USA Today's 10 Best Tiki Bars Around the USA

This has been one of the most interesting threads that I've seen on TC in a while!
Why in the world does Don the Beachcomber (Sam's Seafood) keep getting overlooked by these kinds of lists? The size, decor and legacy is surely worth some kind of mention. It has to be one of the biggest remaining tiki restaurants, right??

Found on websites.
Never been to Don’s but is it this big?
Mai Kai is huge.

• The Mai-Kai is a very large, high-volume restaurant/bar. The facility includes eight dining areas and a bar/lounge that combined seat more than 700. I was told by the owner that at the restaurant’s peak, they served 1,600 diners a night for seven nights a week in season and that business is not off that much. The kitchen and service bars alone take up 10,000 square feet. The staff of mixolgoists, servers, performers and other staff totals more than 150 workers.

Plus a
30,000 square foot tropical garden

You need to also remember with these media outlets cash is king and you got to pay to play.
In short if you take out ads or promote the magazine or paper that writes these articles
then you get press.
Sure there are a few tokens and "friends of" that get in, but not many.

You don't think these Mags and papers are trying to give you the whole truth and nothing but do you.

There is a hot dog place in Columbus that the media LOOVES, they cant even get the "hot" part right in the hot dog recipe, (more like a lukewarm dog) but they do advertise.

That whole news guy trying to help the little guy just because "it's the right thing to do"
is Hollywood BS.

Disney would have had the feed the birds lady hauled off the steps of his park if she sat there.

On 2014-12-02 11:00, kkocka wrote:

On 2014-11-30 22:47, Ragbag Comics wrote:
I will drive hours for atmosphere... nice drinks just require having the proper ingredients and knowing how to mix them.

The problem is, your average run-of-the-mill bar doesn't do that. Even those with a so called "cocktail menu" will list their mai tai with pineapple and grenadine.

Yer definitely right about that.

I think the primary issue is that bartenders in the 70's and 80's got lazy (something the Bum has worked so hard to turn around with his books, shining a light on good drinks...) and a drink like the Mai Tai or the Zombie requires enough precision and different (expensive) ingredients that can't really be used in a wide variety of drinks, that the craft of making proper tropicals devolved much more quickly than other classic cocktails, like the Manhattan (3 ingredients) or a martini (2 ingredients.) Bartending became opening a Miller Lite, and here we are, clawing our way back up from the domestic beer gutter. It makes sense... the faster you can make drinks, the more you can churn out, the faster you can sell somebody another one. Before long... voila: TGI Friday's pre-mixed Mudslides...

I went through bartending school shortly after college to help make extra scratch, and the "tropical" section was laughable. They actually TEACH people to make a Mai Tai with pineapple juice and grenadine... a god damned travesty. With this, I should say, I've had good friends over the years who are professional bartenders at working-class bars who've asked me if there's some way to "riff" the taste of a classic Mai Tai or a Don's Zombie with standard ingredients found in any bar...
it just can't be done, unfortunately. And talking most bar owners into stocking Orgeat, Lemonhart 151, or even fresh fruit is pretty much a losing proposition in most circumstances.

I, too, find this totally depressing. But the thought process is changing... and while I'm way more hyped on finding an old, classic Tiki bar with the atmospheric elements in place and resigning myself drinking something basic and hard to screw up like an Old Fashioned than I am to go to a more sterile craft cocktail bar and get a perfectly crafted Don's Zombie... that's just my personal preference. If I wasn't able to make a proper Mai Tai at home, I'd probably be more bummed out about it.

I think a larger, even more insane (to me) issue in most bars is you can't even get a nice rum neat these days, even in some purported "craft" bars... the best stuff a bar typically has is usually Kraken or something, which is fine, but I ain't especially wanting to drink it on its own any time soon. Rum in most bars... Bacardi, Malibu (BLECH!), Captain Morgan (MORE BLECH!), and (if you're lucky) some basic Cruzan or Meyers's. That's about it. The devolution of RUM, even moreso than cocktails is pretty pathetic. But it's changing... there are a few just run of the mill base-level bars here in Chicago you can get El Dorado, at least, and Smith & Cross and some others at more craft-y places.

