NY times: NJ/NY tiki bar/haunts recap - General Tiki

MH Mr. Ho Tiki Socialite Boston, MA Joined: Oct 09, 2005 Posts: 488	MH Mr. Ho Posted posted on Fri, Dec 13, 2013 7:38 AM Brrrr! Let’s Drive to the South Seas Photos at http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/12/13/nyregion/brrrr-lets-drive-to-the-south-seas.html?emc=edit_tnt_20131213&tntemail0=y Slide Show \| Tiki Time A look at tiki restaurants in the New York area. By HELENE STAPINSKI December 12, 2013 WHEN late autumn’s chill sets in, my husband and I escape to the South Seas. Not the actual South Seas, like Tahiti or Tonga, but to bars and restaurants in and around New York City with fake palm trees, lighted puffer fish, pu pu platters, waterfalls and sweet drinks with umbrellas in them. Not to mention giant tiki heads. On a recent outing to Lee’s Hawaiian Islander in Lyndhurst, N.J., I posted online a photo of us eating in a bamboo hut booth, with puffer fish and large shell sconces lighting our table. When someone seeing the picture asked, “Are you on vacation?” I answered, “No, just New Jersey.” My favorite Polynesian spots are the old-school places like Lee’s, left over from the 1960s and ’70s, on the outskirts of the city. There are only a handful of those survivors left, in places like Staten Island, Queens, upstate New York and, of course, New Jersey. The original tiki spots in Manhattan, like Trader Vic’s and the Hawaii Kai, closed long ago, replaced by a newer generation of places, like Otto’s Shrunken Head on East 14th Street — where the owners have had their tongues firmly planted in cheek since opening in 2002. Otto’s, more a rock ’n’ roll dive bar that serves awesome tropical drinks, is great in a pinch. As is the Zombie Hut, a slightly more tasteful Brooklyn haunt with small surfboards for tables and a back porch with straw fringe and a canopy of actual trees. But when I want a real vintage tiki fix, I have to hop in the car, or at least board the ferry. Humuhumu Trott, who runs the website Critiki, a guide to tiki places around the world, said her favorite tiki spot is the Mai-Kai in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. She said the reason there are so few originals left in New York City is higher real estate prices. “The places where they have survived tend to be in safely forgotten corners,” she explained. “Places where there’s not a lot of pressure on real estate.” Another of her favorites — and mine — is Lun Wah, about a 45-minute drive from Midtown Manhattan. If you’re searching for paradise in Roselle, N.J., just west of Elizabeth, you might drive right past it. But if you look closely, Lun Wah is there, in a strip mall, near the 99 cent store and the eyeglass place. When you step inside, you’re transported to another era in another time zone. There are two rooms, with 18 bamboo hut booths, bamboo-covered walls and tikis with red glowing eyes. Practically every surface is covered in Polynesian splendor. Only the ceiling and bathrooms are unadorned. Though they won’t be, for long; Chris Pandolfo, who bought the restaurant in September, plans to up the ante. “I want to go even more over the top,” said Mr. Pandolfo, dressed in one of seven Hawaiian shirts he recently bought for his new job, one for each day of the week. “The ceiling being plain white is too boring for me.” He’ll redesign the restrooms, the website, the menu and — depending on what his landlord agrees to — he hopes to drag a wooden tiki outside to attract more customers. “At the very least, we’ll put a big tiki bar sign outside,” he said. The most surprising thing at Lun Wah is how good the food is. At most vintage tiki places, you’d be smart to stick with the flaming pu pu platter and not test the rest of the menu. For most tiki fans, good drinks — with fresh-squeezed juice and crushed ice, served in either a tiki head mug or a hollowed-out pineapple — are much more important than good grub. James Teitelbaum, author of “Tiki Road Trip: A Guide to Tiki Culture in North America,” uses what he calls the Tipsy factor to rate how good a tiki bar is. Tipsy, which stands for Tikis Per Square Yard, is a measure of how cluttered a place is, not only with tiki heads and masks, but also with shields, puffer fish, aquariums, waterfalls, rock walls, tropical landscape paintings, bamboo, nets, spears, outriggers hanging from the ceiling and any other Polynesian-themed flotsam the owners can dredge up. “My favorite places are the ones that don’t have windows — that way, it’s much easier to pretend you’re somewhere else,” Mr. Teitelbaum said, adding that being windowless is especially helpful in the colder months. “When people think tiki, they think summer. But I love it in the middle of winter, when it’s 20 degrees outside and snowing. That’s when I want to go to a tiki bar.” Lee’s Hawaiian Islander, a large orange building without windows, is high on the Tipsy scale. Inside is a two-story-high rock wall with a waterfall; a balcony, draped in twinkly white lights, has more tables. Bamboo and tiki heads are everywhere. There’s even a second rock wall behind the bar. Opened in 1974, Lee’s had a sister restaurant in nearby Clifton, which burned down in 2003. Tiki places come and go at an alarming rate in and around New York City. In the last 14 months, the most recent Manhattan incarnations — Lani Kai in SoHo and PKNY on the Lower East Side — were both shuttered. But Mr. Teitelbaum says that every few years, there seems to be a new tiki wave. The first one was in the 1930s, when places like Don the Beachcomber and Trader Vic’s started the craze in California. America’s love of tiki crested in the ’40s and ’50s, after World War II veterans returned