Post #580567 by JOHN-O on Wed, Mar 16, 2011 8:37 PM

I recently visited the Hawaiian Room as I was driving North from Irvine, and it was still too early for DTBC Dagger Bar. Could the HR be the only Tiki bar in the world (other than Frankie's) where you can get a drink at 10am ?? I really like the HR, not only is it a vanishing breed of authentic mid-century Tiki bar, but it's an actual Tiki DIVE bar. You can't say that about the refurbished Tonga Hut anymore.

Here's some interesting undocumented (??) facts that I got while chatting up the local barflies. When the HR opened in 1964, it was simply called the "Hawaiian Room", there was no Poly-Pop decor. The story goes that the following year (or maybe even much later), one of the regulars who was a superintendent at the nearby Tahitian Village motel complex in Downey, "appropriated" some of the decor there for the HR. I don't know if that's really true, but this is what they told me.

They also told me they have a great $7 steak special on Sundays and to come back for that. They were all a friendly bunch of working-class regulars who were VERY proud of their bar. They know that the tapa paper is very valuable and that nothing should be pinned on top of it, and not to turn on the fragile looking Pufferfish lamp.

Maybe we should start having a Tiki Central night there. :)

[ Edited by: JOHN-O 2011-03-16 21:01 ]