Tiki Bars
Kaia’s Island Kitchen & Tiki Bar
Danville, California, United States
After a temporary closure and remodeling, Danville California's Vine and Spirits reopened in April 2025 as Kaia’s Island Kitchen and Tiki Bar.
From Kaia's website:
"At Kaia’s Island Kitchen & Tiki Bar, everything starts with family, love, and the aloha spirit. Our story began with countless unforgettable trips to Hawaii—lazy beach days, laughter around the table, and the simple joy of sharing great food with the people you love most.
For Randy Negi (A local restaurant Entrepreneur), those island memories meant everything. They were filled with warmth, happiness, and a sense of belonging. He wanted to bring that feeling home — to create a place where every guest feels like part of the family, and every meal feels like a little escape to paradise.
Kaia’s is named after Randy’s granddaughter, Kaia — the heart and inspiration behind this dream. Her joyful energy, curiosity, and love for the islands are woven into every corner of our restaurant. From the food to the atmosphere, everything here reflects what Hawaii means to us: connection, happiness, and living life with aloha.
We believe food is more than just a meal — it’s a way to bring people together. Whether you’re gathering with family, meeting friends, or simply unwinding after a busy day, Kaia’s invites you to slow down, savor the moment, and embrace the island spirit. Our menu celebrates authentic Hawaiian comfort food, island-inspired cocktails, and the freshest ingredients, all served with aloha. We serve everything from savory Loco Moco to vibrant poke bowls, tropical cocktails, and sweet island indulgences.
Sip on our silky-smooth Chi Chi Cocktail, the ultimate creamy, coconut refreshment. Discover why our 44 Mai Tai is the most loved — a bold, balanced island classic, bursting with aloha. And don’t forget to save room for Hula Pie, the ultimate Hawaiian dessert — macadamia nut ice cream stacked on a chocolate cookie crust with whipped cream, toasted mac nuts, and chocolate drizzle.
At Kaia’s, every bite and every sip carries you to the heart of Hawaii — where aloha lives, the breeze whispers, and everything’s made with love."
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Kaia's offers a food-first, tiki bar second experience.
The entire location is tastefully decorated in island-inspired decor, with all of the typical design elements: bamboo, tiki statues, thatching, tropical prints, etc.
The food menu features Hawaiian and Hawaii-inspired fare. The drink menu offers beer, wine, traditional tiki bar drinks (mai tai, painkiller, zombie), as well as their own custom tiki drinks (Three Hour Tour and Ohanapod Mai Tai).
For swag, they offer a number of shirts, baseball caps, branded glassware, and multiple tiki mugs.
Chen's Singapore - Above the Winter Garden Theatre - New York
Manhattan, New York, United States (Closed)
Chen's Singapore ran from as early as 1946 through as late as 1957.
The Singapore was located in New York City, above the Winter Garden Theatre (Broadway at 50th), in the same spot earlier occupied by Monte Proser's Beachcomber (1939 - 1942) and later occupied by the Lanai (1961 - 1962) and the Hawaii Kai (1962 - 1989).
Although it is not a tiki bar in the strict sense, the Singapore deserves an honorable mention here. The Singapore is the missing link which kept the earlier clientele established by Monte Proser supplied with a VERY SIMILAR menu of tropical cocktails for over a decade and helped pave the way to make later establishments at this very same location, like the Lanai and Hawaii Kai, possible.
When I say a very similar menu to Monte Proser's, I don't mean just the list of tropical favorites. They also kept the Monte Proser beachcomber under a palm tree graphic at the bottom of the menu and added the "Three Virgins" mentioned in the self-same drink description next to it and on the cover. Those "virgins" included a stylized Hawaiian Hula girl, a Chinese girl, and presumably a Singapore girl in wrap and turban. Their salacious cocktail description states that the "Three Virgins" was "served with three broken cherries on a stick."
