The Lahala House, Corpus Christi, TX (restaurant)

Name:The Lahala House
Type:restaurant
Street:4922 1/2 Avenue B
City:Corpus Christi
State:TX
Zip:
country:USA
Phone:
Status:unknown

Description:
Located on the water in Corpus Christi, owned and operated by Harry Porter, this was a classic Polynesian style restaurant run by a WW II veteran from the South Pacific. Destroyed by Hurricane Beulah in 1967.

Here is the postcard showing the interior.

The back of the card.

And here is a story from William J. Chriss on the internet providing some flavor to the history of this place.

"The Lahala House sat at the north end of Corpus Christi Beach. It was way, way out, or so it seemed to me. Gliding down the Harbor Bridge in our 1964 Oldsmobile station wagon towards a South Sea island paradise under the stars was just the beginning. After parking the wagon, we'd walk down a slippery wooden pier to the cozy little thatched hut that was the Lahala House. Once inside, I never ceased to be amazed.

We were met at the door by the ubiquitous and venerable proprietor, Harry Porter, perhaps the most colorful of Corpus Christi's many able restaurateurs. He was a big, white-haired fellow, in a tropical Hawaiian shirt and pastel pants, and he was always happy to see you. It was this man who invented both the LaHala House and the dressing of the same name.
Harry Porter, who was in the Navy in World War II, at some point must have served in the South Pacific because any veteran of that theater knows the indelible mark it leaves upon your psyche. Movies like "Mutiny on the Bounty" and "South Pacific" keep the dream alive. No one who has spent any time in the islands can ever leave them totally behind, and later, the real world never quite measures up, nor could it, to paradise.

"Hello, Doc," Harry would say to my Dad, "Come on in." The hairy forearms sticking out from his sleeves waved us towards a table that we thought he'd set especially for us. On past the bamboo bar my brother and I would saunter behind our host, knowing that a couple of complimentary "Roy Rogers" or "Shirley Temples" with little umbrellas in them would soon be sent our way. Grown-up stuff was everywhere, just like in a James Bond movie.

We would navigate through the waitresses bustling between tables, dressed up to look like Dorothy Lamour, barefooted and saronged, all lipstick and leis and red nail polish. Va va va voom! The aquariums everywhere, full of tropical fish, indirectly illuminated the smoky, intimate surroundings. This was the '60s, and men had wet hair, women tried to dress like Jackie Kennedy, and almost everybody smoked.

Hurricane Beulah came along in 1967 and wiped out the Lahala House, but Harry Porter just picked up his salad dressing, his original toasty croutons and cheese spread, and his little drink umbrellas, and moved them over to the Torch, his new restaurant on Alameda. Like everyone else, we followed him. Soon, he, too, was gone"

Would be nice to find out more.

DC

After a couple of years of looking for information on Corpus Christi's Lahala House and coming up empty, I scored a menu and matchbook cover within a week of each other. For posterity's sake, I share them with you here. The front of the menu:

The interior of the menu, with clipped-on bar insert.

The interior without the insert.

Detail sketch of the exterior.

Back of menu.

Detail of bar insert. I kinda wonder why they felt the insert necessary, as the bar info is printed on the back of the menu. Unless the insert wasn't actually an insert, but a stand-alone bar menu that got packaged with the menu at some point. I dunno.

The original address for Lahala House was 4922 1/2 Ave. B, but at some point in the 1960s the streets were renamed, which made it hard to pinpoint where the restaurant was actually located. Enter the matchbook cover, which must've been printed shortly before the place was destroyed by Hurricane Beulah. Gulfbreeze is the street name today, and the address places Lahala House at the northernmost point of the North Beach area, opposite what is now the U.S.S. Lexington and the Texas State Aquarium. The writeup above indicates owner Harry Porter opened a new restaurant, the Torch, following the hurricane, but a clipping I've found from the Austin American-Statesman indicates the Torch, along with the Lahala House in Austin (which became Steak Island) were both in operation by 1965.

Interior of matchbook doubled as a mini-menu. Anyone using it for such must've had good eyesight, because the print is small!

The most interesting takeaway from this is that the Lahala House didn't seem to serve tiki cocktails at all. The bar menu consists of beer and wine, with a "champagne cocktail." They have set-ups. Someone on Facebook suggested Texas' restrictive beverage laws likely played a role in limiting the drinks that could be offered. Which is a shame, but would also go a long way toward explaining why there were so very few tiki-style establishments in the state during tiki's heyday. It's hard to get into the full tiki spirit if rhum rhapsodies are a non-starter.

On 2019-04-27 21:30, Prikli Pear wrote:
After a couple of years of looking for information on Corpus Christi's Lahala House and coming up empty, I scored a menu and matchbook cover within a week of each other. For posterity's sake, I share them with you here. The front of the menu:

The interior of the menu, with clipped-on bar insert.

The interior without the insert.

Detail sketch of the exterior.

Back of menu.

Detail of bar insert. I kinda wonder why they felt the insert necessary, as the bar info is printed on the back of the menu. Unless the insert wasn't actually an insert, but a stand-alone bar menu that got packaged with the menu at some point. I dunno.

The original address for Lahala House was 4922 1/2 Ave. B, but at some point in the 1960s the streets were renamed, which made it hard to pinpoint where the restaurant was actually located. Enter the matchbook cover, which must've been printed shortly before the place was destroyed by Hurricane Beulah. Gulfbreeze is the street name today, and the address places Lahala House at the northernmost point of the North Beach area, opposite what is now the U.S.S. Lexington and the Texas State Aquarium. The writeup above indicates owner Harry Porter opened a new restaurant, the Torch, following the hurricane, but a clipping I've found from the Austin American-Statesman indicates the Torch, along with the Lahala House in Austin (which became Steak Island) were both in operation by 1965.

Interior of matchbook doubled as a mini-menu. Anyone using it for such must've had good eyesight, because the print is small!

The most interesting takeaway from this is that the Lahala House didn't seem to serve tiki cocktails at all. The bar menu consists of beer and wine, with a "champagne cocktail." They have set-ups. Someone on Facebook suggested Texas' restrictive beverage laws likely played a role in limiting the drinks that could be offered. Which is a shame, but would also go a long way toward explaining why there were so very few tiki-style establishments in the state during tiki's heyday. It's hard to get into the full tiki spirit if rhum rhapsodies are a non-starter.

Awesome work! And nice menu.

I just landed another Lahala House matchbook cover from a seller in Canada, if you can believe it. I haven't seen this design before. I'd say it predates the green one above by a decade. The map on the inside shows where it used to be, so if you're in Corpus and have a hankering to go see empty seashore, you know where to go: