Test Pilot is a "tiki-inspired" craft cocktail bar in Santa Barbara. It opened in September 2016.

The decor is tiki-lite, with just a few tiki masks on one wall. The walls are painted turquoise, and there is a light beachy feel to the space.

The drinks, some served in tiki mugs, are modified versions of tiki cocktails, and some originals.

They have an excellent selection of rums and a strong bar program.

*NOTE: You can reserve the Sea Wolf Room (see last 2 photos) for yourself and your friends as a space for group gatherings, meetings, and parties.

Cat Eye Club was a small bar and restaurant with a lightly-applied mid-century and tiki theme. It opened in 2013 as more of a "Mad Men" mid-century bar, but shifted to tiki in 2016.

There was a menu of tropical and classic tiki cocktails, many served in tiki mugs, and a small food menu (food came from the kitchen of the attached Blind Burro Restaurant).

The decor was more tropical-lite than tiki, with a few tiki masks on a wall, and palm frond wallpaper on another.

Closed September 28th, 2018 to make room for a Blind Burro expansion.

The Reef Bar is within the Caliente Tropics Resort in Palm Springs, a historic tiki hotel that opened in 1964.

The bar at the Caliente Tropics has changed names, theming, and management many times over the years. Originally, the bar was the Congo Room restaurant, a steakhouse. After the Congo Room years, the bar adopted its most-used Reef Bar name, and there was also a brief period in the late-'00s when it was Hawaiian Bill's.

After many years with the bar in flux, as of March 4th, 2017 it re-opened under the management of Rory Snyder, perhaps best known as the organizer of the annual Tiki Caliente event at the Caliente Tropics (and Circa Caliente). The bar has large windows and a patio overlooking the hotel's swimming pool, and rather than fight the light, Snyder aims to differentiate from the other tiki bars in town and create a space that blends the mid-century history of Palm Springs with the classic tiki elements on the grounds. A menu of tropical drinks and food is available. See cocktail menu below...

In addition to mugs and glassware, the bar also sports its own line of branded rum bottles with label designs by Anthony Carpenter.

Opened in 1959, Tiki Bob's Mainland Rendezvous, more commonly shortened to Tiki Bob's Mainland, was the second location of the fabled Tiki Bob's to be located in San Francisco, the original was at Post & Taylor. This short-lived location catered to the nearby businessmen by offering "lingerie shows" where young women walked through the restaurant in their skivvies. Ostensibly, the idea was that these models would inspire the businessmen to then purchase the lingerie to bring home for their wives. Lingerie shows lived on in the neighborhood for quite some time -- nearby Sutter Station tavern was still doing them as late as the 2000s.

Today, the same space now holds Pagan Idol.

Luau Lounge opened inside Players, a video game arcade on Pier 39 at Fisherman's Wharf, in 2012. The bar and restaurant overlooks San Francisco Bay, with large windows to take in the view. The decor includes tapa cloth, beachcomber lamps and tikis, but with full daylight on one side and a riotous arcade on the other, the mood is not one of escape despite some nice decor, including some Eugene Savage Matson Menu art on the far wall.

There is a full restaurant menu, and the tropical drinks menu on their website skews to the sweet and fruity end. However, that online drinks menu appears to date to 2013-2015 and the newer one from 2019-2022 is much improved. Both are shown below...

The Don the Beachcomber location in Marina del Rey opened in 1970. It is one of the "UFO" shaped versions of the restaurant, with a round building topped by a low-slung wraparound roof with a pointed top. The restaurant makes an appearance in the 1989 Patrick Dempsey film Loverboy as "Tiki Joe's". The restaurant was closed by the mid-'90s. The building is still there, attached to the Marina del Rey Hotel, but underwent a dramatic remodel in the early 2010s, and is no longer recognizable.

Kona Pali is a 63-unit apartment building, built in 1962 in Granada Hills, in the San Fernando Valley. It is a remarkably well-preserved example of a midcentury Polynesian-themed apartment building. It has an identical twin in San Gabriel, the Kona Kai Apartments. The entrance is a dramatic A-frame. The entryway has a tile mosaic of the Hawaiian islands, and a water feature. Tiki carvings are all over the common grounds of the complex.

This 54-unit apartment building was built in 1963 with a Polynesian theme, and was originally named Marina Lani. The entrance is a grand A-frame, with a dramatic lava rock wall intersecting it. Over time, the Polynesian details were removed and it was simply called Marina Apartments.