As though the menu wasn't bad enough, they actually hired white women to pose as Asians, to greet customers, and to tell them the specials of the week in a made up sing-song pidgin dialect. The act and the "yellow face" makeup seemed to go over well until the Sunday Mirror's Lee Mortimer wrote in an April 1946 op ed that the woman introduced to him originally as Singapore Sal was actually a model named Jane Bishop, and the proprietor, Carl Erbe, was forced to find a new "slant-eyed doll" to replace her.
Despite the racism and misogyny by the owners, the Singapore is probably one of the best examples of the "Hermit Crab" effect whereby a bar/restaurant slid into the shell of another similar business and kept it going, then off-loaded the shell later for other similar businesses to use.
*Ruby Foo's in Montreal shared the same menu cover design as the Singapore but did not offer the exotic "Three Virgins" cocktail inside. They did feature a "White Lady" (a classic cocktail made with gin, Cointreau or triple sec, fresh lemon juice and an optional egg white).
Kahala
Barcelona, Spain
Kahala opened on April 21, 1971 and was the first tiki bar in Spain. There were once 14 tiki bars in Barcelona, and Kahala has survived these many years because it has much to offer.
It still has all the original decor. You cross a waterfall to a long bar space, with various private seating areas, including King chairs. Staff wears Hawaiian shirts and the mugs are all original with a massive selection.
The cocktails and music may not always endear themselves to tiki purists, but if you are in the area, you owe it to yourself to check out one of the elder tiki temples still in existence.
Aku Tiki Inn
Daytona Beach Shores, Florida, United States
Built in 1968.
The Aku Tiki Inn features an imposing moai at the entrance, complete with glowing red eyes. Some nice Witco pieces can be seen in the lobby. Connected to the Aku Tiki Inn is the Traders Restaurant (with the Aku Tiki Bar).
The Hawaiian Inn can be found just down the street.
In 2004, the oceanfront hotel sustained some damage from Hurricane Charley. The signature moai at the front of the hotel was damaged beyond repair. By 2005 the hotel had been repaired, with a new signature moai built with the help of Florida tiki artist Wayne Coombs.
Ren Clark's Polynesian Village
Fort Worth, Texas, United States (Closed)
Ren Clark's Polynesian Village was in the Western Hills Hotel, and was richly decorated with bamboo, tapacloth, floats, lights, thatch and peacock chairs. It had several rooms: the Tahitian Room, the Hawaiian Room, the Samoan Hut, and the Cannibal Cocktail Lounge. Its signature tiki was carved by Milan Guanko.
Guanko and his men were hired to fashion palm logs from the Rio Grand Valley that Clark salvaged and had been pushed out for a road widening project. They were accompanied by two Mexican craftsmen that Clark hired (Fidel Rodriguez and Juan Razo) who were trained on replicating Aztec sculpture but found the Polynesian style comparable to replicate as well. The tikis fashioned by these teams were first displayed in the Western Hills Hotel lobby before being moved into position in the finished restaurant.
Ren Clark was a magician, and held several posts in magician groups in the 1950s. For entertainment at his Polynesian Village restaurant he performed a magic act; as a souvenir, patrons could purchase a grotesque mug of a severed head -- this mug has become one of the more sought-after tiki mug collectibles, despite it not being really all that "tiki."
The Polynesian Village opened on June 20th, 1960. The hotel was open from 1951 until it burned down in 1969.
The location is currently a Winn-Dixie Marketplace.
Sam's Seafood - Huntington Beach
Huntington Beach, California, United States (Closed)
Sam's Seafood started in its original location in 1923 at 2501 Coast Highway and, up until its Polynesian remodel in 1960 it was just a seaside seafood joint.
At 3 a.m. on Feb. 17, 1959, a fire burned the original Sam’s Seafood to the ground. Forced to rebuild, then-owners Ruth, Nick and Dick Katsaris glommed on to the midcentury fad sweeping Southern California: Tiki!
In 1960, they invested $1 million and hired architect Don Davis to design the new face of Sam’s and introduced Surfside to “Sam’s Seafood and Hawaiian Village.”
