You are currently processing an exchange. Remove Code Cancel Order

At the top of Primary Trust, Kenneth introduces us to his favorite place on earth, Wally’s. It’s “an old tiki restaurant with carpeting, and there’s always a man in a Hawaiian shirt playing the keyboard next to the salad bar.” Kenneth spends his evenings there sipping mai tais, the quintessential tiki cocktail.

Tiki is the name of the first man in Maori mythology as well as the word many Pacific Islanders use for carved figurines that resemble human faces. The first known tiki bars, Don the Beachcomber and Trader Vic’s featured décor reminiscent of those carvings in addition to rattan chairs, thatched roofs, and other elements evocative of a fantasy island life. Both of these bars opened in California in the 1930s. The island-inspired décor brought an element of escapism and levity to patrons during the Great Depression. This tiki trend became a phenomenon after World War II most likely due to a combination of post-war prosperity and GIs returning from the Pacific Islands with a fondness for the island lifestyle they experienced during leisure time. Prior to color TV and access to global travel, the tiki aesthetic provided a romanticized escape to an imaginary paradise. In the ‘40s and ‘50s as tiki’s popularity grew, Trader Vic’s opened multiple locations across the country alongside countless lesser-known bars capitalizing on the trend.

Vic Bergeron, founder of Trader Vic’s, created the mai tai in 1944. His recipe calls for Jamaican rum, a squeeze of lime, a dash of rock candy syrup, a splash of orange curacao, and Orgeat — a French almond syrup — poured over cracked ice.

The now iconic tiki aesthetic was created from the borrowing and blending of many different cultures. While the decorative accoutrement drew inspiration from the Pacific Islands, the menus featured Americanized Chinese food. Trader Vic’s mai tai and other popular tiki cocktails use rum, a liquor with roots in the Caribbean and whose own history is inextricable from colonialism. In a 2016 segment on NPR’s All Things Considered, Kalewa Correa, a curator at the Smithsonian's Asian Pacific Islander Center, points out that the tiki aesthetic:

[I]s just taking all those cultures and putting them all in a blender and blending it all together to create this Isle of Tiki, which is this mythical place where tiki bars come from.

After going out of vogue, tiki culture enjoyed a revival in the 1990s. With growing respect for cultural sensitivity, some tiki bars have replaced tribal or totem imagery with more universal tropical motifs. Still, Kenneth’s love for Wally’s suggests the enduring appeal of tiki in the American imagination and appetite.


 


References

Brogan, Jacob. “There’s More to Classic Tiki Than Just Kitsch.Smithsonian Magazine, 21 Aug. 2017.

DeVito, Lee. “With Mutiny Bar and Lost River, the tiki bar has returned to Detroit.Detroit Metro Times, 15 Dec. 2018.

Polynesian Pop: America’s Fascination with Tiki Culture.Arcadia Publishing, 2023.

Maori of New Zealand: Maori Tiki.Maori Info, 2001-2021.

US Weekly Staff. “We Dug Deep Into the Trader Vic’s Story — And We’re So Glad We Did.US Weekly, 10 Aug. 2022.

Singh, Maanvi. “Let’s Talk Tiki Bars: Harmless Fun or Exploitation?NPR, 7 Sep. 2016.