Minneapolis's OTHER new tiki bar!

So last night I found out about this other new place in Minneapolis. I only had time to drive by the place. It is set up in an old drive in. Looks relatively promising. Obviously NOT run by a big corporation! I expect that it will continue to evolve.

Nothing on there page except for a logo.

http://www.psychosuzis.com/

"The bar is decorated with 60’s lounge accents, basket-weave straw, wood paneling, and tiki masks"

"Psycho Suzi’s menu offers a full three pages of Polynesian "COCKtails," and their prices vary widely. You can pay anywhere from $6 to $20 for one of these beauties, and each one has a rating from OK to knock-you-on-your-ass-strong. "

I will be off to check it out this week. Hopefully I will come back with photos that aren't as scary as Kokomo's!

Do tell. I have some friends who would check it out up there. So many folks up north go to Hawaii on vacation.

My friend in Minneapolis called me from this place this weekend. It's run by an old friend of his. He is not vintage tiki, but he likes a sort of 70's weird vibe. He liked the place. He said they had a huge vintage mug collection there. I didn't get a lot of details. He said it was not Uptown where the trendy kids hang out, so that got his vote right away. Someone, please report with pictures.

I've just organized an expedition for Tuesday night w/digital camera. I will review and post pix a.s.a.p.

Psycho Suzi's Motor Lounge
Gourmet Pizza * Exotic Cocktails
Superb Coffee
2519 Marshall St. N.E.
Minneapolis ... 612-788-9069

I checked out Psycho Suzi’s last night and was extremely impressed. (Sadly, the camera did not make it along on this trip, so no pix yet.) Psycho Suzi’s can be placed firmly in the Neo-Tiki genre identified by James Teitelbaum in “Tiki Road Trip.” As mentioned above, the building is a converted drive-in restaurant with wood shingle roof and fake stone façade. The kitchen faces the street with big plate glass windows so you can see what’s going on back there. Upon entering (there are a couple of entrances actually) I was greeted by a newish CD jukebox. I paged through the selections and was happy to find 5 exotica/lounge albums along with some punk classics and jukebox favorites like Johnny Cash and various heavy metal.
The main seating area is done in the style of a ship’s galley, with a vaulted ceiling and heavy beams and posts, almost all of which have some tikis on them. (The tikis are reminiscent of the Florida school, but I’m not really a carving expert so I couldn’t be sure about who did them.) The carpet is that great kitschy wood-plank stuff a la a 1970’s rec room. The mug collection mentioned above sits on several shelves along the tops of 3 walls (the fourth wall has the bar). As far as I could tell, it is not vintage, although a few of the mugs could have been. It’s mostly Muntiki, Tiki Farm and the like. So nice, but not vintage. There is fishing net hanging from the ceiling, with some plastic puffer fish. One of the highlights of the décor is the lighting, provided mostly by a series of 1950’s-look hanging fixtures which consist of 5 nested fiberglass or paper cylinders in varying shades of red and orange. Very appropriate if not strictly tiki.
The service is almost all punk rockers (the joint is owned by Leslie Bock, proprietress of St. Sabrina’s Parlour in Purgatory, an Uptown piercing/tattooing/silly goth boot/skintight club gear boutique) and very friendly and efficient.
The menu seemed likely to please, if you’re not expecting Polynesian food. There’s all sorts of bar food like Tater Tots, homemade cheese curds and of course pizza. (Food menu only online at http://www.amorphousdesign.net/)
The drink menu is also decent. Almost all of the Polynesian drinks are either $6.50 or $6.75 with two bowl drinks that were, I believe, $13.75 and $18.95 respectively. All of the Polynesian cocktails are served in tiki mugs which you can purchase for $4.00 (a deposit of that amount or a credit card is required to discourage mug theft). I tried two drinks that sounded like they might be a Zombie (the “Paralyzed Polynesian” and the “One-Eyed Willy”) both were fairly strong and tasty. I also tried something called the “Dirty Rotten Stinker” or something like that, which was some kind of Pina Colada substitute I think. The only traditionally named drink is the Suffering Bastard. There’s also a rotating “special” cocktail. Same price, but different from the various menu choices. I believe there were 12 or 14 total fancy cocktails.
Also available were 5 or 6 beers on tap, including Ace Pear Cider (hooray!) and various other bottled and canned beer as well as all the premium liquors. You can get a sampler of 6 cans of cheap beer in a little cooler for $10.
Happy hour is 3 – 6 p.m. either Mon-Thurs or Mon-Fri, I can’t remember which. It consists of half-price wells and taps and I think half-price appetizers too.
Overall, I’d say this seems to be one of the better neo-Tiki establishments I’ve heard about. It’s definitely better than that one down in Dallas, where they didn’t even know how to make any kind of fancy cocktails. And if you’ve got the jukebox money, you can guarantee that you’ll hear plenty of exotica. As far as I could tell, they aren’t set up for live bands. I recommend Psycho Suzi’s to all tiki-philes without reservation.

