth. Some polished, some chaotic, some sublime, some absurd. All of them real.
In 2025 the world is fractured, restless, unhinged. But the Piña Colada remains. Order one, and the city will show its face. Strong, sweet, artificial, refined — it doesn’t matter. Because in the end, the Piña Colada is more than a drink.
It’s proof that life, even now, still wants to be fun.
