Entering the understated newly renovated lobby of Trailborn Surf & Sound in Wrightsville Beach can be a little disorienting. It just looks so different from the hotel’s previous incarnation as the Blockade Runner with its very nautical, very palm fronded, very wicker and very Miami-blue decor. The hotel opened in 1964 and was owned by the same family until it was sold to Trailborn in 2022.
Now, 61 years later, the building on Waynick Boulevard has entered the 21st century, and it’s a really good place to get a drink.
Walk toward the back of the lobby, take a sharp left and you’ll find Bar Duna at the entrance to the hotel’s restaurant, La Duna Paradiso.
Behind the bar, you will highly likely find the very smiley face of its chief bartender, Kolin Carswell, thinking aloud about how to tweak a classic cocktail recipe to make something of the now.
One afternoon the Wilmington native had a bottle of Momentum’s rye whiskey in one hand, a lime in the other and thoughts of rum punch in his head.
“The whiskey will make it a good drink for cooler weather,” he says. “And the lime will make it a little Tiki. Like a rum punch, but with rye.”
Carswell started out as a line cook, found college was not for him, so went back to a kitchen to work with his brother, who was a chef for 15 years. “He left,” says Carswell, “went back to school and now he’s a big-time accountant.”
Carswell turned to sales and started to make drinks to “de-stress.”
His liquor cabinet and his library started to fill up. “I’d say I have about 40 high-quality bartending books with recipes, history and techniques,” he says. “And I have a pretty decent bar at home.”
In his pocket, he has the Mixel cocktail recipe app, which keeps track of what’s on your bar and tells you recipes you can make with what you have on hand.
In his pocket, he has the Mixel cocktail recipe app, which keeps track of what’s on your bar and tells you recipes you can make with what you have on hand.
“They give me ideas,” he says. “With drinks it’s not about creating a whole new recipe; it’s plug and play and adjust for taste.”
Carswell was tending bar and learning a lot at a private club when he saw an ad on Indeed about the job at Trailborn. “I sent an application in February, and kind of forgot about it.” He’s been there since the restaurant opened to the public in April.
Back to the Tiki Rye Punch: The cocktail, says Carlswell, is a riff on a Barbados rum punch from Smuggler’s Cove in San Francisco. “It’s got the rye, fresh lime, rich simple syrup and one, no two,” he shakes the bottle again, “three dashes of Angostura bitters.”