[ Edited by: DaneTiki on 2004-01-07 10:39 ]

City Pages article:

http://citypages.com/databank/25/1207/article11830.asp

[ Edited by: DaneTiki 2009-08-30 19:12 ]

I hate to squawk, because any new Tiki place is welcome in the Twin Cities--especially one that has the look like Suzi's does--but the drinks need some work. Granted, there's some interesting, complex things going on with the taste, but most of them are WAY too sweet. And I think they've gotten sweeter in the last couple of months. If they would just cut the sugar and add some lime juice, there's a few recpies on that drink menu that would stand up to anything anyone else has to offer. I will say, the Fu Manchu they serve is pretty darn good--but some other ones, like the Suffering Bastard, are just plain awful. I wondered what was up with the sweet formulations, then I saw the owner sitting at the bar drinking a Red Bull; it explained a lot. (I think Red Bull might be going in some of those drinks--eugh)

My other complaint--lose the jukebox (at least lose the heavy metal CDs). There's only 5 decent records in the thing and no one ever plays them. It's an unfortunate fact of life that most wannabe hipsters trying to get into tiki will invariably fall back on the shitty thrash metal or 80's pop they are used to when it's made available. It's also usually pretty packed and smoky in there, and the wait staff can be pretty inattentive at times, but those are minor issues.

Despite those complaints, I have to say I still like the place a lot and find myself going there once a week or so--the food's excellent, you can buy the mugs, people are friendly, and the crowd is fun and diverse. But the owner could stand to spend a couple bucks on exotica CD's and a copy of the Grog Log.

I agree that Psycho Suzi's is too smoky and crowded (but better too crowded than closed for lack of business.) The drinks are definitely on the sweet side, but that's how I like 'em. Last time I was there (2 weeks ago) the bartender was mixing them REALLY strong. It was one of the younger guys, not as punked-out as most of the staff, so look for him the next time you go.

Also, I'd like to ammend my earlier claim that there was a lot of exotica. I dunno if they switched some of the discs out in the first couple of months (that would seem kinda strange) but I swear there was more exotica the first time I went. They should get one of those digital jukeboxes like The Trend has. Then you could play all kinds of weird stuff.

I don't think any of the drinks I've had (at least half the menu) had Red Bull in them. Yuck.

Right now, there are too many yuppies at Psycho Suzi's. I would lay the blame for some of the ambience problems on them rather than on the poor, long-suffering hipsters. Stupid yuppies. They ruin everything.

On 2004-03-29 16:55, DaneTiki wrote:

Right now, there are too many yuppies at Psycho Suzi's. Stupid yuppies. They ruin everything.

Now once again, what is a yuppy? Is it someone that's young? Is it someone that lives in the city, hence urban? Is it someone that has a degree, hence professional?

If it is, DT, then your loving Tiki Central is filled with them.

yeah, I'm not sure I entirely understand that Yuppie statement either. That's a word I used to throw around back in my 20's when I was all about looking at people, sizing them up and making a quick judgeent. But now I don't judge somebody by how they look just because they're dressed professionally. I'm usually more concerned about what's going on upstairs. I've met a lot of hipsters in my time who proved to be pretty shallow and quick to jump ship on the tiki (or any other craze) due to changing fashions. And in any case, I'm actually pretty happy with the diversity of Suzi's crowd. They just need to lay off the cigs.

My biggest shallowness is that I'm usually immediately contemptuous of someone drinking a beer in a tiki bar. And the older I get the more I dislike most rock 'n roll music, particularly in a tiki bar--so the whole tattoo/punk/rockabilly fusion with tiki always sort of bugs me--I guess that's shallow too.

Regarding the Yuppy stuff.... My guess is that this is a regional context in which folks are speaking. That's the trouble with posting about places to a broader audience, ones regional stereotypes in Minn. may not be realized by a reader in San Jose, Ca. or Florida. Anyway, I will be reporting back from Suzies soon as I am leaving sunny Florida to go snowmobiling near Minneapolis. Since I will be a tourist I don't really care what caste group I will be partying with. I'm not even sure what group I fall into. Hopefully it's the laid back, old enough to know better but still capable of spontaneous combustion. tolerant group.

Okonkuluku TC

Mr. Ho going visit Minneaopolis this weekend. Is this the only tiki place in town? Where should I go? where da good exotica and tiki drinks?