Whiskey turned it around... most bars now, you're not limited to Jim and Jack; you can usually get a nice stiff Bulleit or Knob Creek. This kinda painfully slow change in thinking in the bar world (that whiskey can be a premium spirit... and now, hopefully, rum, too) I think is due, almost entirely, in the craft cocktail explosion. Now even in small towns, you can at least get a premium bourbon, decent Gin, and maybe even a nice single malt scotch.

So there's hope. And I hope to illustrate that I'm not trying to say craft cocktails or craft cocktail bars are bad... they're not, by a long shot. They're doing good work... anything that brings more knowledge about GOOD spirits to the public is a positive change, and increases the chance we can pull some people out of the "captain and coke" or "vodka red bull" tailspin.

And I should clarify, I don't mean, specifically, to crap on Three Dots - it's an excellent craft cocktail bar. Their drinks are stellar, and if you go when they open or on an off night, you'll get a killer soundtrack (I'm a bit of a nerd in this area, so I've been stoked to hear obscure stuff I love like Takeshi Terauchi & the Bunnies, Los Saicos, and Preston Epps come on while we've been there) and a nice, chill atmosphere. Their barstaff is bar-none... they are ace at what they do. I understand they have had to walk a very careful line... they're in a mega-douche trendy neighborhood that is also chock-a-block with tourists. I get why they have to have the DJ's and crappy dance music on weekends and why it's crowded. I also get why they couldn't exactly go full-bore Mai Kai on the place, decor-wise. It's very pleasant when it's very pleasant, you just aren't ever really sure if you're gonna get Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde, which is unfortunate.

Just wanted to clarify that... we were at Three Dots just a little while ago and had a spectacular time. But it was a slow night. That being said (and speaking to the larger discussion here) I, personally, consider it a very nice cocktail bar more than a proper Tiki bar, which is why I find it kinda crazy it's on every "top Tiki bar" list I've seen since pretty much the day they opened. To me, "Tiki" is more of a a fully-rounded, all-senses-engaged aesthetic than just drinks, and atmosphere and aesthetic is something that seems to be missing in a lot of new places (Tiki or not), as we've been discussing. And also as we've been discussing, it's all about personal preference for where you spend your money. At the end of the day, these are businesses... they gotta do what they gotta do to get people in, engaged, and keep the cash flowing. I would argue, that a place like Hala Kahiki that's aesthetically a Tiki wonderland couldn't even really HAVE a premium craft cocktail program. At base level, it's too expensive. They have a huge, dedicated local following, and it's in a very blue collar neighborhood. Most people are not going to consistently spend $12 or $15 per drink there, especially not with any regularity. Even $10 is a stretch... most of their drinks are around $6 or $7. Try making a proper craft tiki drink for $6 and still turn a profit. It can't be done (at least not in Chicago.) So, with the history and the experience of being there, I give them a pass. And if it's cheaper to use a pre-mix than squeeze limes, so be it. I'll play along... I'm just passing through. With luck, HK will still be making tropical drinks long after I'm gone, just as they did years before I was alive.

And Tikiskip: to your point about "pay to play" politics with this stuff, you are 100% correct and really hit the nail on the head with something that's bothered me about a lot of these lists - there's a whole lotta "you scratch my back, I scratch yours" that goes on in the press world, especially these days. And I can't speak to some of the other repeat list-ers (while both classic-era US Trader Vic's sit on the sidelines), but Three Dots is owned by Lettuce Entertain You, which is an absolutely MASSIVE hospitality group in Chicago. So they're promoting their businesses at a corporate level that is out of reach of most small business owners (like the Fongs at Chef Shangri-La, or the Sacharski's at Hala Kahiki) That doesn't make them better or worse than anyone else... but there's certainly a financial, palm-greasing advantage there.