Sam's Seafood contained several dining rooms. The brightly lit main dining room had a large wall mural on one side and a dramatic tiki & waterfall display at the back. A pair of smaller side dining rooms were also bright and more aviation themed.
Of more interest to the tikiphile was the Hidden Village (Hawaiian Village) banquet room area in the back available for event rentals, which was large and moodily lit, with glass floats, waterfall displays, A-frame covered seating areas, and a small bar. On Friday nights from April to November, Sam's Seafood had a Polynesian Dinner Show in the Hidden Village. Last but certainly not least was the excellent main bar at Sam's. It was dark and full of excellent carvings, pufferfish and float lamps, and thatch.
A small bar with some tiki carvings inside, Turc's, can be found just down the street.
At the end of May 2006, Sam's Seafood was sold to developers who aimed to build retail spaces & condominiums on the site. Red tape appeared to be holding off any development on the site for years. Sam's closed for several months until June 2007, when the property owners allowed a new group to come in and keep the restaurant running in a somewhat modified form until the development could move forward.
In 2007, Sam's Seafood became Kona. In 2009, Kona closed and the restaurant reopened as Don the Beachcomber (no connection to the historic chain), which then closed in 2018.
Waikiki - Munich
Maxvorstadt, München, Germany (Closed)
Opened in the early 2000s and closed by 2016.
Waikiki was a small Thai/Indonesian restaurant located in a quiet neighborhood near the Schwabing district of Munich. By foot, it could be reached via a short (5 minute) walk from the Josephsplatz U-bahn station.
The decor was tropical, featuring tapa cloth wall coverings and large, carved wooden tiki masks. A backlit bookcase filled with carvings and knick-knacks also figured prominently, along with fan-backed wicker chairs. Traditional Hawaiian music was played, at a reasonable volume, and the lighting was muted.
The drink menu was extensive and the drinks themselves were clearly modeled after Trader Vic's. The bartender could mix a very reasonable fascimile of a Mai Tai and an excellent Zombie and both were priced far lower than the Munich Vic's.
The menu was reasonably priced and featured Thai staples such as spring rolls, along with curries and noodle dishes.
Luau Polynesian Lounge
Seattle, Washington, United States (Closed)
Luau Polynesian Lounge opened in 1997, and was more of a nice little neighborhood restaurant than a traditional tiki bar. The decor was bright and airy, and included more surfboards than tikis. There was, however, a rather striking carved Ku (with mouth reminiscent of Milan Guanko's carvings) serving as a hostess podium, and a number of tropical drinks were available on the menu. The food is what really made Luau stand out -- the mainland interpretations of classic Hawaiian food were quite good, and they served a can't-miss pupu platter, complete with flaming Sterno.
Luau Polynesian Lounge closed in early 2010.
Kelbo's - La Brea - Los Angeles
Los Angeles (La Brea), California, United States (Closed)
This location on Fairfax was the second of two, built in 1950, the first being built at Pico in 1947. Two men, Thomas Kelley and Jack Bouck, combined the first syllables of their last names and invented Kelbo’s, a small chain of Hawaiian barbecues whose food was not all that Hawaiian: burgers, barbecue meat sandwiches and some miscellaneous seafood. The concession to the islands was that every plate was garnished with a piece of pineapple and the fried shrimp was coated with coconut. They also served very sweet (but very good) barbecued ribs and had a menu of tropical drinks, some of which came flaming or served in a skull mug. Eli Hedley was the main designer and he was also responsible for the interior of other tropical-themed restaurants like Don the Beachcomber. Kelbo’s felt like a place that had been decorated in the thirties or forties and then no one changed anything. As mentioned, there were two Kelbo’s. This one was on Fairfax across from CBS Television City in La Brea, and was later torn down. It was a popular hangout for crew members who worked across the street at CBS Television City in the fifties and sixties. The building that housed the other was over on Pico at Exposition. After that location was shuttered, the building was converted into a bikini bar called Fantasy Island for a time. Much of the Kelbo’s advertising art was done by Bob Hale who otherwise turned up on Los Angeles TV from time to time as a cartooning weatherman. (He was also active in Seattle where he owned a popular hobby shop that bore his name.) Hale’s drawings of a fat Hawaiian guy in native garb could be seen on Kelbo’s napkins and menus, and both of the Kelbo's outlets had huge Bob Hale murals on the outside.
