Post #94812 by BornTiki on Sat, Jun 5, 2004 1:16 PM

Hmmm...let's see, that was some time ago, I always remember going to or being at TB's and that was in the '60s, I usally got to sit at the booth next to the fish tank where the crew would distract me with yd. long straws, Tiki mugs filled with 7up and grenadine syrup and all I could eat Sesame fried chicken. The crew was Perry the Bartender, he was very good and could mix with the best of them, very old school, Jimmy, a very nice man and one of the more popular waiters and of course Walter, he would smile and bow, all the while cursing your mother for having the nerve to give birth to you, in cantonese of course, and making it seem as if he was simply repeating your order in chinese, he was also in charge of the salad dressings, he's the only one who knew the whole recipes. There was Jimmy the cook, never saw a duck deboned so quickly, he was a great cook...and I there was this one cook...always smoked...always had this cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth with a 3 inch long ashe that he never got in the food, ever. The food in the polynesian genre is simply cantonese cooking usally with a island flavor. Of course that's changed now but then that was the norm. The walls, most noticeably the ceiling in the bar was of the old corrugated tin sheets...frugality being embraced, these were plastered in chinese newspapers dating from the 50's and remained there 'til the end, as did most of the fixtures, the various Fugu, velvet paintings of naked women, lit glass globes and netting, spearguns etc.. They mostly were there till the end. Raffles #1 at Market near Polk? I think, it 's the Fox Plaza building, actually coexisted with TB's, it came along later. It catered to the business crowd, lunch, happy hour and dinner...wasn't a Tiki place inasmuch as it was polynesian themed. The waiters at TB's also moonlighted at Raffle's for lunch a lot. Raffles #2 was on Market and 1st St., it also catered to the business crowd. We became 'uninvolved' in the late '70's...TB's never recovered, alot of regulars had passed on and times were changing as they are prone to do. Raffles #2 closed some time before TB's. So that left Raffles...Aunt Florence(not my real aunt, I was just raised calling her that) continued on with her daughter Kim taking over Raffles for a time. I totally forgot that some of the 'stuff' from TB's ended up in Raffles, but I hate to say it...a lot of stuff didn't and I know it wasn't saved, shame really. So if any memorabilia shows up, be cynical, aside from mugs( we served a lot ), there really wasn't much that survived.