This bar/restaurant opened in the beginning of 2022 in the site of the former Kona Kai Tiki Lounge (which ran @2013-2016?).

It is set in an unassuming strip mall, but the interior space is quite large, with plenty of seating to accommodate live music and other events which the hosts schedule regularly (as you can see through their social networks).

From the Pau Hana Lounge website:

"Pau Hana Lounge is your prime bar destination for authentic Hawaiian food with the freshest, premium ingredients and traditional, regional recipes. Located in Wood Dale, IL, our Hawaiian restaurant is proud to provide quality service, delicious food, and a warm, comfortable atmosphere. Our goal is to make sure that you have a memorable dining and drinking experience at our cocktail bar with your companions.

At Pau Hana Lounge, our bar and grill restaurant specializes in a wide range of Hawaiian cuisine made with fresh ingredients and expert techniques. In addition, we have a cocktail lounge and karaoke bar that offers premium drinks, live music, and even tarot readings for quality entertainment that you are sure to enjoy!"

The interior decor is a bit swallowed up by the space, but they have added some bamboo and thatching around the bar and some smaller tiki masks and other elements. The vast ceiling is broken up with some netting and lights but could use some swag lamps and maybe even an outrigger canoe. As with all tiki bars, they can certainly add more carvings, floats, lights, and art as time and budget permits.

The first incarnation of Don The Beachcomber's was across from the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, at the Queen's Royal Gardens.

This first Don's lasted 10 years which is how long his original lease was for.

Don the Beachcomber moved to the International Market Place, a short distance away, after it was built sometime in 1957, and this was on a new lease of 17 acres.

This version of Don's had the famous Dagger Bar with walls covered in Don's collection of daggers he had picked up during his travels.

Adjacent was also Don's tree house, which was inspired by earlier tree houses that he had on his property in Encino, California.

It was at Don the Beachcomber’s that Martin Denny got together with vibraphonist Arthur Lyman and bassist John Kramer to play jazz. The trio got a record contract in 1955, and bongo player Augie Colon joined the group the following year. Denny played at the International Market Place Don's on a regular basis.

Duke Kahanamoku's moved into the Don The Beachcomber building at the International Marketplace at some point and Don moved to another nearby location (circa 1971), although this final location was named The Colonel's Plantation Beefsteak and Coffee House. This location burned in a fire in 1966, due to outdated and faulty wiring.

Opened in 2010.

It occupied a space formerly filled by an R.J. Gator's.

This was a scaled-down concept, or "Trader Vic's Light" if you will.

Closed July of 2013.

The property, including the stand-alone building and surrounding 2.2 acres, was listed for $1,995,000 on Loopnet.com and the interior was liquidated. A few of the more authentic pieces went to a Tiki Centralite. Most of the remaining carvings had been created by Indonesian carvers, and weren't as coveted as pieces you might see in other long-standing Trader Vic's locations.

The Sillman Hotel was built in 1910 by the Sillman Brothers.

It was a five-story brick construction (125 rooms and 8 apartments) on the Southwest corner of Third and Monroe in Spokane, Washington.

The ground floor had a large dining room, The Monkey Room (a Pre-Tiki Tropical Bar), and a cafe, as well as a barber shop and lobby.

The Monkey Room was aptly named for the caged gibbons kept on display.

Old timers like to mention that customers entered the bar laughing and pointing at the monkeys and later, the monkeys would laugh and point at the drunken customers on their way out.

Sold in 1945 to Thomas F. Bowers, who sold it a few years later in 1950 to the Cardinal Investment Company.

In 1964, it was purchased by James P. Purvis. Purvis changed the name of The Monkey Room to the "Tahitian Dining Room".

At some point after this, the hotel was demolished. Today in 2022 it is a parking lot used by the Lexus dealer across the street on the North side.

Opened in 2021 underneath a Vietnamese restaurant in DC's Adams Morgan neighborhood.

Tiny Tiki is a small, intimate bar, seating around 30 people, with 6-8 at the bar. The decor is traditional tiki, with lowered lights, statues, carvings, and Polynesian-pop decoration throughout. A very large Moai at the entrance faces a decommissioned Vespa next to the table seating. The drink menu covers the Tiki greatest-hits with a reasonably extensive rum list, organized by origin. The bartenders will take orders off menu. No food is available, but can be brought in from neighboring shops.

