Offbeat Eats

As I mentioned a few years back in a review of Tiki Underground a few years ago, “Tiki” in the United States had an interesting history: starting in the early 20th century in California and Hawaii (e.g. Trader Vic’s and Don the Beachcomber), the nice cuisine grew in the 1940s through 1960s until most major metro areas had a handful of Polynesian-inspired (like Americanized Chinese Food, it bears only a casual relationship with it’s initial inspirations) restaurants and cocktail lounges. Unfortunately, while Tiki itself has recently had quite a revival (along with craft cocktails), this revival came too late, and entirely too many classic bits of Tiki Americana started to close (most of the Trader Vic’s locations, Ohio’s Kahiki Supper Club, and Chicopee, MA’s He Ke Lau have all closed). But some classic joints still remain. One of these, the Mai-Kai, in Oakland Park, Florida, remains one of the United States’ oldest still-operating Tiki establishments, serving up Tiki drinks and Polynesian shows since 1956.

Wusong Road Those that know me well, know that I rather love the combination of good cocktails and the occasional Americanized Asian food, and that usually means one thing: a Tiki Bar. However, doing this well is challenging. Even a few years ago, Massachusetts had quite a few hold-outs from the mid-20th century Polynesian Pop craze, including Chicopee’s Hu Ke Lau, Cambridge’s Aku-Aku, and Saugus’s Kowloon. In their day, they were popular, often packed every night of the week, and they survived for decades even as the Polynesian Pop craze faded, although the drinks often got watered down and the food a bit more mass-produced. Starting in the 2010s there’s been a noticeable resurgence in Tiki culture. A few places still hang on (like the abovementioned Kowloon, although they are supposed to close and rebuild as a smaller restaurant), and the occasional new place has started to open (like Tiki Rock in Boston, but despite the resurgence, there have been a lot more closures than openings. It’s actually a bit hard to find a place to go with friends for some quality cocktails and good (Americanized) Asian food food at the same time, but in November 2021, the regional Tiki bar scene got noticeably better with the opening of Wusong Road in Cambridge.

Our annual trips to Ohana Luau By The Lake (“The Best Little Event in Tiki”), have us doing most of our activities at The Tiki Resort. Like much of Lake George, while it’s definitely a bit rough around the edges at times, it’s more than a bit of a Mid-century Americana Time Capsule: a mostly intact Tiki-themed resort, with Tiki-themed bar, a nice pool deck, and even (during high season) a Polynesian stage show. It’s also got it’s own breakfast restaurant, the Garden Cafe, located just off the lobby.

(Moved) Our vacation in Minnesota and Michigan involved crossing New York, Eric County Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Wisconsin en route. To break up the drive, after having a late lunch at Schwabl’s in Buffalo (an Offbeat Eats favorite), we pushed on to northern Ohio. On most trips where we take the US route, we’d stop in the Cleveland area, but this time we decided to take a slightly more southern route through Ohio, stopping for the night in Stow, Ohio. Why? So we could finally check out Tiki Underground in nearby Hudson, OH.

In the post-war Era, literally thousands of “Polynesian” and “Tiki”-themed restaurants showed up around the US, peddling a mostly even mix of Polynesian, Maori, Asian, Pacific Island, and Escapism. Providing a spot where you could get away and sip any one of a number of Tiki or tropical drinks, nosh at a pu pu platter, and, for the larger establishments, maybe even catch a floor show. Sure, if one is looking for “authentic” food (Chinese, Polynesian, Japanese, or otherwise), this isn’t your place, but like I said in last year’s House of Wu, these sorts of places still have a valuable niche in American cuisine, with somewhat equal parts sentimentalism, nostalgia, preservation, adaptation, and, admittedly, bastardization. Once plentiful, changing American tastes, a wider variety of competing cuisines, changing local economies, and different challenges of running a huge restaurant have taken their toll, and many of these 1950s and 1960s places have faced the wrecking ball (including the recent 2018 closings of both Chicopee’s Hu Ke Lau and Lynnfield’s Bali Hai, both former Tiki icons). Despite the trend, Kowloon, in Saugus MA, still hangs on (and heck, it’s one of New England’s highest volume restaurants).