Alfredo's Beach Club
Long Beach, California, United States (Closed)
Alfredo's Beach Club had 6 locations up and down the Belmont Shore.
This location, Alfredo's Beach Shack, opened @2010.
This was a snack bar -- no liquor license. It was part of an in-line skate shop. They rented themselves out and helped with private parties, sometimes luaus or other Hawaiian-themed events.
There were a couple of tikis on premises but this was by no means a full-time tiki establishment.
Closed @2019.
Alfredo’s Beach Shack was demolished in 2021.
Now home to Saltwater Deck as of 2022.
Mauna Loa Lounge - Portage la Prairie
Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, Canada (Closed)
Mauna Loa Lounge was in the Mayfair Hotel, built during the early 1960s by George Kelly Hill.
The project was executed on the eastern part of the hotel. The walls and ceilings were of grass matting sewn on the large bamboo poles. The room resembled a large Polynesian hut with colored fish floats that glimmered as they were suspended by fishnets in between lighted king turtle shells. Painted leather and gilded tiles made the walls glow. There were gurgling fountains, hoTai (the god of good luck), lighted blowfish, peacock chairs, hand carved wooden tables, all on exotic theatre carpeting. The servers’ sporting flowered shirts and leis, brought drinks served in brightly colored glasses.
While listening to Hawaiian surf music, you could enjoy tall Singapore Slings and other tropical cocktails. Credit goes to Edith Holden (a talented artist), along with Daryl Giffin and Don Pelechaty who both hand carved and painted the tiki pole Gods to create the perfect look.
Mayfair Enterprises sold the hotel in 1966.
The building later burned down December 26th, 1976, destroying the Mauna Loa Lounge.
The Palms
Anaheim, California, United States (Closed)
In 1952, Jack Sutton opened Dutton's Jungle Gardens, which sprawled across 7-acres at the intersection of Orangethorpe and Raymond Avenues.
The property was covered with more than 500 palm trees and crawled with assorted megafauna: an alligator, bear, lion, three elephants, orangutans and more. One of the biggest attractions was Jerry, a chimpanzee who was toilet trained and could dress himself and brush his own teeth. Admission to the jungle was free and large paths led people through the dense canopy where they could get close to the animals, which inevitably caused liability issues.
Dutton offset the cost of running the animal attraction with this swanky Polynesian joint known as the Palms Restaurant. Serving exotic gourmet food, it hosted parties of up to 1,000 people. Menus housed in the Anaheim library show Lobster dinners were served for $3.50; Hawaiian dinners such as Barbecued Pork and Opae Teriyaki were served for around $5 a plate. Guests included such glitterati as actor Dale Robertson (Dynasty) as well as Catwoman Eartha Kitt. The brochure below shows that the bar was known as the "Lantern Bar" and featured a ton of swag lamps! There was also a "Terrace Room" and a "Gold Room".
But ultimately the operation was too much for Dutton to handle. In 1974 thieves raided the jungle making off with two flamingos, two silver pheasants, a Ghigi Golden pheasant and other birds totaling a loss of $1,200. In 1976 police responded to reports of an unruly party of approximately 700 guests at the Palms. According to the Santa Ana Register a “free-for-all” broke out with people launching rocks and bottles at police forcing cops to use mace and batons to break up the throng. Three people were arrested for assault on a police officer and one lawman was hospitalized.
On May 17, 1976 the Palms closed. It stood vacant for two years and succumbed to a suspicious electrical fire in 1978.
The Palms restaurant was right next door to the Akua Motor Hotel, now known as the Akua Motor Inn.