Have you ever been to an old-school Polynesian restaurant?
I don't mean some recently-established hipster tiki bar, I mean the classic Polynesian place serving all manner of fruity drinks and sticky sauces.
I'll be damned if I can find one around here but I figure some have got to still be out there.
Came across this website a few months ago and it's a little scary how thoroughly informed it is.
https://critiki.com/
Apparently the only tiki bar near me is some random guys basement that he converted into a tiki bar, full of antiques and shit. Also turns out that the place where I had my first job as a dishwasher got turned into a tiki restaurant.
Man, I love tiki bars. My favorite one is one that's been in operation since the 50s.
>>7801502
There's only two near me. Well, only one, actually, the other is just a bar. In SF, Smuggler's Cove (just a bar, but awesome), and the Tonga Room, which is very old school (and old, been open since 1945) underneath the Fairmont hotel. The Tonga Room is the real deal, and tons of fun, but it's pricey (of course it is, it's in SF). It was on a episode of one of Anthony Bourdain's shows, I believe. Don't know which one, because I never watched it, just heard that it was on his show.
Frankly, I'd love to see a resurgence of Polynesian restaurants, done old school, like Trader Vic's used to back in the 40s and 50s, but I'd worry the PC police/SJWs would pounce on it for some reason.
>>7801502
mean as hangi cuz
Closest thing to Polynesian Island Fare that I have in my town, if you could consider it similar
Is a Florida/Caribbean theme bar and restaurant in my town
>>7801545
Here it is.
http://www.alibiportland.com/
I don't live in Portland, but I make a point to go there every time I'm in Portland.
>>7801502
I live in Hawaii. Does that count?
I love good faux-polynesian places. Back before bottled mai-tai mix was a thing the good places cranked out some SERIOUS fucking drinks. Booze-forward but balanced and tasty enough that they'd disappear faster than you can say "call a cab I can't see straight". Some of them are still around. There's a tiny little 12 seater about an hour from me that serves up a Fog Cutter that you're fully aware is screwing you sideways but you don't care because it's so tasty.
>>7801545
The Mai Kai?
>>7801597
I'd say yes, it does, since you have Polynesian food literally at your fingertips. How I envy you, I'd love to live in HI.
>>7801617
Very difficult for people to move here and stay here though due to the high cost of living.
>>7801633
Well, I already live in the Bay area, which is high enough, would it be even higher there? My problem would be that I don't know if I could find the right job in my field there (project engineer, in aviation).
>>7801633
I hear most hawaiians are addicted to crystal meth and most of them want to kill anyone who hasn't lived in hawaii for at least ten generations, is that true?
>>7801645
According to some sites I just found when googling 'cost of living hawaii vs. san franciso', generally lower.
http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&city1=San+Francisco%2C+CA&country2=United+States&city2=Honolulu%2C+HI
http://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/honolulu-hi/san-francisco-ca/100000
Could see about finding jobs that allow you to telecommute.
>>7801648
Generally, no. It is more stems from people out of the islands expecting people already living there to be how they want them to be, so more an issue of assimilation and manners but 'beef with haoles' thing is still there.
I've been to Trader Vic's in SF and Bali Hai in SF. Looking to check out Don the Beachcomber sometime this summer too.
>>7801674
Bali Hai in SD*
>>7801674
It's honestly only worth the visit when they're having their tiki flea market thing, with the live music and all. The food menu is hit and miss and the drinks are only decent to good, at least in my opinion. My recs for maximum enjoyment: sticky ribs, kalua pork, or drunken clams to eat and a rum barrel or 151 swizzle to drink.
>>7801674
Oh fuck, I just remembered I have been to Trader Vic's. Great Mai Tai's there.
>>7801705
I've also been to the Trader Vic's lounge in the Beverly Hilton. Had a drink called the Pino Pepe and it was really good. Liked it better than the mai tai
>>7801502
Didn't Don the Beachcomber start out doing Cantonese or something?
