Post #236194 by skulltoons on Mon, Jun 5, 2006 11:08 PM

Found the new owner tending bar ... So, Jim is one of the guys who founded the Yardhouse and he's the mystery buyer of Royal Hawaiian, says anyone who wanted to keep it just as it was could have bought it. I'm guessing he's been saying that a lot. He should print it on a card and just hand it to people as they walk in.

I didn't hold it against him. The RH founder was gone and the heirs were more interested in the selling the cow $$$$$ than selling the milk $$, it's sad, it happens.

So we had a pretty interesting conversation with him about the extensive remodel and what the old ownership is taking with them. The old owner's family is taking the name of the place & the TIKIs and ALL the tropical décor as well the salad dressing and the rib sauce recipes (for a stab at retail marketing). But they're leaving him the chef who'll keep making the 3 or 4 menu leaders along with a more general club fare like pizza's etc. Downstairs the entire dining area is being replaced with one gigantic bar that will continue serving the "Lapu-Lapu" and he's adding an upstairs VIP lounge for cigars etc and told one drunken customer that his liquor license would let him run a strip club there (hopefully, just hyperbole for the hooting toadies?) .... Oooookaayyyy then.

Taste the drink... you'll start humming the mantra ..."but that's not a Lapu-Lapu"

Welcome to "sharky's" of Laguna! What I'm really afraid of is that the immense Friday-Saturday RH crowd that fills the joint, won't even notice the difference.

And ... he's sure location is everything and no one will care about losing Royal Hawaiian. I couldn't talk him into giving Crazy Al a call or Bosko or Holden, or rolling up the street to House of Tiki, he's not realy interested.

Stick a fork in this one gang! Royal Hawiian is just another tombstone int the Tiki graveyard.

[ Edited by: skulltoons 2006-06-05 23:11 ]

[ Edited by: skulltoons 2006-06-05 23:12 ]