from duty in the South Seas, then coasted along through the ’60s and into the ’70s, when it eventually diminished. In Ridgefield, N.J., Chan’s Dragon Inn, a faded pink stucco spot, is struggling to keep its tiki head above water. Though Chan’s, circa 1965, is still cluttered with tiki trappings, including a cascading waterfall made of actual giant clam shells, much of its vintage décor has been lifted over the decades by overenthusiastic customers with sticky fingers. The matching 200-pound carved wooden tiki pillars outside the restaurant were stolen years ago, as were the carved shields in the parking lot. Also gone missing are many of the vintage tiki mugs and glasses; ashtrays; salt and pepper shakers; and heavy metal tiki-head table lamps with wooden shades. Crowds were once three deep at its bar, but Chan’s has hit leaner times. “A lot of younger people don’t like tiki,” said Tiger Yee, an owner. “People in their 40s still remember from when they were kids. But the younger people say, ‘What is this?’ ” Many tiki fans tend to be those in their 40s and 50s raised on too many episodes of “Gilligan’s Island” and trips to the local Polynesian-themed hot spot. For my family, it was the Hawaii Kai in Manhattan, which closed in the late 1980s and is now preserved only in scenes from “Goodfellas.” (It’s the bar where Martin Scorsese introduces each of his characters.) One of the few old tiki spots left in New York City is Jade Island in Port Richmond, Staten Island, which opened in 1972. On a recent Saturday night, the place was packed with customers looking for a good, cheap Chinese meal. Waiters were dressed in Hawaiian shirts and were smiling, not a guarantee at many of the vintage places, where waiters can be brusque or downright rude. On our first visit to Jade Island years ago, our 4-year-old son ordered a virgin piña colada, but when it arrived, it was spiked with rum. He made a face; we took a taste and summoned the waiter, who insisted it was virgin. But then he, too, took a sip, grimaced and gladly whisked it away. In keeping with the name, most of the décor at Jade Island is green: big green leather booths, a thick green leather-bound menu, green starfish lamps and green carpet. There’s not one, but two waterfalls, and a dozen bamboo hut booths. Since signing a new 10-year lease last year, the owner, Johnny Yip, set about making a few improvements. Tiki heads were repainted in bright colors, and new bamboo wallpaper was installed. “But we still keep the old style,” Mr. Yip said. The only other old-school tiki survivor in the five boroughs is in Fresh Meadows, Queens. It is King Yum, and Robin Ng, the owner, claims that it’s the oldest Chinese restaurant in Queens. His father, Jimmy, opened the place in 1953, though it didn’t go tiki until the mid-’70s. “It was a fad that was coming in at the time, and so my father jumped on the bandwagon,” Mr. Ng said. Though King Yum still has a high Tipsy factor, some of its tiki décor was removed recently, when the Cooking Channel redecorated it for an episode of “Restaurant Redemption,” broadcast in October. Some of the bamboo on the walls was pulled out, as were the Hawaiian wallpaper and fake palm trees, replaced by billowy white curtains. “I don’t miss the palm trees,” Mr. Ng said. “They got too dusty.” Mr. Ng, who grew up working in the restaurant, took classes at the Culinary Institute of America, so the food here is well worth venturing past the pu pu platter’s spare ribs and shrimp toast. Because his father used to love to sing, the place also has a thatched-roof stage. Until the 1980s, it was used for Polynesian floor shows. Now the stage is used for karaoke, on Friday nights. For a Polynesian floor show, it seems that the only place left in New York State is the Tiki Resort in Lake George, a four-hour drive from Manhattan that lands you smack back in 1960, when the motel was founded. There are 32 tikis on site, in and around the sloping A-frame buildings, two swimming pools and a perfectly preserved bar — the Paradise Lounge — with two outriggers hanging overhead and a fire pit out back. At the resort’s downstairs Waikiki Supper Club, the musician Jimmy Faatauvaa leads his whole family in a fire-eating, hula-dancing Polynesian spectacular. Unfortunately, the show — and the resort — is open only seasonally, from May to mid-October. But every summer since 2009, the Fraternal Order of Moai — a serious group of tiki aficionados — has held Ohana, the Luau at the Lake, a long-weekend celebration, at the Tiki Resort, renting all 110 rooms, hosting several bands, roasting a pig and setting up a room-to-room bar crawl, where members mix their own concoctions. A marketplace with vintage LPs, mugs, clothes and all kinds of tiki collectibles is set up as well. Mr. Faatauvaa, who was born on Samoa and grew up in Hawaii, travels from Florida every season to play at the Tiki Resort, and says he looks forward to the annual Ohana gathering. “It’s a perfect place for us,” said Mr. Faatauvaa, who’s been playing there for two decades. “This place looks more like the islands than the islands.”
L LoriLovesTiki Tiki Socialite NJ Joined: Jul 03, 2011 Posts: 1339	L LoriLovesTiki Posted posted on Fri, Dec 13, 2013 7:37 PM Mr. Ho, What a well-written, comprehensive report of the NY/NJ tiki scene. I'm from NJ and I've been to Lee's Hawaiian Islander but none of the other places. I wasn't so sure about the Chinese Restaurant does tiki thing but after reading your post I've reconsidered. I'll be heading to Lu Wah as soon as possible and a trip to Otto's has been on my to-do list for the past year already. Many thanks for writing about my home area. It is most appreciated!

