Post #781410 by Prikli Pear on Thu, Nov 9, 2017 9:59 AM

On 2017-11-08 10:35, tikiskip wrote:
That is a great point, I often wonder if what we want in a bar restaurant is what most people don't want.

I for one see restaurants that people RAVE about that truly suck.

There's a new bar/restaurant here in New Braunfels, the Downtowner, that has gone with nightly themes for its drinks. They have Tiki Sundays, so The Wife and I went a couple weeks ago to check them out. The place is in an old rock shop (seriously--they sold minerals, semi-precious stones, geodes, amethyst etc.) with a lot of space. Unfortunately, they remodeled it with the industrial look so popular today--polished concrete floors, flat walls, unfinished ceiling with duct work exposed, etc. Nothing inherently wrong with that, except for the fact that it was LOUD. In these places even the smallest sound echoes around, so that you have to talk louder and louder just to be heard. Their tiki "decor" was a dozen paper accordion-style pineapples scattered around the place, along with some Party City leis. The drink menu was limited, with half a dozen less common tiki drinks (no Mai Tai, for example) and two bar originals that looked like they had potential. I can't recall what we ordered, but I do recall they were good. Not great, but they significantly exceeded my expectations. Good enough that we were inclined to order another round, but left instead. The place was so damn loud it was giving us both headaches.

The drinks were good, but there was zero atmosphere. We're not the type of folks who go to bars to drink, we go to relax and enjoy the atmosphere. For us, putting up with the noise and tension was not worth it for the good, reasonably-priced drinks. I made a foray to the restroom--one of the few quiet places there--and realized they were piping in reggae music over the PA. It's reggae, yeah, but I give them points for making the effort to switch it off the top 40 they normally play. But my larger point is that I couldn't even hear it in the main bar area. And there were younger 20-somethings there who were ordering these respectably-crafted tiki drinks and videoing each other with their phones as they raced to see who could drink theirs down the fastest. No. Just no. These aren't shots or slammers. They're defeating the entire purpose of tiki cocktails.

And here's the kicker: Just yesterday some of The Wife's friends were raving about how much they loved the place, and how they go there every chance they get. The Wife said she found the drinks good, but the atmosphere terrible. "Really?" they replied in surprise. "We hadn't noticed."

There you go.