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Tiki Central / Locating Tiki / The Tanela Restaurant, Shrewsbury, MA (restaurant)

Post #801009 by PockyTiki on Thu, Feb 27, 2020 1:49 PM

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Took a lot of digging to find any information on this now defunct and rotting facade. What kickstarted my digging was my work day today. I drive a truck to pay the bills and my route for the day happened to take me down US-20 through the Shrewsbury/Worcester area. I come up to a line of cars, causing myself to slow down. As I slow down I glance over to the right and catch a glimpse of what appeared to be a derelict pagoda-like building.

"Whoa! I wonder if that ever used to be a 'go-to' Tiki spot back in the day!"...The traffic starts to crawl forward a bit and low and behold this mighty moai

I did not take that photo, as I was driving, but the stylized moai (I believe to be themed after the Orchids of Hawaii mug) was still very much there in February of 2020. If I recall it had at some point within the past 10 years been painted a pepto bismal pink. Yuck.

Hopefully other members here can shed some more light on this very sad state of affairs. I attempted to look up any and all realty information on the property after arriving home from work to inquire about that concrete behemoth but no luck on my end.

I would also like to give credit to "RoadArch.com" for having these photos of the Tanela on their website.

EDIT I completely forgot to add one of the weirdest things about this find for me. Over the past week my fiance' and I have been prepping some items for our 2021 tiki wedding. One item that my fiance' has been very excited about are custom candles that we are making. I molded one of our tiki mugs in silicone and my fiance' has been cranking out some super fun candles.....I bet you can't guess which mug we used...


[ Edited by: PockyTiki 2020-02-27 13:58 ]