Brrrr! Let’s Drive to the South Seas

Photos at http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/12/13/nyregion/brrrr-lets-drive-to-the-south-seas.html?emc=edit_tnt_20131213&tntemail0=y

Slide Show | Tiki Time A look at tiki restaurants in the New York area.
By HELENE STAPINSKI
December 12, 2013
WHEN late autumn’s chill sets in, my husband and I escape to the South Seas. Not the actual South Seas, like Tahiti or Tonga, but to bars and restaurants in and around New York City with fake palm trees, lighted puffer fish, pu pu platters, waterfalls and sweet drinks with umbrellas in them. Not to mention giant tiki heads.

On a recent outing to Lee’s Hawaiian Islander in Lyndhurst, N.J., I posted online a photo of us eating in a bamboo hut booth, with puffer fish and large shell sconces lighting our table. When someone seeing the picture asked, “Are you on vacation?” I answered, “No, just New Jersey.”

My favorite Polynesian spots are the old-school places like Lee’s, left over from the 1960s and ’70s, on the outskirts of the city. There are only a handful of those survivors left, in places like Staten Island, Queens, upstate New York and, of course, New Jersey. The original tiki spots in Manhattan, like Trader Vic’s and the Hawaii Kai, closed long ago, replaced by a newer generation of places, like Otto’s Shrunken Head on East 14th Street — where the owners have had their tongues firmly planted in cheek since opening in 2002.

Otto’s, more a rock ’n’ roll dive bar that serves awesome tropical drinks, is great in a pinch. As is the Zombie Hut, a slightly more tasteful Brooklyn haunt with small surfboards for tables and a back porch with straw fringe and a canopy of actual trees. But when I want a real vintage tiki fix, I have to hop in the car, or at least board the ferry.