>I don't mean some recently-established hipster tiki bar, I mean the classic Polynesian place serving all manner of fruity drinks and sticky sauces.
That sounds pretty fucking hipster itself, do you /ck/ autists completely lack any self-awareness?
>>7801705
No wait, it was Tradr's Sams, my bad.
>>7801648
Born and raised in Hawaii here, though moved away a number of years ago.
At least where I lived, meth was pretty fucking huge when I was in high school (i.e. old enough to be aware of it). There was actually an article in the local paper that said that most people smoke weed solely for the crash after smoking meth - which is complete bullshit because everybody in Hawaii smokes weed, but it's still funny.
What the other anon said about assimilation is pretty much true. You have to remember that the majority of people in Hawaii at any given time are tourists, who go there and act entitled and like they own the place (either because they're rich, or it's the biggest vacation of their life and want to be treated good by everybody), so these are the people the locals are dealing with on a daily basis (there's a bunch of other factors). If you're cool and know your place there isn't that big of an issue, though it also helps if you went to school since kindergarten with people from the families that have been there for 10 generations.
Biggest problem is finding a job. If I could make a living online I'd move back in a heartbeat (or just become a shut-in in Idaho or some 3rd world country where the cost of living is negligible).
>>7801717
>sounds pretty fucking hipster itself
It's a valid distinction in this case, and while going for the old school real deal may seem like the hipster option, you'll usually find more hipsters in the new places; kind of like how you'd find more hipsters in a speakeasy hidden inside a hot dog place in NYC compared to the bar around the corner that survived through prohibition.
>>7801717
Don originally hired cantonese chefs because such food was the only thing considered exotic enough to go with his drinks at the time. Trader Vic's food was influenced by a lot of different places along with his own culinary tweaking to coax 50s people out of their food comfort zones. His "Tahitian Cheese Tangs" were sort of a crepe-bound version of the bechamel-based croquettes you see in Iberian and Latin American food. He had thai and indian-style curries on offer, sometimes garnished with oddities like hardcooked eggs, toasted pumpkin seeds, chopped tomato and cucumber, and chowchow. Then there were blatantly western-style dishes with exotic-sounding names, like Bongo Bongo soup, which was sort of a spinach and oyster chowder. Polynesian restaurants were the most ritzy restaurants of the time, so you could usually get things like prime rib and lobster as well.
Fuck, this thread is making me nostalgic for shit I wasn't even around for.
I want to go to a tiki bar like it's the '40s and drink tropical rum cocktails and eat crab rangoons and chinese food and hang out with sailors.
>>7801795
Tiki bars are the most chill places if they're run by people who know what they're doing.
Nothing like going to a tiki bar.
>>7801795
Try one of these:
3/4 oz lime juice
3/4 oz grapefruit juice (white if possible, pink if you must. avoid ruby red.)
3/4 oz honey syrup
1 oz white puerto rican rum
1 oz gold jamaican rum
1 oz navy rum (Skipper/Wood's/Lamb's/Pusser's) or just a good heavy demerara rum
1 tsp allspice dram
1 oz soda water
Shake the everloving piss out of everything but the soda with crushed ice. If it was the 40s you'd blend it for 5 seconds in a top-down blender (like that Hamilton Beach one your grandpa probably uses to make milkshakes), but no one has one of those just lying around. Add seltzer to shaker, and pour the whole mess into a lowball. Ice cone is optional, you can make one by filling a pilsner glass with shaved ice and jamming a chopstick through it to make a hole for your straw. Do as Don did and limit yourself to 3, or you'll wake up in the morning feeling like you actually got shanghaied
>>7801735
My local is one of these new-fangled """hipster""" joints, relatively recently opened so naturally it is run by someone that loves the aesthetic, that is passionate about the cocktails, the spirits, other ingredients, sourcing as close to the original ingredients as possible. I'd hope that a 40s or 50s joint still going would do things right, but fuck letting angst over hipsters get in the way of enjoying a good thing.
