Post #255655 by Sabina on Wed, Sep 20, 2006 8:51 AM

Hmmmmmmmmmm, I thought I had posted about the RP before, but since I can't find anything I might have written about it before via search and Hukilau is just around the corner (who me, counting the nano-seconds? Yeah, well!)

OakTiki and I explored it on an earlier Miami trip and fell in love with it. It's little known to most Tikiphiles treasure! I think they may have one of the better internally lit glass float collections I've seen in a long time, and plenty of shell lamps and 'glass pebble' lamps. There are a few Tikis here and there, but think more nautical than overwhelmingly Tiki per-se.

As with many coastal true Tiki haunts, it's tucked in alongside a marina and is right on the water. There's a long covered walkway leading up to the front doors with lamps hanging overhead. Once you enter, in the afternoons anyway, the entryway is light and somewhat airy with tropical fans and rich dark walls.

As you can see from above in one of the pictures, booths have slight shell curtains framing them, adding to the feeling of intimacy. It's nautical through and through, and while not heavy on the flotsam and jetsam does have enough 'neat bits' to make us tikiphiles at least comfortable with the general surroundings. There is some matting, though most of the walls are wooden planking.

Mainly, the Rusty Pelican conveys a sense of time/age (with all the positive connotations thereof) and of being somewhat of an 'institution', a place that has been there long enough to make you wish the walls could talk.

I'm not sure I'd call it altogether Tiki, although it certainly has enough to keep tikiphiles interested, (doubly so, considering how much of the rest of FL suffers a relative dearth of Tiki artifacts, and constant mistaking chickee huts for Tiki.) Still, it's good food, fantastic views, a place with a real sense of place and time to it, some Tikis scattered throughout, and enough nets, lit glass floats, cork floats, shell lamps and pebble lamps, carved wood panels, lauhala matting, etc to keep us happy- when we wander beyond the sacred walls of the Mai Kai, that is!

I'm realtively certain we don't have any pictures from our earlier expedition, but we hope fo remedy that this trip.