Carroll's Reef and Tiki Room, Kent, WA (restaurant)

Name:Carroll's Reef and Tiki Room
Type:restaurant
Street:1001 East Valley Highway
City:Kent
State:WA
Zip:98031
country:USA
Phone:852-5422
Status:defunct

Description:
Carroll's Reef and Tiki Room offered banquet rooms and catering service and boasted ample free parking.

Again, all I know about Carroll's Reef and Tiki Room is what the matchbook has told me.

Seattle Times August 9, 1963

From the West Seattle Herald 1/18/1962,

"Mother's hobby assists son in new business"

As you might have guessed the article is focused on hobby
ceramics not The Reef. They did mention that the restaurant
had been recently opened.

aloha, tikicoma

Excellent findings! As mentioned before, home ceramics was a huge hobby in the 50s, especially amongst old ladies, so this makes sense.

Recently I've met a lady who was a polynesian dancer at the Reef as early as May 1962.
Her name is Tani. (all photos taken at the Reef)

Though she had previously performed modern dance at Stanford U. she first learned to hula in the Seattle area at the YMCA and over the years continued to add to her repertoire from dancers on islands across Polynesia.

She told me that the Reef was small and so was the stage, you can see it's just a spot that two dancers barely can perform on.

It was her first professional hula gig (here doing a Hilo Hattie style comic hula) and before long she put a troop together (Tani and the South Sea Islanders) and they started performing at the Golden Door in Seattle, a gig that lasted fifteen years.

She seemed to recall that the Reef wasn't open long and may have closed after a fire.
Forgive the bad photos, but I was taking shots of pictures with bad lighting.

aloha, tikicoma

On 2012-06-23 12:57, tikicoma wrote:
From the West Seattle Herald 1/18/1962,

"Mother's hobby assists son in new business"

As you might have guessed the article is focused on hobby
ceramics not The Reef. They did mention that the restaurant
had been recently opened.

aloha, tikicoma

I have this goodwill find that appears to be the same size and design as the one she's working on.
Mine has a marking of "H '79" underneath.