Too often it seems on 4chan and /ck/ particularly hipster is just used as a vague nonsense word to discredit people with shared interests but cooler or better looking than oneself, it's an ironically hipster lust after authenticity.
>>7801829
Sounds good. Definitely going to knock back a few of these when I'm off work in a couple days.
>>7802058
Most people here either think that being a hipster just means following some kind of fashion trend or something, while others continually claim that hipsters don't actually exist, which is equally retarded.
>>7802113
You've completely settled the issue once and for all, internet warrior (even though it's not entirely clear if your description was of a hipster or a non-hipster).
>>7802138
Spotted the guy wearing cargo shorts and a soul patch and agonizing about what he'll order at the next trip to the Drive-Thru
>>7802081
Also consider a real-deal, original recipe Mai Tai. Don't go away! The actual drink is really good, I swear!
2 oz aged jamaican rum, the older the better
"Juice of a lime"
1/2 oz orange liqueur (the original call was for orange curacao, but most of the ones on the market now are pretty much just triple sec with orange food coloring. Go with any good quality brandy-based orange liq or get "Dry Curacao" from Ferrand if you absolutely insist on being able to call it curacao)
1/2 oz orgeat syrup (anything but Torani. As long as whatever brand you use actually has almonds in the ingredients list you're golden. You can also just make simple syrup using unsweetened almond milk from the store instead of water and you'll get close enough)
1/4 oz rock candy syrup
That's the earliest recipe. He later halved the amount of orgeat. For this drink, I interpret 1 lime's worth of juice=1 oz
My preferred recipe, if money is no object
1 oz Denizen Merchant's Reserve
1/2 oz Appleton 12 Year
1/2 oz Hamilton 151
1 oz lime juice
1/2 oz dry curacao
1/2 oz orgeat (I find that the orgeat I get isn't flavorful enough to really impart an almondy taste when its only 1/4 oz and competing for attention with the rock candy, so i ditch the rock candy and do double orgeat)
For either recipe, shake thoroughly with crushed ice and pour unstrained into a lowball. Garnish with the spent lime shell and a sprig of mint.
>>7802058
What you have to remember with very old polynesian restaurants is that Don Beach, Trader Vic, and Stephen Crane ran their restaurants like money grew on trees. Don made daiquiris out of 30 year rum. Vic's well white rum was a 5 year. They all had half a dozen people on staff whose sole job was to prep garnishes of carved fruit and ice molds and all kinds of shit. People who just squeezed fresh juice for drinks all day. They had troupes of dancers on staff for nightly floor shows. The reason they folded and shrank and disappeared was because that kind of overhead was unsustainable, and the places that outlasted them did so because they used crappier ingredients and minimal staff. Some places lucked out and kept their heads above water in spite of all the money they hemoraged into going balls out on everything that came out of their kitchens and bars, but remember the reason that "umbrella drink" is a derogatory term is because the places that mixed hoboswill with pineapple juice, stuck a paper parasol in it, and called it a mai tai managed to keep their bars packed while Trader Vic was shuttering one restaurant after another as they consistently failed to turn a profit.
>>7802529
Then that would make it even more retarded to hate on hipsters.
>>7802647
I'm not really interested in hipsters, I just don't want anyone to get their heart broken by going to a really old polynesian supper club expecting them to be top notch and ending up drinking a mai tai made of reallime, rose's grenadine and ronrico. Tiki joints have to be approached very carefully. There's a reason they were so overwhelmingly popular, but there's also a reason they all went belly up.
>>7801645
You'd have a hell of a time finding work in your field.
I remember going to the Kahiki growing up. It was literally the coolest place I'd ever been. They had a drink that came in a special glass with a reservoir in the middle for dry ice and when they served it they'd pour a little water in there and the thing would fog up the whole table top
>>7802789
>>7802789
Alot of us bitterly miss that place.
Bamp.
