Polynesian Cocktail Lounge - at The New Chinatown Restaurant

Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States

The Polynesian Lounge opened in 1990, as a newly themed bar for the New Chinatown Restaurant. It was owned by Freddie and Jane Baker. Freddie "Kekaulike" Baker was born in Hawaii and moved to the mainland in 1949, he was an extra in Hollywood for some time, before forming a band. His band played hapa haole and other Polynesian-tinged tunes all over the country, including the Aku Aku in Las Vegas. He started headlining at the Tiki Kai Supper Club in the '60s, where he met Jane. The couple performed at the lounge regularly, along with a hula dancing friend, Evalani.

The New Chinatown was co-owned by the Ong family, and opened circa 1976. The restaurant was built using hundreds of green tiles which were brought over from China and are much coveted today (but these tiles were destroyed when the site was later leveled). When first opened, it advertised a Pagoda Bar and Kung-Pei Cocktail Lounge (one or both of these was probably coverted over to the "Polynesian Lounge"). It sat 400 people and they touted it as the finest Chinese restaurant in the Southwest.

When the New Chinatown Restaurant changed hands in 2003, the Polynesian Lounge was also sold, and the new owners turned it into a non-tiki, cabaret joint, and re-branded the restaurant as Mr K's Oriental Restaurant & Bar.

That was short-lived. This site has been re-developed (some time prior to 2015) and is now home to Labor Finders and Albuquerque Distilling (as of 2022) on the footprint of where the New Chinatown Restaurant used to be.