Post #809808 by mike and marie on Sat, Jul 8, 2023 1:30 PM

Hayward, when was the first time you went to the Mai-Kai?

The late 70s and early 80s is an interesting period. We don't have too many shots of the Mai-Kai from that time, and would love to have seen it then. Meeting Mariano and getting a drink made by him would have been great. Our first time there, just over 20 years later, was an interesting time there. The Tiki Revival had not really happened, or was in its infancy. TC was just a Yahoo group, the BOT had just come out, TBRP was about the only site online for tiki. The Mai-Kai was pretty great then. The menu was huge, they used smokers quite a bit and the food was terrific. We would also love to have seen the Mai-Kai in the mid 90s, that period when the Cocktail Nation had just come out, which arguably was the precursor of the Tiki Revival.

We would love to see the front doors restored to their underwater blue (kind of the color of your shirt in the photo above), which we knew it as in the early 2000s.