Tiki Bars

"If you can't get to paradise, I'll bring it to you." - Don the Beachcomber

If you have not experienced the pure joy, pleasure and exotica of visiting a tiki bar, I feel very sorry for you, my friend.  Tiki bars offer the best kind of escape from reality paired with a tropical buzz and, if you're lucky, a rainstorm.  My husband and I experienced love at first sip of a Painkiller when we visited our first tiki bar earlier in 2019, but that was just the tip of the pineapple.  I'll admit, this has become an obsession for us.  We visit tiki bars more than once a month, my husband's license plate reads TIKITME and we're in the process of constructing a tiki bar of our own at home, so we can have tiki time everyday!  

P.S.  We even have a crazy cool spreadsheet my husband made which lists out every tiki drink known to us and with some fancy formulas, updated with the booze we have on hand, he can run out a report of all of the tiki drinks he's able to shake up.  Did I mention we're a little obsessed?  

Here's the list of tiki bars we've been drunk at:

1. The Inferno Room - Indianapolis, Indiana
2. Strange Bird - Indianapolis, Indiana
3. Lost Lake - Chicago, Illinois
4. Three Dots and a Dash - Chicago, Illinois
5. Tonga Hut - North Hollywood, California
6. Lono - Hollywood, California
7. Trader Sam's Enchanted Tiki Bar - Anaheim, California
8. Tonga Room - San Francisco, California
9. Zombie Village - San Francisco, California
10. Pagan Idol - San Francisco, California
11. Smuggler's Cove - San Francisco, California
12. Adrift - Denver, Colorado
13. Beachbum Berry's Latitude 29- New Orleans, Louisiana
14. Tiki Tolteca - New Orleans, Louisiana
15. Trader Sam's Grog Grotto - Orlando, Florida
16. Tiki Tiki Lounge - Indianapolis, Indiana
17. Topside Garden Room - Baltimore, Maryland
18. The Bamboo Club - Long Beach, California
19. Foundation - Milwaukee, Wisconsin
20. Wauwatiki Bar & Grill - Milwaukee, Wisconsin
21. At Random - Milwaukee, Wisconsin
22. Trader Nick's South Shore Inn - Cudahy, Wisconsin
23. The Limbo - Louisville, Kentucky
24. The Bamboo Room Tiki Bar - Savannah, Georgia
25. The Reef - Palm Springs, California
26. Tonga Hut - Palm Springs, California
27. Tiki Tango - Atlanta, Georgia
28. Pearl Diver - Nashville, Tennessee
29. Tarantula Tiki Lounge - Fort Worth, Texas
30. Frankie's Tiki Room - Las Vegas, Nevada
31. The Golden Tiki - Las Vegas, Nevada
32. Chopper - Nashville, Tennessee
33. Tiki Tiki Bang Bang - Cincinnati, Ohio
34. Hala Kahiki Tiki Bar & Lounge - River Grove, Illinois
35. House of Tabu - South Bend, Indiana
36. Max's South Seas Hideaway - Grand Rapids, Michigan
37. Mutiny Tiki Bar - Detroit, Michigan
38. Lost River - Detroit, Michigan
39. Undertow - Phoenix, Arizona
40. Hula's Modern Tiki - Phoenix, Arizona
41. Tiki Ti - Los Angeles, California
42. The SOS Tiki Bar - Decatur, Georgia
43. Dirty Dick - Paris, France
44. Rumba - Seattle, Washington
45. The Lanai - Vancouver, Washington
46. Hale Pele - Portland, Oregon
47. Hula Hula - Seattle, Washington
48. Inside Passage - Seattle, Washington
49. Hidden Harbor - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Venture out and discover your missing Aloha.  

<3 B

Meeting Martin and Rebecca Cate (the owners of Smuggler's Cove in San Francisco)
at their tiki drink book signing at the Inferno Room in Indianapolis, IN
October, 2019