Humuhumu Trott, who runs the website Critiki, a guide to tiki places around the world, said her favorite tiki spot is the Mai-Kai in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. She said the reason there are so few originals left in New York City is higher real estate prices.

“The places where they have survived tend to be in safely forgotten corners,” she explained. “Places where there’s not a lot of pressure on real estate.”

Another of her favorites — and mine — is Lun Wah, about a 45-minute drive from Midtown Manhattan. If you’re searching for paradise in Roselle, N.J., just west of Elizabeth, you might drive right past it. But if you look closely, Lun Wah is there, in a strip mall, near the 99 cent store and the eyeglass place.

When you step inside, you’re transported to another era in another time zone. There are two rooms, with 18 bamboo hut booths, bamboo-covered walls and tikis with red glowing eyes. Practically every surface is covered in Polynesian splendor. Only the ceiling and bathrooms are unadorned. Though they won’t be, for long; Chris Pandolfo, who bought the restaurant in September, plans to up the ante.

“I want to go even more over the top,” said Mr. Pandolfo, dressed in one of seven Hawaiian shirts he recently bought for his new job, one for each day of the week. “The ceiling being plain white is too boring for me.”

He’ll redesign the restrooms, the website, the menu and — depending on what his landlord agrees to — he hopes to drag a wooden tiki outside to attract more customers. “At the very least, we’ll put a big tiki bar sign outside,” he said.

The most surprising thing at Lun Wah is how good the food is. At most vintage tiki places, you’d be smart to stick with the flaming pu pu platter and not test the rest of the menu. For most tiki fans, good drinks — with fresh-squeezed juice and crushed ice, served in either a tiki head mug or a hollowed-out pineapple — are much more important than good grub.

James Teitelbaum, author of “Tiki Road Trip: A Guide to Tiki Culture in North America,” uses what he calls the Tipsy factor to rate how good a tiki bar is. Tipsy, which stands for Tikis Per Square Yard, is a measure of how cluttered a place is, not only with tiki heads and masks, but also with shields, puffer fish, aquariums, waterfalls, rock walls, tropical landscape paintings, bamboo, nets, spears, outriggers hanging from the ceiling and any other Polynesian-themed flotsam the owners can dredge up.

“My favorite places are the ones that don’t have windows — that way, it’s much easier to pretend you’re somewhere else,” Mr. Teitelbaum said, adding that being windowless is especially helpful in the colder months. “When people think tiki, they think summer. But I love it in the middle of winter, when it’s 20 degrees outside and snowing. That’s when I want to go to a tiki bar.”

Lee’s Hawaiian Islander, a large orange building without windows, is high on the Tipsy scale. Inside is a two-story-high rock wall with a waterfall; a balcony, draped in twinkly white lights, has more tables. Bamboo and tiki heads are everywhere. There’s even a second rock wall behind the bar. Opened in 1974, Lee’s had a sister restaurant in nearby Clifton, which burned down in 2003.

Tiki places come and go at an alarming rate in and around New York City. In the last 14 months, the most recent Manhattan incarnations — Lani Kai in SoHo and PKNY on the Lower East Side — were both shuttered. But Mr. Teitelbaum says that every few years, there seems to be a new tiki wave.

The first one was in the 1930s, when places like Don the Beachcomber and Trader Vic’s started the craze in California. America’s love of tiki crested in the ’40s and ’50s, after World War II veterans returned from duty in the South Seas, then coasted along through the ’60s and into the ’70s, when it eventually diminished.

In Ridgefield, N.J., Chan’s Dragon Inn, a faded pink stucco spot, is struggling to keep its tiki head above water. Though Chan’s, circa 1965, is still cluttered with tiki trappings, including a cascading waterfall made of actual giant clam shells, much of its vintage décor has been lifted over the decades by overenthusiastic customers with sticky fingers. The matching 200-pound carved wooden tiki pillars outside the restaurant were stolen years ago, as were the carved shields in the parking lot. Also gone missing are many of the vintage tiki mugs and glasses; ashtrays; salt and pepper shakers; and heavy metal tiki-head table lamps with wooden shades.