In 2009, a refresh of the communal spaces brought in fresh tropical landscaping and the addition of many new tikis, and the apartments were renamed Marina Palms. The color scheme was green/orange/yellow for this iteration.

As of 2021, the color scheme appears to be slate blue and white. The 2009 tikis are not as evident in promotional photos, although the honu/sea turtles can still be seen on the front.

Coral Reef was a Polynesian restaurant in Millbrae, just south of San Francisco, owned by Buddy and Roberta Maleville. This location opened in 1946 or earlier, and was closed by the owners in 1953 as the restaurant had accumulated debt. During its heyday, it was a destination restaurant. When it was open, Bing Crosby was a regular, and brought Bob Hope here.

The Malevilles also opened a Coral Reef location in Sacramento in 1949, that location was connected to a lodge and operated until 1994.

Opened in 2016.

The Tiki Hut was a vacation rental by owners just north of Yucca Valley, near Pioneertown (and its famed Pappy & Harriet's music venue), Joshua Tree National Park, and Palm Springs.

The building was on Janky Acres, a collection of three themed vacation rentals tucked into a secluded desert valley.

The Tiki Hut was able to sleep up to seven people, and was furnished with lots of bamboo, a tiki bar, a fake palm tree, and large tikis carved by CC Rider.

Seems to have closed @2020.

The Royal Hawaiian opened in 1947. It was owned by the Cabang family. The Cabangs were originally from the Phillipines and were friends with both of the Fillipino Tiki carvers in L.A. at the time, Milan Guanko and Andres Bumatay. These talented artists both supplied Tikis for the restaurant. The prominent Andres Bumatay tikis outside the restaurant became weathered and destroyed and were later replaced by modern carvings.

The Royal Hawaiian also had a sister location located in Anaheim in the 1950s.

The Royal Hawaiian has been through several iterations. It originally had several small dining rooms with glass-walled dioramas filled with tikis and plants, great lamps, bamboo, thatch and sea grass matting, and a bar with a fireplace and pufferfish. There were lovely oil paintings throughout, including a large piece hung directly above the hostess stand.

In spring 2006, the restaurant was sold to a new owner, who gutted it. The newer, tiki-stripped version closed for good in 2012. In 2016, the space reopened, again with the name Royal Hawaiian, this time by people who wanted to bring back its rich tiki history. The new owners, Mo Honarkar and daughters Hasty and Nikisa, worked to bring back a fully-decorated Royal Hawaiian with the help of Bamboo Ben.

However in January-February 2019, the restaurant was closed for yet another remodel and then re-opened on April 3rd, 2019 under the auspices of chef Mariano Maro Molteni. Honarkars company remained as landlords, while Molteni owned and operated the restaurant which he rebranded as the "Royal Hawaiian Fire Grill". Molteni's remodel (which came as a surprise to the landlords) removed much of Bamboo Ben's decor, especially natural materials like lauhala matting and thatching in favor of dark blue painted walls and a "cleaner" and "less cluttered" look. There were still tikis and accent pieces, but the interior was much reduced from its former full tiki glory.

On July 15th, 2022, Royal Hawaiian Fire Grill announced its closure for the end of that same month, on July 31st, 2022.

Following the 2022 closure of the last iteration of the Royal Hawaiian, the space was turned over to Boulevard Hospitality for a complete transformation and a grand re-opening in May 2023. The new build-out was completed by Ignacio “Notch” Gonzales, famous for building spaces like Smuggler’s Cove in San Francisco and Inside Passage in Seattle.

To round out the new experience, the Royal Hawaiian’s owners have brought on famed barman Dushan Zaric of Employees Only to build a bespoke cocktail menu that riffs, weaves, and rethinks the rum-forward staples of tiki lore.

*NOTE: For photos of original location prior to 2006, or newly opened version from 2023 onward, see separate listings.

The Grass Skirt opened November 7th, 2016, in San Diego's Pacific Beach neighborhood. It is owned by the SDCM restaurant group. This speakeasy-style tiki bar is hidden behind a poke restaurant, Good Time Poke. There is a full menu of tropical cocktails, mostly their own creations, and a menu of seafood-centered dishes. Carved posts by local tiki legend Tiki Bosko support thatch over booths wrapping around a central fire pit, and backed by a grand mural of Diamond Head with a hula dancer. The bar is backed with orange tile and lava rock, and fronted by bamboo, lauhala and tapa cloth. One booth sits inside the mouth of a huge tiki head.