The May issue of Travel + Leisure magazine features an article about Trader Vic’s, the old school tiki restaurant. The article even credits Vic Bergeron, the founder of the restaurant, with giving Americans the travel bug starting in the 1930s, when his first Trader Vic’s opened in Oakland.
I remember the Trader Vic’s in Chicago, my home town. Walking down State Street, I always looked for the giant wooden tiki standing by the entrance on Monroe Street to welcome people to Trader Vic’s in the hotel.
It’s said that Trader Vic’s spread tiki culture around the world. They’ve even been a part of history: opening a restaurant at the Havana Hilton a year before the revolution, an outpost in London where the Beatles hung out, and one in Munich just before the ill-fated 1972 Olympics.
I went out for a post-theater drink with my friend Carolyn at Trader Vic’s a year before it left the Palmer House (it has since been reestablished a mile away in the foo-foo Gold Coast area).
But Trader Vic’s wasn’t the only place to go for tiki time in Chicago back in the day. Not by far.
When I worked at the University of Chicago, I often drove by a dilapidated bar called Ciral’s House of Tiki. Long deserted, the neon bulbs were missing and the windows shuttered. The sign remained for years after it had closed, leaving a reminder of a bar with a 30+ year history on the South Side of Chicago.
Then I noticed other remnants from a lost tiki culture in Chicago: the old Pago Pago painted advertisement on the side of a building on Wabash Street in the Loop and the boarded up Tiki Room near a bundle of crumbling Chicago Housing Projects.
Up north, beyond the Chicago city limits, my family and I used to go to a Polynesian restaurant in the suburb of Evanston, where I grew up. Pali Kai had an outdoor garden, but before we reached it, a hostess clad in a grass skirt would place a plastic lei, the crinkly, non-flower type, around our necks. Once we sat down, our waitress took our drink orders. My brother and I always ordered a bright red Shirley Temple with an umbrella toothpick pierced through a piece of canned pineapple and a maraschino cherry. Unfortunately, the drinks were the highlight of the meal and the restaurant didn’t stay in business past the early 80s.
Susan, wasn’t the Pali Kai in that little courtyard by the Chandler’s building? I think it then became a Thai restaurant and is now Al’s beef/Koi/a nail salon… I could be totally wrong, tho. I have very vague memories of the House of Tiki – they closed it when I was living in HP. Sigh. Someday, there will be a Tiki revival…I’m surprised the “Survivor” show hasn’t spurred one, tho.
Yes, it was in that space by the Chandler’s building. I always loved sitting in the courtyard, sipping my sugary drinks! It became a Thai place I think before we went to high school. I can’t imagine that space being chopped up into several businesses now! I hope there’s a tiki revival, too. According to critiki.com, Illinois is only 2nd to Florida in the amount of tiki bars, restaurants, etc. The best place in the country for tiki, it says, is our very own Field Museum!!
After Hala Kahiki, the best current Tiki adventure in Chicagoland is taking Metra all the way to Kenosha, where a few blocks from the station is a primo Tiki bar called the Rendezvous.
That would be worth the trip! I just read that Kona Kai in the O’Hare Marriott was closed more than 10 years ago, but like many other Tiki bars, it was basically abandoned. I guess they use it once in a while, but it’s not open to the public on a regular basis. Weird. I used to dream of going there when we drove to my grandparents’ in Elgin.