Crowds were once three deep at its bar, but Chan’s has hit leaner times. “A lot of younger people don’t like tiki,” said Tiger Yee, an owner. “People in their 40s still remember from when they were kids. But the younger people say, ‘What is this?’ ”

Many tiki fans tend to be those in their 40s and 50s raised on too many episodes of “Gilligan’s Island” and trips to the local Polynesian-themed hot spot. For my family, it was the Hawaii Kai in Manhattan, which closed in the late 1980s and is now preserved only in scenes from “Goodfellas.” (It’s the bar where Martin Scorsese introduces each of his characters.)

One of the few old tiki spots left in New York City is Jade Island in Port Richmond, Staten Island, which opened in 1972. On a recent Saturday night, the place was packed with customers looking for a good, cheap Chinese meal. Waiters were dressed in Hawaiian shirts and were smiling, not a guarantee at many of the vintage places, where waiters can be brusque or downright rude.

On our first visit to Jade Island years ago, our 4-year-old son ordered a virgin piña colada, but when it arrived, it was spiked with rum. He made a face; we took a taste and summoned the waiter, who insisted it was virgin. But then he, too, took a sip, grimaced and gladly whisked it away.

In keeping with the name, most of the décor at Jade Island is green: big green leather booths, a thick green leather-bound menu, green starfish lamps and green carpet. There’s not one, but two waterfalls, and a dozen bamboo hut booths.

Since signing a new 10-year lease last year, the owner, Johnny Yip, set about making a few improvements. Tiki heads were repainted in bright colors, and new bamboo wallpaper was installed. “But we still keep the old style,” Mr. Yip said.

The only other old-school tiki survivor in the five boroughs is in Fresh Meadows, Queens. It is King Yum, and Robin Ng, the owner, claims that it’s the oldest Chinese restaurant in Queens. His father, Jimmy, opened the place in 1953, though it didn’t go tiki until the mid-’70s. “It was a fad that was coming in at the time, and so my father jumped on the bandwagon,” Mr. Ng said.

Though King Yum still has a high Tipsy factor, some of its tiki décor was removed recently, when the Cooking Channel redecorated it for an episode of “Restaurant Redemption,” broadcast in October. Some of the bamboo on the walls was pulled out, as were the Hawaiian wallpaper and fake palm trees, replaced by billowy white curtains.

“I don’t miss the palm trees,” Mr. Ng said. “They got too dusty.”

Mr. Ng, who grew up working in the restaurant, took classes at the Culinary Institute of America, so the food here is well worth venturing past the pu pu platter’s spare ribs and shrimp toast. Because his father used to love to sing, the place also has a thatched-roof stage. Until the 1980s, it was used for Polynesian floor shows. Now the stage is used for karaoke, on Friday nights.

For a Polynesian floor show, it seems that the only place left in New York State is the Tiki Resort in Lake George, a four-hour drive from Manhattan that lands you smack back in 1960, when the motel was founded. There are 32 tikis on site, in and around the sloping A-frame buildings, two swimming pools and a perfectly preserved bar — the Paradise Lounge — with two outriggers hanging overhead and a fire pit out back.

At the resort’s downstairs Waikiki Supper Club, the musician Jimmy Faatauvaa leads his whole family in a fire-eating, hula-dancing Polynesian spectacular. Unfortunately, the show — and the resort — is open only seasonally, from May to mid-October.

But every summer since 2009, the Fraternal Order of Moai — a serious group of tiki aficionados — has held Ohana, the Luau at the Lake, a long-weekend celebration, at the Tiki Resort, renting all 110 rooms, hosting several bands, roasting a pig and setting up a room-to-room bar crawl, where members mix their own concoctions. A marketplace with vintage LPs, mugs, clothes and all kinds of tiki collectibles is set up as well.

Mr. Faatauvaa, who was born on Samoa and grew up in Hawaii, travels from Florida every season to play at the Tiki Resort, and says he looks forward to the annual Ohana gathering.

“It’s a perfect place for us,” said Mr. Faatauvaa, who’s been playing there for two decades. “This place looks more like the islands than the islands.”