*NOTE: Not to be confused with the Tiny Tiki in Spokane, Washington (closed "temporarily" since 2021).

Tiny Tiki closed on 29 June, 2024.

Jimmy Wong's was located at 426 S Wabash Avenue in Chicago. Although it was a Chinese restaurant, it was quite famous in its day and extremely "tiki adjacent".

Eventually 2 other locations were opened. One of them was at 3058 West Peterson. The third was at 423 S Clark (Nan Yan).

Jimmy Wong's was known for its Cantonese cooking, Hong Kong Steak, and whole fish dishes. It was also known for celebrity sightings.

The two-floor restaurant had an impressive neon sign out front, a pagoda-like skylight, Chinese green tile divider screens along the booths, bamboo trim on the walls, and a bubbling Buddha fountain.

Although it was marketed as a Chinese restaurant, like so many other Chinese restaurants of this period, they borrowed classic tiki elements that were all the rage in the 60s. Waiters wore flowered Aloha shirts and there was a Polynesian cocktail menu with take-home mugs marked for Jimmy's. All five shown in their menu are represented in this site's collections. See menu below…

This original Jimmy Wong's opened in 1959 and stood for nearly 40 years under the Wabash El between Van Buren and Jackson. The building was closed and torn down in 1997.

As a South Loop restaurateur, Jimmy Wong was best known for his Hong Kong Steak and the opportunity to spot celebrities at his restaurants -- see him with Sammy Davis Jr. in the photo below.

Mr. Wong passed away in 2001 -- a beloved entrepreneur of Chicago's 50's & 60's.

Sunken Harbor Club is an intimate nautical cocktail bar tucked away on the second floor above Gage & Tollner.

After eight years as a weekly pop-up at owner St. John Frizell's Red Hook mainstay Fort Defiance, The Club finally anchored in Downtown Brooklyn in October 2021.

Though this bar has no tikis, they certainly excel in making tiki style cocktails and various craft rum drinks.

They also have a mid-century friendly 200+ hour-long soundtrack that boasts Exotica, Surf, and Bossa Nova, for a retro feel -- and some thunderstorm sounds and other special effects mixed in to give a bit of that Don The Beachcomber rainstorm vibe.

The bar was profiled in Exotica Moderne Issue 17, 2022 and a good comparison was made to other nautical bars that are "tiki adjacent" such as the Molokai Bar at the Mai-Kai in Ft. Lauderdale.

While some tiki purists may bemoan the lack of actual carvings or artwork, they do not claim to be a "tiki" bar. However, there is no doubt that this venue appreciates tiki connoisseurs, understands tiki history, and has created a wonderful nautical bar that any mid century modern or tiki enthusiast would have a very difficult time not enjoying.

This 46 room mansion was built in 1913.

Later, it was sold in 1941 to Stanley Wiedner who invested half a million and remodeled it to become the Plantation Restaurant.

The pre-tiki establishment had a smaller area known as the Tahitian Room located inside, complete with plenty of rattan, bunches of bananas hanging from the ceiling, and private huts for intimate dinner conversation.

The picture of the nude Tahitian girl shown below was a backlight transparency and was there until the restaurant closed.

The Tahitian Room was open until 1980 and was the social setting for those in the Quad Cities and beyond.

The days of the Plantation and the Tahitian Room were numbered when the Manager, Nick Chirekos, was murdered by a disgruntled employee on November 18th, 1979. The restaurant closed in 1980.

In 1981, the building was sold and reopened as W.L. Velie’s along with a club called the Back Door Club that was quite popular. As time went on, it was hard to compete with river boat gambling.

The restaurant and club closed and an antique mall was there briefly before closing and leaving the mansion empty. That is until Quad City Bank and Trust chose the location for their bank.

On Tuesday, October 11th, 2022 Barter & Shake Cocktail Entertainment, the hospitality group behind the award-winning Century Grand in Phoenix, opened their second location of UnderTow (the third in a series including the original that closed) at the Epicenter at Agritopia in Gilbert, Arizona. Marking the group’s first expansion, the new location offers an immersive experience complete with special effects, transportive décor and exotic cocktails that bring guests on a novel adventure with every sip.

