Rhode Island tiki

I typed in the following URL to see if the new Islander Restaurant in Seattle had a web site and I got the home page of a place called the Islander in Warwick, Rhode Island. They have tropical drinks, volcano bowls, and Polynesian food. I checked the Tiki Bar Review Pages and didn't see it listed, and I don't have my copy of Tiki Road Trip with me at work. Has anyone been there? Why don't some of our Atlantic Seaboard members check it out?

http://www.theislanderrestaurant.com/

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[ Edited by: thejab on 2003-07-24 12:06 ]

Nothing in TRT about it.

I am going to RI in a couple weeks, I will try and check it out...

if i can scrounge up some cash, i will check it out ASAP. the nightmare summer session ends next week, so i'll have some time.
(new rhode island resident here.)

Good luck on your adventure.

Something that hits close to home for my first post. Don't bother checking out the Islander in Warwick. It is now a plain ole Chinese restaurant with a new modern design. The drinks are so so. The islander used to have somewhat of a tiki atmosphere until 1990 or so; I remember it being dark and having a fountain in the middle. For a much more authentic tiki atmosphere check out China Sea on Post Rd. It's small, the drinks are amazing, funky resin chunk globe lights, lots o bamboo, and a thatched roof over the drink prep area. The place hasn't been touched in over 20 years. Still use Orchids mugs. Please leave them there.

in the immortal words of charlie brown -
"AAAAUUUUUUUUGH!"

i hate hearing about places that have become detikified. thanks for saving us the disappointment in person, though, chris.

will check the other place you mentioned instead. still haven't had a chance to check out mai tai polynesian or hawaiian isle. (see "tiki road trip.")
any word on those?

r

I grew up in Rhode Island about 2 miles from China Seas, I am sooooo glad to here it is intact. That was the place I forced my folks to take me ever year on my birthday.

It was fabulous!

Rain,
Hawaiin Isle is not in RI. This listing was a typo - there is no Concord, RI - and the area code is listed as 603 (New Hampshire)
Sorry to say, but forget about Mai Tai Polynesian - it is modern and worse than the Islander. I don't know what it used to look like. Although the owners pissed me off, the Mon Ku in Attleboro on RT. 1 still has a significant number of tikis. The place has been modernized with a new tropical feel. The plates are original with a little tiki emblazoned on them. They have fake palm trees, many masks, and lots of tikis of different sizes. They used to have tv commercials in the 70's & 80's showcasing their "polynesian splendor."

man, i'm glad you signed up here before i wasted my time.
there are still two places to check out, though, so that's good.

i was just telling a friend how cool it would be to open a tiki bar here in downtown providence, or maybe down on water street by the canal. if i didn't have to worry about student loans, i'd think about a small business loan.

I ate at the Mon Kau tonight, it was as Chris said, lots of good masks, a real good mural painted around the wall, and some fake palms around, like the ones you can get at a party store. There were also a quite a few real lame fish themed paintings on the wall,which couldn't hold a candle to the masks. I had a Dr. Funk to drink, which was billed as a classical island drink, has anyone ever heard of this one before? The food was not bad, the manager or owner, I don't know which, told me that the new Polynesian places coming in now don't know anything about the intracracies of a Pu-Pu platter, which I thought was a hoot, and has earned him a return visit from me. Thanks everyone for the posts, I never would have gone hunting for the place without it. It is about three miles south on route 1 from where I-95 and I 295 come together in Attleboro, Ma.

ok, had dinner at China Sea on friday night.

the food wasn't bad. the drinks were pretty good - i had a suffering bastard, my friend had a dragon lady. the decor was pretty happening - i love the lamps that chris mentioned.
the problem i had with the place was the vibe - despite the drinks and decor and food, there was something a little disconcerting. i figured it out about 10 minutes in --- there was no ambient noise or music. all i could hear were little kids yapping and other tables' conversations. an easy fix, no doubt, just wish they'd do it. the service staff was rather apathetic, as well, but not so much that i was bothered. overall, probably worth a visit or two. if they'd put some good tunes on, definitely worth a few visits.
r

where is Rhode Island is the China Seas? I am going to be in RI this weekend.