So the lesson, perhaps, is that like most things in America, the more money involved, the "better" something is perceived as being.

To me, when you factor out the dollars being spent to oil the machine, no place "better" or "worse..." it's all subjective, which, again, is why these lists are kinda silly.

--Pete

Good points Pete.

"but Three Dots is owned by Lettuce Entertain You, which is an absolutely MASSIVE hospitality group in Chicago. So they're promoting their businesses at a corporate level that is out of reach of most small business owners (like the Fongs at Chef Shangri-La, or the Sacharski's at Hala Kahiki) That doesn't make them better or worse than anyone else... but there's certainly a financial, palm-greasing advantage there."

And that's the deal with the hot dog joint I was talking about too.
My wife works for a company that pays her ALL day, every day, to do nothing but find ways to make this
company she works for do better on lists just like these.
Hale Kahiki does not do much PR I would bet.

BUT we don't have to buy into that S#^t.
This day and age is all about Public perception, it's why people stand in line for a crappy well, anything.
Too bad, the real days of good restaurants and bars are soon going away.
THIS is why I go to small places that have been around for a long time, there's no hype, they are busy
because it's a great place and they really care about the customer, not because of some list or PR.

A bad review may have helped take down The Tropical Bistro here in Columbus, too bad, not a
great place but they were trying and would have been great or at least close.
So that's what this PR world does, it kills small places that care and have a heart and lets the
big hospitality groups kill the small.

If your product sucks you should die large or small I should add.

So true, this culture of instant gratification & apathetic lack of fealty to anything
It is why we don't have nice things anymore, why we need to support & covet, what little is left
It is an attitude I find distasteful in younger folks who just don't seem to care about much of anything today.

TikiSkip, yes, Dons is big. I've been to the Mai Kai too (hell, I played it a couple of years ago). It's not THAT big, but it IS bigger than most restaurants, I would say. Two large indoor waterfalls, Six different rooms (three with stages), a room FULL of stuff from Bosko's short lived Taboo Cove, as well as the many pufferfish that were in the Luau in Beverly Hills (the recent incarnation, not Stephen Crane's), more vintage Milan Guanko tikis than you could imagine… That just touches on it. It has everything that you could want in a tiki bar. Most nights they are playing exotica CDs that I gave them… I'm still working on getting them to play DVDs of vintage Hawaii, rather than sports in the bar….

I totally 'get' the greasing of the list makers though too...

On 2014-12-04 19:10, Atomic Tiki Punk wrote:
So true, this culture of instant gratification & apathetic lack of fealty to anything
It is why we don't have nice things anymore, why we need to support & covet, what little is left
It is an attitude I find distasteful in younger folks who just don't seem to care about much of anything today.

Wouldn't the blame for the lack of tiki bars be in the older generations that stopped going to them many years ago? :D

At the same time, instant gratification really doesn't have anything to do with this considering it wasn't replaced with an instant tiki mix or something.

Yet another list but narrowed down to one city

LAist: Best Tiki Bars in Los Angeles

They did take some liberties and went outside of the county.

On 2015-01-07 17:38, King Bushwich the 33rd wrote:
Yet another list but narrowed down to one city

LAist: Best Tiki Bars in Los Angeles

They did take some liberties and went outside of the county.

Spike should be happy now. :wink:

It has been awhile since Don's got some loving in these lists
& this list is about the best "Tiki Bars" not best cocktails.

Damn nine of the Ten. Now I have to go to Montana. Love the other 8, Tiki Tolteca in New Orleans can be skipped. All of the others are awesome!!!!

On 2015-01-18 16:27, tamminjoe wrote:
Damn nine of the Ten. ...

That's pretty impressive. Well done Tammi and Joe!