Post #76091 by tikijackalope on Sat, Feb 14, 2004 3:45 AM

In the rest of the restaurant, the light fixtures look as
Though they are made from carved wood. There were a couple other lights made of sea shells!

I'm pretty sure those are Orchids of Hawaii lamps...about ten different ones. One of my favorite things about eating there is wandering around and taking pictures of them.

There was one scary looking mask on one of the walls.

Omni Hut has one of the same ones. They always look to me like an acid-freak's vision of a demonic triceratops...more Thai than Polynesian. What do our experts think? This one is at Aloha:

From what I have been told, the family has been in the restaurant business for decades and the decor for Aloha came from storage where it had been put when previous Chinese and Polynesian restaurants (i.e. Diamondhead in Joplin) closed.

Included with each place setting there was a plastic lei. I wore mine,
But Dawn refused.

Oh, ya gotta wear the leis! If for no other reason than to forget you have it on until hours later when you wonder why the convenience store attendent is looking at you funny.

The drinks were both very good, though I was disappointed that mine was not actually flaming.

I think they do actually have something they set on fire; I'll ask since we're going there for Valentines Day.

My drink was served in a sort of ceramic bowl with hula girls around the sides. I'm sure it is new, but it looked like it would have been right at home in 1955.

Their volcano and scorpion bowls are a mix of pieces bought recently from Dynasty and some they've had, perhaps for 20 years, in their various restaurants. Unlike the majority of their Dynasty mugs, many have Orchids of Hawaii imprinted on the bottoms. But I don't know that they actually date back that far or if Dynasty just didn't remove the OoH reference from the mold for awhile.

Pretty reasonably priced. With the drinks, the bill was $31 before tip.

They have great lunch specials, most about $6-7. I recommend the ribs, though they are more like $9.

Service was excellent. Our waitress was responsive without bothering
us all the time. They had a small army of people running around to refill water glasses and keep the floor clean. The hostess kept going around wiping up stuff that spilled on the pleixglas.

Yes, the service is good; but I am concerned that of the five or so times we've been there, the employees have outnumbered the customers except for one time on a Sunday afternoon when they were crowded.
This place has decorative flaws, IMHO, like the very strip mall-like ceiling and a tendency to paint things in bright colors (i.e. Witco-like boy and girl plaques on restroom doors that are painted silver) but the waterfalls add a nice audio ambiance, sometimes the music is exotica, the tikis (bright though some be) are tikis, the fishies under the floor are cool, the food is good, the service is attentive and the lighting and privacy of the booths make this a great date restaurant.
If it goes out of business there'll once again be no tiki place for literally hundreds of miles around in any direction.

I found out from one of my co-workers that it is owned by the people who own Mr.Yen's.

They also own Grand Fortuna in Springfield and both it and Mr.Yen's serve some drinks in Dynasty mugs, although they don't sell them like Aloha does.

[ Edited by: tikijackalope on 2004-02-14 04:15 ]