Trader Vic's, Almaty, Kazakhstan (restaurant)

Name:Trader Vic's
Type:restaurant
Street:465 Gornaya Street
City:Almaty
State:
Zip:
country:Kazakhstan
Phone:+7 705 111 1580
Status:operational

Description:
This Trader Vic's location opened in April 2011 (an educated guess). It's located at the Medeu Ice Skating Stadium.

The restaurant's VK page: (VK is a social site like FaceBook)
http://vk.com/trader_vics

[ Edited by: kenbo-jitsu 2014-02-13 14:57 ]

Photo from vk.com

Photo from vk.com

Photo from vk.com

Photo from http://www.hg2almaty.com

Photo from http://www.hg2almaty.com

Photo from http://www.hg2almaty.com

Photo from traveltipz.ru

Links:
http://www.hg2almaty.com/bars/cocktail-bar/---trader-vics-island-bar-grill---Almaty-kazakhstan

Interesting restaurant - it does not meet the "appearance guidelines" of other Trader Vic's restaurants, does not show up on the location listing at tradervics.com, but some of the restaurant's social media pages definitely point to http://www.tradervics.com.

My visual take, based on the photos posted here and from what I see on their social media pages, is that this is a restaurant inspired by the real Trader Vic's locations in other parts of the world.

Ah, sometimes tiki does get around by hook or by crook.

The Almaty location is a strange one. It was without a doubt once a legitimate Trader Vic’s location. It still appears on this current menu for the Trader Vic's in Munich.
http://www.bayerischerhof.de/resources/_docs/en/cocktailkarte_trader.pdf
Here’s a picture in case the PDF goes away.

Also, according to the Internet Archive WayBack Machine, it WAS at one time listed as a location on the Trader Vic’s corporate web site. It first appeared there sometime in the second half of 2009. (This is actually a year and half earlier than I had previously thought the place had opened – although maybe the web site was anticipating the opening.)

Sometime between then and now, though, the relationship between this restaurant and Trader Vic’s corporate seems to have changed. There have been quite a few overseas franchise locations recently that have left the Trader Vic’s fold and gone their own way. All four India locations, for example, left this year and now operate as a chain called, “The Big Kahuna”.

This isn’t quite what’s going on here though. Check out this curious window sticker shown in one of the photos of the place available on the internet.

Photo from http://ilovealmaty.kz

It’s almost like the restaurant is independent now, but they’ve made a deal with Trader Vic’s corporate allowing them to sort-of pretend that they’re not.