Post #7153 by ikitnrev on Thu, Aug 29, 2002 4:42 PM

Nice review on the Honolulu. A few of my own observations to add .....

• The bar does not have barstool type seating, only tables to sit in. The bar area of the restaurant is the designated smoking area.

• Hawaiian music is generally not being played during the lunchtime hours (I work only 3-4 miles away) ... they will most often have either a radio station on or nothing at all ... the quiet can be very peaceful, especially with a mai-tai in front of you

• For an impressive after-dinner treat, order the banana flambe (or whatever it is called), if only to see the rum-fueled fire reach up to the ceiling.

I did a review of the Honolulu for Tiki News, and have excerpted some additional comments here for you to read.

Vern

Located off of Telegraph Road just a few hundred feet south of the Beltway and I-95 interstate, the Honolulu is easy to miss. It sits off the corner of a busy intersection and is visually overshadowed by the 7-11 immediately next door. Once one parks in the limited parking space and walks in the front doors though, one will be immersed in the best Polynesian decorated restaurant in the D.C. area.

The lights are low, two deep blue colored landscape scenes are located on opposite walls, and indirect lighting is provided partly through giant translucent seashells. The setting is rather intimate - several times I have stopped in for a Mai-Tai and found myself the only customer in the restaurant. This is the type of small, family owned and operated businesses I like to frequent, the type where the owners will simply close down the restaurant for several weeks whenever they choose to take their family vacations.

The Honolulu Restaurant opened in 1977, but the original owner was forced to sell it only ten months later. The restaurant's saving knight was a man named David Chan, who bought the restaurant with his wife Ann in the summer of 1978. Returning to the D.C. area after two years of operating a restaurant in Saskatchewan, Canada, Mr. Chan decided the warmer D.C. climate was more appealing and has since kept the restaurant running for 21 years.

Except for a remodeled bar, the restaurant appears much as it did 21 years ago. Mr. Chan has significantly improved the bar area from its previous closed in closeted state to the more accessible wide-open look, which enables one to watch from your table as David and Ann mix their top notch tropical drinks, including the house favorite Mai Tai. It is obvious that Mr. Chan has an artistic touch. He not only is an expert at mixing drinks, but also drew the pictures of the drinks contained in the full drink menu.

Mr. Chan has extensive drink mixing experience, having been a bartender at the now closed Washington D.C. Trader Vics restaurant from 1970 through 1976. This was the era of the Watergate controversies, and the tropical décor of Trader Vics proved to be an irresistible location of escapism for then President Nixon. David Chan did meet and shake hands with President Nixon at Trader Vics, and remembers how Nixon would usually visit either in the daytime or on a weekend so he could enjoy his favorite drink - the Navy Grog. Mr. Chan has personally served President Ford, his vice-president Nelson Rockefeller, and most likely quite a few other senators, representatives, and other movers and shakers of our nation's capital

[ Edited by: ikitnrev on 2002-08-29 16:45 ]