At UnderTow, guests embark on a 90-minute worldly journey in the belly of a spice trader’s turn-of-the-century Clipper ship, following the adventures of revered Captain John Mallory and his crew. Similar to its original location, the new bar features signature design elements such as a hand-carved bar top and a figurehead salvaged from the bow of a ship. The experiential atmosphere also features custom-made thunderstorm and lighting effects and a new surround sound system to provide an enhanced audio experience, along with handcrafted carvings from Daniel “Tiki Diablo” Gallardo and illustrations by Tom “Thor” Thordarson.

The cocktail menu features a variety of on-theme signature drinks, classics with a twist, and non-alcoholic libations. Some of the drinks included are The Missionary’s Downfall, the Mai Tai, the Clear Skies & Tropical Winds and the Shipless Sailor.

The menu also features a wide selection of rums.

Opened in 1958 by Pat Gilmore, the Islander Lounge is the oldest continuously open beach bar from Destin, Florida to Orange Beach, Alabama along that 70+ miles of Gulf coastline.

To put that in perspective, it was opened the same year as the Tonga Hut in North Hollywood, California.

The Islander has expanded over the years. A game room area with its own bar was built years ago to adjoin the main bar. The club added an upstairs bar, the Cypress Bar, long ago, which is used for private parties and charity events, and open to the public on weekends. It leads out to an outside deck that looks south toward the Gulf of Mexico.

However, the striking remodeling from an immaculate 1950s Polynesian themed bamboo bar to a generically decorated neighborhood dive bar is disheartening for purist tikiphiles to look at. The gray walls and floor, not to mention the blaring televisions and signs for lotto and whiskey -- make it tough to spot any semblance of the former Polynesian theme.

Despite this, the bar is a survivor and still sports a few more modern tikis at the entrance and the upstairs deck. It is also much beloved by locals and doesn't need approval from outsiders who might disapprove of its decor.

The Tonga Hut in North Hollywood also saw a slide into generic dive bar status for several years, though, before being updated and refreshed. So, too, did the Bahi Hut in Sarasota, Florida. Perhaps the Islander Lounge also has a tiki remodel in its future?

Opened in 2010, in Mar del Plata, Argentina.

They pride themselves on being knowledgable about tiki cocktail history and in developing their own cocktails based on local seasonal fruits and juices. Additionally, they seek to please an Argentine palate and sometimes this means a tilt towards the bitter end of the spectrum. Cynar is popular, for instance. One of their popular cocktails, the Cynar Grill, is made with Cynar 70, roasted pineapple, lime juice, rosemary, elderberry and soda.

During Covid quarantines, when deliveries became the norm, they decided to put together special cocktail kit boxes which are delivered via a person dressed up as a sea lion with a captain's hat. See last photo. Since their mascot is a sea lion, it only made sense to run with it and lend a sense of whimsy to home deliveries.

This Kahunaville was one location in a nationwide chain of restaurants.

It was located in the Holyoke Mall (which is the 3rd largest in New England by retail space) from @2007-2008.

Like the others in the chain, this restaurant featured a synchronized water fountain show, waterfalls, caves, talking idols, a sophisticated sound system, an arcade, and a variety of tropical drinks. Their eclectic food menu featured about 90 items, which included "Kahunaville-sized" sandwiches, salads and entrees with American, Mexican, Cajun and Asian influences.

The parent company of Kahunaville, Adventure Dining Inc., once operated nine nationwide locations, including homes in Delaware, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Michigan and Tampa. The Las Vegas, Nevada "Party Bar" (2001-2016) was their last holdout before the chain folded.

This type of corporate chain typifies what many tikiphiles dislike most about corporatizing the Tiki aesthetic -- bending the decor more towards a Chucky Cheese buildout (or perhaps Rainforest Cafe if one is being kind) with cheaply molded and cartoony fiberglass and plastic decorations in primary colors, dumbing down the cocktails of Don the Beachcomber and Trader Vic into chemical-tasting slushy boat drinks (but served with "flair"), offering a big scattershot food menu in hopes of appealing to every American tourist palate, and supplying loud video games and animatronics to entertain the kids. For those that grew up with these, there is some nostalgia, but they were not terribly mourned by fans of traditional tiki bars and restaurants.

It appears that this location now houses an Xfinity retail store.