Manhattan, New York, New York, United States
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.
No one has visited this tiki bar.