China Sea can be found at 1278 Post Rd. in Warwick, RI 401.467.7440. It is about 2-3 miles north of the airport on the right hand side. If you take the Rt. 37 East/Warwick exit on I-95 and follow to Rt. 1 North (Post Rd.)the China Sea will be less than a mile up on your right. True, there is no music and at times the clientel can be somewhat questionable; however I enjoy thier vegetarian food and have never had a bad drink there. Thier tofu or chicken curry has french fries in it - a perfect example of how some of these places mixed and matched ingredients in a way that made them seem "exotic." The service gets better the more times you visit.

i'll be checking it out again.

just as a point of trivia - if you ever get a chance to check out peruvian food, you'll notice that a great deal of it is basically chinese food with french fries added in. the owners of this little peruvian joint in florida i used to visit mentioned that there is a huge asian influence in peru.

i think i'll try to check out Mon Ku this week.
r

On 2003-07-30 19:37, tiki.head wrote:
I had a Dr. Funk to drink, which was billed as a classical island drink, has anyone ever heard of this one before?

Dr. Funk, or sometimes Dr. Funk of Tahiti, or sometimes Dr. Fong, is a fairly common drink that seems to appear most frequently in those Chinese Food/Tropical Drink hybrid places that I call 'Type III' in TRT.

No two recipes seem to be the same; I conjecture that the drink is an excuse for Asian restaurants to make use of their Fu Manchu mugs!

we hit Mon Kou last night (that's the correct spelling) for a couple of drinks.
haven't eaten there yet, but the drinks weren't bad and the decor was pretty cool. more tropical than tiki, but they did have a whole buncha cool masks. the bar area was SUPER friendly and attentive. the guy in the regular area was pissed that we were just having drinks and made us move to the bar. he was very brusque.
overall, good. i'll definitely be making a return visit.

Does anybody know if China Seas is open for lunch?

I will be blowing through that way next Thursday, on my way to family vacation in Cape Cod, and have once again convinced my folks that it is worth the stop.

And I felt so special last week...
http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=5215&forum=1

your mojo should not depleted, china seas is super-special!!!! like i implied in previous posts...it is my birthday paradise!

Thanks for the encouragement Inky.
I'm flying back to Providence the Tuesday after Labor Day for two weeks. Rain and I are sort of planning to visit the Kowloon, and maybe a return to the China Sea or whatever else is around, the weekend of the 5th, 6th, 7th. Send me an e-mail, or respond to this thread with the preferred date, if anyone is interested in sharing tiki New England style.
KG

yes, i will be back in RI as of the 5th, so KG and i will be plundering tiki paradises. until then - muggler and i et al will be toasting something or other tomorrow night.

i still think a south seas pirate/tiki place would be cool. pirates of the polynesian... s... or something. a perfect dockside place for new england, methinks.

Hey Now Rain,

Great idea! How about a floating bar. Put it in an old boat hull and tie it up down on the docks of the city. I used to work on a floating restaurant (the S.S. Victoria) that was tied up by the Hot Club. They did a pretty good business, and that was back when downcity Providence was a dive. Does anybody have an old pirate ship for sale?

China Sea has been changed forever. The interior has pretty much been gutted. All the bamboo and thatch is gone; I checked out the dumpster - nothing salvageable. There is a little bit of original decor left such as the 6 hanging lucite chunk globe lamps, the fountain (which is being restored,) the kitchen door (kind of like a porthole.) The room will probably be more sleek and brighter when done. So far the menu has stayed the same and the bar still has all the old mugs and bowls. Still the best drinks in RI.

On 2005-09-06 19:44, CHRIS wrote:
China Sea has been changed forever. The interior has pretty much been gutted. All the bamboo and thatch is gone; I checked out the dumpster - nothing salvageable. There is a little bit of original decor left such as the 6 hanging lucite chunk globe lamps, the fountain (which is being restored,) the kitchen door (kind of like a porthole.) The room will probably be more sleek and brighter when done. So far the menu has stayed the same and the bar still has all the old mugs and bowls. Still the best drinks in RI.

No way! I just went there for the 1st time a couple of months ago and was impressed the vintage decor. Too bad it's mostly gone now.

What's left in RI now? I think just the Ho Kong in Woonsocket - right?

I

My family and I just came back from the Mon-Kou.

We were searching for another Polynesian restaurant near the Emerald Square Mall that we dined at, twice, about nine or ten years ago (see bottom of this post).

We drove all around and couldn't find it. At first, I thought it may have been the "Kai-Lua" (or something like that) but, when I went in, it looked like an old strip club in the latter stages of bankruptcy -- so we left to keep searching.

