Post #512115 by Hot Lava on Fri, Feb 19, 2010 8:31 PM

My wife and I have been to the TV Island twice. As others have stated, we're all just happy that there's a place to get a decent drink (outside of my or Pablus' house) that's closer than a 4-hour drive to the Mai Kai.

While Pablus has been overseas, I've been talking to the management about the Crazed Mugs playing. They've got the CD, liked it, and I'm waiting for Pablus to return to work out the dates. They actually wanted us to play in February but it's just not going to be possible. At least by March maybe it won't be so cold out on the porch and everyone will have a much more pleasant time. It's been in the 50s or lower for the last month, which I'm sure sounds great to your northerners, but it COLD to us. As soon as we get some dates together, we'll post here and gather the ohana.

Valentine's Day brought a couple of menu items from the big Vic's to this location. My wife and I were jazzed to be able to get a Tahitian Coffee Creme Brulee, which we hadn't had since our visit to the Seattle Vic's a couple of years back.

The drinks are good. Scratch that, they're great. We ordered a Tiki Bowl on VD and it was phenomenal — that was the first time I've ordered that anywhere. The drinks shown on the menu are a small subset of what's available at a normal Trader Vic's, but the bartenders were able to accommodate my "off the menu" orders of a Fog Cutter and Menehuene Juice (a manager had to make them).

The food, while not the fine dining of a regular TV, is of excellent quality and generous portions. True, a lot of what's offered is pretty normal. We've stuck to the signature items which are a bit more aggressive in nature and haven't been disappointed yet.

I like to think of this concept restaurant as a "gateway" Trader Vic's. If the concept catches on, it would open up a whole new revenue stream for the company and sustain both old and new locations alike. A lot of people forget (or never knew) that Saint Petersburg actually had a real-live Trader Vic's in the 1980s at a Sheraton Resort. It's gone today. So are a lot of the other Trader Vic's locations, like Seattle.

If having a few Island Grille and Bars can keep the rest of the old locations afloat, I say bring them on. We'll be out on the porch playing "We Spread Aloha."