Tiki Bars
Grass Skirt Tiki Room - Columbus
Columbus, Ohio, United States (Closed)
Grass Skirt Tiki Room opened in downtown Columbus in November 2012. The drink and food menus included both Polynesian yesteryear classics and more modern takes on tropical. Souvenir mugs were available. The decor included echoes of Columbus' beloved Kahiki Supper Club, with contributions from local tikiphile collectors and craftspeople. There were beachcomber lamps, pufferfish, large tikis, and a lava wall, and even some bamboo pieces that originated at the Kahiki. The bar closed in September 2019.
Alphie's
Goleta, California, United States (Closed)
Opened in 1957. Alphie's was a greasy-spoon diner, serving breakfast and lunch. The space was light and airy, with white walls, but there were quite a few Polynesian touches throughout. There were some carved tikis on the wall, lauhala matting, tapa cloth, and an outrigger (from Oceanic Arts) hanging overhead. It was a family-run joint, and if you were lucky, you might have caught the owner and friends playing jazz.
Closed May 18th, 2021. The family decided not to re-open as a result of COVID closures.
Adrift
Denver, Colorado, United States
Opened in 2012.
Adrift is a modern-era tiki bar and restaurant. The primary focus is quality, classic tiki cocktails. The bar is covered in plenty of bamboo, the walls are lined with bamboo, and murals of elegant vintage-feel scenes of Polynesia are framed in bamboo, as well. Light comes from pufferfish lamps, glass floats, and a bit of fire for good measure. Carved tikis are found inside, and outside the building is flanked with metal tiki wall sconces and two large carved tikis.
Mai Tai Restaurant
Indianapolis, Indiana, United States (Closed)
Built in 1968.
Mai Tai Restaurant also went by the names Kahuna, and Knobby's Mai Tai -- the chronology is not clear. During the time it was Mai Tai, the name Kahuna Lounge seems to have been used for the bar area within the restaurant.
The restaurant is perhaps most notable as an excellent example of the sort of design theft that happened during the height of Polynesian restaurants: all of the graphics for the restaurant, including Mai Tai's logo tikis, menu design, even the lettering used for the Mai Tai logo, where lifted completely from the Tahitian.
The Mai Tai's building has a tall, peaked A-frame roof in front. The building still stands today (as of 2021) , and for a time housed a karate school, but is currently vacant.
The Breakers
Crystal Lake, Illinois, United States
The Breakers (sometimes called "Lenny's The Breakers") is a classic Tiki-Cantonese restaurant and bar in Crystal Lake, outside of Chicago. It opened in 1949, and has plenty of old school tiki-in-a-Chinese-restaurant touches, with a landscaped garden, bamboo and beachcomber lamps, tikis, and dim lighting, amidst newer layers of rope lights and Party City-style tropical bric-a-brac.
The food menu is typical midwest Cantonese fare, and a "Po-Po Platter" is on the appetizers menu. The cocktail list includes a Mai-Tai ("It's a secret") and a Navy Grog ("It's a stronger secret"), and other classic and less-classic tropicals. There are some Dynasty mugs and bowls in use, but you may have to ask nicely to get your drink in one.
On the weekends, you may find some live music, which often includes some Hawaiian standards.
Tong's Tiki Hut
Villa Park, Illinois, United States
Tong's Tiki Hut in Villa Park is the last remaining location of a small Chicago-area chain of Chinese/Polynesian restaurants. Open since at least 1982. This location still has plenty of old-school tiki charm, with rock walls, tapa cloth lamps, and some nice big tikis. Food is the tiki-traditional "Polynesian" Chinese including a flaming pupu platter, and there is a full bar with drinks served in mugs.
Kokomo Tikibar & Room - Helsinki
Helsinki, Finland (Closed)
Kokomo Tikibar & Room opened in February 2011 in the Punavuori neighborhood of Helsinki. They had many karaoke nights, and later at night it become a DJ nightclub. The decor included bamboo and carved war clubs and masks, with some large carved tikis, but with stark white chairs and a white-and-black checkerboard floor. On Saturdays daytime brunch was served from noon to 2:30pm.
