Post #29650 by bigbrotiki on Tue, Apr 8, 2003 12:48 PM

This just opened last Thursday. Here is a review by my friend and BOT cover artist Moritz R.:

The Hilton Berlin is definitely not the Hotel Bayrischer Hof in Munich that hosts a Trader Vic's as well. It is a brandnew building with lots of light grey marble and cheapish looking gold inside, charming like a block of ice. There's a red Trader Vic's sign above the inside entrance of the bar and you are welcomed by a well known type of tiki that you can also meet at the entrance in Munich. Before you enter the actual restaurant you go through a little room passing by a wooden Easter Island tiki and there's another big impressive tiki statue down the stairs.

The place looks really new. It's big and spacious, a bit like the Trader Vic's in London, not unpleasant, although some people prefer a romantic design full of nooks and crannies. Obviously the goal of the designers was to avoid using even the smallest piece of bamboo. There is virtually none at all. Most of it is dark brown wood and light ochre walls. About five big colums hold the ceiling. Two of them are covered with brown wood with a ring in the middle. You could imagine these look like stylized 4 feet thick pieces of bamboo, but only if you have a lot of imagination. There are some nice details, like a row of wooden tiki statues in between the table recesses at the right side. There are different levels, the floor is higher at the sides and lower in the middle of the room.

There is a wall with primitive masks, that is the only part of the restaurant that doesn't look very clean and reminds one of primitive art and the original theme of this reastaurant chain. The ochre walls are painted in a brushy stained 80ish manner. They give the entire room a rather bright appeal, you could say it looks like a modern protestant church rather than like a tropical hut. Actually the place doesn't resemble a tropical hut at all. It really looks like some 90s post-modern architecture where exotic objects happen to be around. On the ceiling you find lots of these obligatory fishnets with colored glass balls, which unfortunately are not lit from the inside. Instead there's indirect blue light on the ceiling that makes it look like steel concrete in a parking building. The objects on the ceiling look somewhat lost and not very diverse. There isn't even a single set of shark teeth.

Despite some groups of Tiki poles there are mostly nautical objects, models of ships, pictures of ships, but old European ships, no south sea boats, no outrigger canoos. The lights are pleasant. Not too bright, not too dark and mostly indirect. You can see the big wok oven with its open fire from almost everywhere in the big room. The candle lamps on the tables look rather cheap compared to the double tiki figures you still find in older Trader Vic's.

The worst part of the evening was the music. There was a singer with a guitar, obviously from Spain or Colombia, and so was the music. When he arrived at "Guantanamera" you knew what you were in for and felt like in some cheap tourist's place in Mallorca. When he was not performing there would be the same type of Spanish background music from CD. It was really disapponting so I asked one of the pretty but blonde waitresses to call for the guy who's responsible for the music. (Why I assumed there is "a guy responsible" for it I don't know). Well... SHE thought I like the music so much, that I want to know what it is and brought me the sleeve of the CD that was playing. I asked her if she was aware what the theme, the character and the design of Trader Vic's is at all. She wasn't. She turned out to be a big fan of the music that was playing, but was happy as well when I promised to bring some exotic CDs eventually the next time I would visit the bar. I still don't understand why the people who run Trader Vic's bars around the world are not trained the least bit to be able to make a distinction between the South Seas and the Caribean. What ignorance! The right kind of music would improve the quality of the whole place by at least 100%!

Actually it wasn't very crowded any time we were present. Which makes me hope that the owners of the Trader Vic's will see the need to open up a Happy Hour one day. Which would be kind of essential, at least for me, to make the Trader Vic's a regular place to visit at all. The cocktail prices are insane. Like the Munich Sour especially designed for the Munich TrV's they have a special Berlin cocktail called something like Berlin Bear Paw or so. It's made with rasberries (!) and tastes... silly. Don't order it! The Mai Tai, the basic reference drink, is very good though.

It looks as if the 21st century doesn't stop in front of the doors of Trader Vic's. Wether people like me will get used to the new appeal such places seem to be getting, or wether new generations of exotica lovers will accept this as unique exotica design, only the future will tell. I must say I wasn't really impressed, but neither was I completely disappointed. I think it's neccessary to go new ways, but in detail things in the new Trader Vic's of Berlin could certainly be improved. Says the artist in me.

Cheers!

--Mo

studio ® --- http://www.moritzR.de