We passed the Mon-Kou and my wife was sure that that was the place. It looked like it (inside and out) but I am positive it wasn't called "Mon-Kou" (as we had a private joke back in the 1980's about the Mon-Kou from a certain, local TV commercial that ran ad nauseum: with patrons reviewing the food in different (and badly spoken) foreign languages; so the name would have been remembered and jokes would have been made). We finally gave up our quest and drove back to the Mon-Kou.

It was pretty quiet for a Saturday night (but I think there are a lot of Halloween parties tonight (Oct. 27) and the Red Sox are playing Game #3 in the World Series)

We had a Pu-Pu Platter, crab rangoons, and pork fried rice (boring, huh?) but it was exactly what we were in the mood for.

The chicken fingers and fried shrimps were enrobed in big, puffy, crispy golden batter and the rice was nice and dark and delicious. Great boneless spareribs and big and juicy chicken wings (no crappy pub-food "Wing Dings" here - but real Chinese wings!)

The rangoons were actually too crabby - but that's a good thing and how they should be made -- we've just gotten used to the super-cream-cheesey ones served everywhere else.

No tiki drinks (just hot tea tonight) but we saw several big Scorpion-Bowls-For-Two being served.

Pleasant and efficient staff and groovy decor (weird, chartreuse backlighting through bamboo lattice-work, etc...)

This is one of the last "old school" Chinese restaurants around Central/Southern Massachusetts.

Worcester, MA has one (The Ho-Toy Luau) and it's in a scary area and the interior looks like it was lacquered with nicotine. It's more Chinese than South Seas/tiki.

The Honolulu is gone (a damn Bertucci's now) and the old Wind Tiki has become a Japanese place that has seen better days (it is now Sakura Tokyo: not one renovation since 1993, I fear)

The Mon-Kou will see us again, soon.

So...
Does anyone know of a similar place just north or south of the Mon-Kou?
It had a hard-to-decipher/pronounce name and looked a lot like the Mon-Kou inside.
I know the Mon-Kou has been around for 36 years, but was it originally at another location/address?
The Mon-Kou we were at tonight looked a lot like this other place we visited (twice) back in the mid-1990's.
Did it close and the Mon-Kou move in?

[ Edited by: Lapu-Lapu 2007-10-27 23:33 ]

[ Edited by: Lapu-Lapu 2007-10-28 11:38 ]

[ Edited by: Lapu-Lapu 2007-10-28 11:40 ]

On 2007-10-27 23:20, Lapu-Lapu wrote:

The Mon-Kou will see us again, soon.

So...
Does anyone know of a similar place just north or south of the Mon-Kou?
It had a hard-to-decipher/pronounce name and looked a lot like the Mon-Kou inside.
I know the Mon-Kou has been around for 36 years, but was it originally at another location/address?
The Mon-Kou we were at tonight looked a lot like this other place we visited (twice) back in the mid-1990's.
Did it close and the Mon-Kou move in?

[ Edited by: Lapu-Lapu 2007-10-27 23:33 ]

[ Edited by: Lapu-Lapu 2007-10-28 11:38 ]

[ Edited by: Lapu-Lapu 2007-10-28 11:40 ]

The Mon Kou has always been at that same location. I went to school with Bailey, the second generation owner, since 1972. His dad ran it before he did.

About 1 mile South on Rt. 1 is the Super Dragon. Could that be the place you are thinking of? It is very small, and located right on the RI/MA border.

The Kai Lua finally did close. That place was a dive, but had a good bar. It is about 1 mile North of the Emerald Square Mall on Rt. 1.

A few miles further North WAS the Hong Kong. It's now a Mexican place called Rancho Chico.

Route 1 has changed so much over the years..... it is tough for me to recall all of the resturants that have come & gone....

Hey guys, haven't been on here in a while but just logged on today and saw this post! I just went to Mon Kou yesterday and the place isn't all that bad. The food is so so but the drinks are pretty good.

Knewman actually brought up Kia Lua in North Attleboro, MA...I live RIGHT next door to that place. It has slowly gone downhill over the years but that place used to be fantastic. Also, the Hong Kong was great too, its a shame that it closed down.

Shanghai Gardens in South Attleboro, although there is no real tiki decor or any island theme, have fantastic drinks and the staff are incredibly nice.