Post #641379 by Mai Tai on Fri, Jun 22, 2012 1:26 PM

This Trader Vic's is closing because the owner decided to not renew her contract with Trader Vic's, and decided to try something else, so don't blame this one on Trader Vic's. How sound of a business decision that is on the owner's part, I don't know. Alexander's is a steak house, and there are a couple of REALLY good well established steak houses right near that Trader Vic's, and they are going to try to spin this as an Alexander's with lots of seafood, but there are a couple of really great well established seafood restaurants nearby as well. The restaurant business is tough, especially in this economy that the Bay Area (and elsewhere) has weathered over the past 5+ years. And while the greatest affluence of new money wealth is definitely concentrated in that area of Silicon Valley - just the other day I could NOT find a parking space in what was once sleepy Mountain View - I wonder how wise a decision it is to mess with something who's theme ties in so nicely to the adjacent hotel. I guess time will tell.

This throws yet another monkey wrench into the Tiki Crawl for me - I was planning on throwing a crawl at the end of summer, but if Trader Vic's Palo Alto is closed by then, I'll probably have to scrap the entire South Bay day, as there are pretty much no tiki establishments left in the South Bay with the closing of Martini Monkey, Smoke Tiki, and now Trader Vic's Palo Alto. Support your local (and distant) Tiki Bar while it's still around, peeps!