Blue Hawaii, Bethesda, MD (restaurant)

Name:Blue Hawaii
Type:restaurant
Street:4906 St. Elmo Ave.
City:Bethesda
State:MD
Zip:20814
country:USA
Phone:
Status:unknown

Description:
Found via match book. Listed as "The only Polyensian restaurant in Bethesda Maryland."

Checked the address via Google and there is a Thai restaurant there. Worth checking out J$! Bangkok Garden.

[ Edited by: Swanky 2010-09-03 05:47 ]

OMG swanky, that building has been there ever since i can remember, and dead serious i asked my wife about 4 months ago, while walking past it, "i wonder if that was ever a tiki place?"

that is totally cool you substantiated it!

we'll have to get there, never been inside - and it's located about 3/4 mile from shanghai village, where chef kwok in present day serves up authentic trader vic's-style coctails.

perhaps a trip this weekend is in order.

Swanky,

I have seen that matchbook a few times, here is an image from ebay.

Johnny Dollar,

Hope you get a chance to check out the building, maybe you can find out if this is where the mysterious Blue Hawaii Tiki Mug is from. Seems like we can rule out the Blue Hawaii in Wildwood as the source of the mug after the recent post on that thread.

DC

On 2010-09-03 06:00, Johnny Dollar wrote:
OMG swanky, that building has been there ever since i can remember, and dead serious i asked my wife about 4 months ago, while walking past it, "i wonder if that was ever a tiki place?"

that is totally cool you substantiated it!

we'll have to get there, never been inside - and it's located about 3/4 mile from shanghai village, where chef kwok in present day serves up authentic trader vic's-style coctails.

perhaps a trip this weekend is in order.

Funny, but I always think the same thing when I walk by it.

I vaguely recall a place called Blue Hawaii. To be fair, I may simply recall the Elvis song.

Spotted this swizzle from the Blue Hawaii.

I think the Moai swizzle gives this location a lead in the answer to where the Blue Hawaii mug came from.

DC

so check this out...

i was browsing through the WaPo archives, and ran across this may 12, 1977 "maryland dining" page (check out the french chef clip art! lol)

way cool. both luau hut and blue hawaii on the same page!

Wow. Everything used to be so cool around here.

That's awesome. Who knew the WaPo archives had something useful? LOL

ok, here is another thread of info:

Blue Hawaii was at this address in the 1970s (will focus in more on dates in a bit) - no extant photo of exterior.

At some point, Blue Hawaii became Tiki Hawaii, a Korean BBQ joint... my guess is the exterior was very like this for Blue Hawaii?

this photo is dated 1983, and was provided courtesy of Daphne Plaut via a Facebook local history group.

Then in the 1990s (?) the location became a thai restaurant, Bangkok Garden. This is the storefront that I have seen, and I always assumed that those A-frame roof parts were part of Blue Hawaii, but they weren't there for Tiki Hawaii - weird???

sadly, this storefront has now been redone and the storefront has very little character.

here is the largest resolution version of that Tiki Hawaii storefront, for maximum enjoyment: