Post #764289 by Ragbag Comics on Fri, May 27, 2016 9:18 AM

This was definitely the worst news I'd heard in a long time.

The Chef was the clubhouse for Chicago Tiki folks... We met all of our Chicago Tiki friends at the Chef starting over a decade ago. Watching the place go from clutter and musty carpeting, often questionable food and an occasional cockroach to what Duane and Betty turned it into was fantastic. I NEVER thought I'd see the day where the Chef was on TV (!) and yet, in the last year, not once, not twice, but THREE times on local shows.

We used to go just because it was a cool, vintage hole in the wall. We went for kitsch and to wonder what it used to be like more than anything... the last five years we've gone because we WANTED to go there for the food, and the drinks, and because you felt like you were amongst friends and family the moment you walked in the door. They were constantly adding new menu items, trying out new drinks, adding new layers to the Tiki-ness. The crappy old rusty buffet cart was replaced with cool bamboo dining huts. They added outdoor seating. They REALLY cared and they always appreciated that WE all cared. They were excited about it. Watching so many vintage places close up shop or fall into shabby disarray, it meant something to all of us to watch this little corner in North Riverside blossom into something everyone cared about.. It was ever changing in the best way possible, always with reverence for the history of the place.

We had some really cool things in the works that will not happen now, I'm sad to say. I was working with Duane on new Tiki mug designs, Evening in Shangri-La bands were booked through October, and Dave and Coalbe were hard at work getting the lineup set for Fong Fest 2016 (last year was a MAJOR success.) I'd already begun sketching out this year's artwork, hoping for a positive outcome with all this mess.

But so it goes.

It's heartbreaking... in an era when new Tiki bars are opening up left and right, somehow it makes the original era places even MORE special than when they were the only vestiges. Is the food always "artisan" and are the cocktails "craft?" No... but that used to be part of the fun of it. The less of these places we have around, the sooner we lose a vital connection to what makes Tiki "TIKI" and we lose sight of why it was ever a "thing" in the first place.

A dozen years ago, my wife and I took a long drive out to Berwyn from our apartment in Chicago on the promise that there was a weird little original survivor of Chinese-Tiki hiding in North Riverside. Up to that point, our only knowledge of Tiki was a couple of trips to the Palmer House Trader Vic's and seeing a stray Tiki mug at an antique store or a flea market. We had dinner at Chef Shangri-La that night... We were the only people in the dining room. Halfway into my first Dr. Fong, tiny bit of a bottom-shelf rum buzz starting to kick in, we both looked around the restaurant and thought "Wow. How did this survive?" Our next stop was Hala Kahiki... minds. blown. This whole world existed we knew almost nothing about when we left the house... here we are now, 300-and-some Tiki mugs, many miles traveled seeking out vintage Tiki bars, with a basement full of carvings and paddles and fish floats and all else... Our lives have been totally different since that night.

Since then, we went to the Chef and Hala Kahiki so....many...times. Any time we could justify making the trek. We watched both just get better and better and only in the last couple years did it seem like anyone outside of us and our Tiki friends we'd met along the way had any idea these places were special. Finally the national spotlight has started to pay attention... they're on TV. Both places are packed every time we visit.

And then this awful news about the Chef.

Even if the drinks kinda stink, or the servers are surly or whatever your hangup... go out and visit your local vintage Tiki bar tonight and savor the experience, whatever that is.

Cuz like Joe Tex said, you better hold on to what you got...

--Pete