Tiki Supper Club, Mobile, AL (restaurant)

Name:Tiki Supper Club
Type:restaurant
Street:
City:Mobile
State:AL
Zip:
country:USA
Phone:
Status:defunct

Description:
I was always intrigued by this funky looking 70's Tiki joint from the matchbook that was in The Book of Tiki.

(What is that girl on the right wearing??)

Maybe they were trying to emulate that more classic look captured in this postcard from the Kahiki.

These menus were on ebay a while back showing some more the the "Tiki" graphics.

They served Tiki Burgers.

Looks like one of the places that signafied the beginning of the end.

DC

Wow! The Tiki rendering on the menu cover is even worse than the one on the matchbook - and that was hard to do! :)

Good idea to put this up so more material might surface from this obscure location.

I did some internet sleuthing on this. I found some old telephone books on the web which list the restaurant at this address:

Tiki Supper Club
421 Holcombe Avenue
Mobile, AL 36606

The listing was in all the books I was able to find, the earliest being 1964 and the latest 1977.

I've also been in contact with Malcolm Steiner, author of "Old Mobile Restaurants", who claims his book mentions the restaurant and even includes photos. The book can be purchased from http://oldmobilerestaurants.com

I'm not really in a position to spend $ to pursue this but perhaps one of you is. A word of warning though, even if somebody already owns the book, is it OK for that person to post information or photographs taken from it? I'm thinking the answer is no - at least not without obtaining the author's permission.

I'd say that is Fair Use. It promotes the work and does not benefit financially and does not take any value from it. Not much different from doing a review and including snippets.

Not much progress on this. I’ve learned the building was originally a restaurant named “Chick-N-Box” (not sure I like the sound of that name or not) which was sold (when?) to James P. “Jimmy” Vallas. Mr. Vallas was born in 1921 probably in Ohio. His parents were immigrants from Greece. He had an older sister and three younger brothers, many or all of whom had settled in Mobile, Alabama and between them they owned a number of clubs and restaurants there.

I don’t know if Jimmy Vallas continued to operate the Chick-N-Box as such for a while or not, but at some point (I’m guessing 1964 or earlier) he converted the Chick-N-Box to the Tiki Supper Club. Later (mid 1970’s?) the restaurant became Nights of Broadway, and then The Entertainer Dinner Theater. I don’t know if Mr. Vallas sold the Tiki Supper Club or if he continued to own the restaurant through these transformations. I also don’t know what ultimately happened to the place. For at least the last several years the building (or a newer building on the same lot?) has housed a children’s day care center.

I saw this matchbook on eBay recently. It's slightly different from the one Dustycajun posted at the top of this thread.

It shows that apparently the Tiki Supper Club did not REPLACE the Chick-N-Box Restaurant as I had stated in my previous post but, at least for a while, existed together with and right next to it. I wonder if they shared the same building?