Closed January 20th, 2018.
There was also a sister bar, the Kokomo Tikibar in Lahti, but it closed in January 2015.
Trader Vic's - Pearl District - Portland
Portland, Oregon, United States (Closed)
This Trader Vic's location opened in Portland in June 2011. There was a Trader Vic's in Portland from the '50s through the '90s in the Benson Hotel, just a short distance south of this new location.
In early March 2016, a small fire in the medical offices above caused some minor damage to a small patch of the ceiling. Though the repairs were to be covered by insurance, the owners of the location opted to close the restaurant entirely.
One of the two large exterior tikis that used to flank the entrance to the Portland Trader Vic's before it closed (around 8' tall with large lips, a small nose, and concentric Tangaroan-style eyes) now resides in a Dubai Trader Vic's.
Kalyra by the Sea
Santa Barbara, California, United States (Closed)
Kalyra by the Sea was a tasting room for Kalyra Winery located in Santa Barbara.
The owners are from Australia, and the theme for their tasting room drifted from there into Polynesia. The room was decorated in the style of a full-on tiki hut, with bamboo, thatching, tiki masks and carved tikis, war clubs on the wall, and rattan and tapa lights.
The winery based in Santa Ynez lives on, but this Santa Barbara tasting room closed at the end of 2016.
The Hurricane Club
Manhattan, New York, New York, United States (Closed)
The Hurricane Club was a modern, high-end restaurant and bar in Flatiron district of Manhattan. Its name hearkened back to the famous 1940s era New York tropical nightclub.
It was opened in 2010 by Fourth Wall Restaurants. The restaurant's decor felt expensive, and looked like a sort of mix between a plantation dreamscape and an upscale place for businessmen in suits to hash out business deals. It did not look or feel like a tiki bar, and it wasn't trying to.
It was clear that a lot of money went into opening this restaurant, right down to the gold Hurricane Club logo woven right into the linen napkins. The club offered free shoeshines along with a purchase of rum.
And yet amid all this refinement, there were a few odd intrusions of bizarre tiki kitsch. There were several bowling shirt-wearing, acne-riddled, fez-topped, cheesy-grinning tikis on the bar, in the form of lowbrow Tiki Farm decanters.
The confusion extended to the drink menu: the menu made an explicit nod to tiki history, pointing out that tiki bars often break down their drinks into light, medium and strong drinks. The drinks were good, and were served in some rather nice mugs, including a rare mug by Bosko. And yet the execution felt stiff: the drinks didn't have names, just numbers. The three "tiki style" drinks on the menu were not any more or less "tiki" than any of the other drinks on the menu.
The Hurricane Club was "re-branded" in the summer of 2013, becoming Hurricane Steak & Sushi. It lived on briefly in that incarnation before closing for good.
Tahiti Village Resort & Spa
Las Vegas, Nevada, United States
Tahiti Village is a resort south of the Las Vegas Strip (near the airport). It opened in 2007.
This large resort has timeshared and hotel rooms, and originally had the Tahiti Joe's tiki-themed restaurant on-site (closed in 2014).
The Village's current (as of 2021) bar is 17° South Booze and Bites, which is only lightly tropically themed, but does offer a cocktail menu.
Cocktails are also available at their poolside bar, The Sand Box.
There were some large tikis that spit water in the resort's pool and lazy river area - but from recent reports, these may have been removed.
Every Sunday is a Mermaid show at the Main Pool from 11 am - 12 pm.
The resort offers a shuttle to the Strip.
They have offered CheekyTiki brand tiki mugs in the past with heat decals for their location.
Lanai Hawaiian Food
São João, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil (Closed)
Lanai Hawaiian Food was a restaurant in the Auxiliadora neighborhood of Porto Alegre. It was opened by Sarah Wojahn in June 2010, and closed in January 2015. The space was sleek and modern, yet still warm thanks to careful lighting and a smattering of bamboo trim. Two large, pale, Hawaiian tikis overlooked the dining room. The food was upscale, modern Hawaiian.