Steak Island

Austin, Texas, United States

The Steak Island building, located at 600 E. Riverside Dr., originally housed the Lahala House restaurant, which had a thatched roof, and was built in the early 1960s.

Lahala House was a partnership between Corpus Christi restaurateur Harry Porter and G. Jim Hasslocher of Jim’s Restaurants fame. Porter eventually sold his interest to Hasslocher, who renamed the restaurant Steak Island around 1965/1966.

The round hut-like structure had its thatching removed around 1965.

The establishment billed itself as “Austin’s Most Exotic Restaurant,” and was built on the shores of Town Lake (now Lady Bird Lake) at a time when there weren’t many businesses on the water. Though the Steak Island menu was more steak and seafood than pupu platter, the decor and sarong-wrapped waitresses were definitively tiki. It was considered fine dining by Austin standards of the time and was a favorite haunt of President Johnson when he visited Austin.

In 1973, Steak Island became a Magic Time Machine, later it was a Landry's, then a Joe's Crab Shack, and is now a Cidercade.

No Polynesian-themed details remain, but the structure still stands.