Category: Tiki Bar

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San Jose Goes Hawaiian at Dr. Funk’s Luau

San Pedro Square was awash in the aloha spirit on Sunday for the inaugural luau at Dr. Funk Rum House. The San Jose tiki bar’s ticketed event included Hawaiian food including barbecued pig, Polynesian music and dancing, and even a mechanical shark ride. VIP ticket holders were let in early to claim their spots on the large outdoor patio or indoors, offered a flower lei, a welcome cocktail, and two cocktail tickets. Standard ticket holders were let in an hour later and also received a guava-forward welcome cocktail.

The musical offerings started with DJ SamoaBoy on the patio, flanked by a few rum brands with samples and small cocktails. I especially enjoyed the daiquiri station from 9North rum where you could choose a style and a specific rum to pair with. Island Daze followed with an energetic Jawaiian set and then the entertainment concluded with some excellent Polynesian dancers including a fire dancer.

Throughout the day, Dr. Funk staff were offering small passed bites including spam musubi, sliders, delightful pork buns, and ahi tuna tacos which were our favorite. There also was a buffet featuring fried rice, macaroni salad, fruit, and freshly barbecued pork. This plate lunch style offering was pretty good, and there was more than enough food for everyone. I’d have liked a little soy sauce or some other sauces but overall we felt the food was well-executed.

Aside from the welcome cocktail, Dr. Funk was offering their standard menu and had two bartenders going at all times. None of us thought the welcome cocktail was particularly punchy and honestly was I disappointed there weren’t some special event cocktails being offered. Ever resourceful, I took matters into my own hands by ordering off-menu Blue Hawaii and Hawaiian Mai Tais. Thankfully, Justin and Joy rolled with the request and delivered some excellent drinks that helped us get into the mood – so much that we did end up briefly riding that shark!

Mid-May seems like a great time to do this, and a five or six hour experience was executed with aplomb. The Dr. Funk staff was fully engaged and working like a well-oiled machine for this event, yet still found a moment of levity to pose for a group photo with the shark. We hope this will be an annual event.

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Beautiful Day on the Santa Cruz Wharf at Makai Tiki Bar

My company gave me Friday off for a “wellness day” so Mrs. Mai Tai and I went over to the Santa Cruz area for shopping and lunch. After a quick visit to Capitola and Soquel, we drove onto the Santa Cruz Wharf for lunch at Makai Island Kitchen and Groggery.

Makai has been a favorite of ours for some time, including the rotating bar area. This is such a unique feature and you have full views of the ocean, Makai’s Captain’s Table room, and the rest of the restaurant. We also saw a vast rum list that was over 30 pages and according to staff features over 620 rums, very quietly one of the largest collections of any venue in the United States. We both enjoyed our lunch, I had the Poke Bowl that includes lychee and crushed macadamia nuts as different kind of options, with Mrs. Mai Tai having the Halibut Green Curry Bowl.

There are bunch of different cocktail options including many developed by the crew. I started with a 1944 Mai Tai that I should have loved, featuring Appleton Signature, Smith & Cross, and Planteray Xaymaca rums (three of my favorites), but this Mai Tai was too lime forward and I could barely taste the rum. We had much better luck with the other cocktails, including the sweet banana flavors of Squid Ink, the light gin and lavender flavors of Purple Haze, and the not-too-sweet ube and coconut Triumph & Disaster. Our favorite was Pau Hana, a gin and elderflower cocktail that incorporated lemon and raspberry. This cocktail was developed by Hana Kingsbury (see what she did there) who was our server and posed with a photo with her creation.

The cocktail and rum options at Makai remain strong, plus their island far remains high quality and moderately priced. We enjoy things inside in the rotating bar, but the patio outside is pretty nice including a couple of very large tikis to help set the mood. Along the way, we saw birds and sea lions from our vantage point, and then strolled to the end of the pier to check out more sea lions, sea birds, and seagulls.

1944 Mai Tai, Squid Ink, Pau Hana, Purple Haze

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DJ Ship Rex at Zombie Village

We’re sending healing thoughts to our buddy DJ Ship Rex who is recovering from hip surgery. Rex’s latest gig was at Zombie Village last week, so a few of us went up to San Francisco on a weeknight to listen to some amazing music and wish our friend a speedy recovery. We arrived a bit before Rex’s set started and were seated in one of Zombie Village’s huts but we knew when we heard energetic retro music that Rex’s set had started. So many great tunes, including “Found a Child” by Ballin’ Jack which features the guitar riff sampled in Young MC’s “Bust a Move,” and Rex’s sets always mix up various genres and styles but still feels cohesive.

Our cocktails at Zombie Village were pretty good, meeting our high expectations. Brian and crew really did a great job, including a really great individually-sized Scorpion that was orange-forward with some flavorful spirits. Mrs Mai Tai’s Disco Banana was outstanding, and I really enjoyed the Jungle Bird Milk Punch (J.B.M.P.) once again. Our son Quinn has dug a few Grog cocktails, so Zombie’s still-excellent Doc’s Grog was very well received. Quinn and I both felt the Mai Tai was lacking a certain rummyness, but Mrs. Mai Tai really loved the curry spices in the Curry’d Favor. Overall a very good hit rate during our visit.

Sorbet shooters have been a thing at Zombie Village for a while and the Lava Flow Sorbet Shooter continues the tradition with aplomb. The strawberry flavors of the shooter were an excellent pair for the delicious sorbet. These are great and a unique option for this venue, so look for it on your next visit. We also have to provide a hearty mahalo to Brian and the team who handled a drink mishap really well.

Zombie Village was hopping on Thursday, thanks to some great cocktails, an energetic crowd, and DJ Ship Rex’s toe-tapping tunes. We hope that Rex is on the road to recovery and that he will be back behind the deck in the near future.

Disco Banana
Curry’d Favor
Scorpion
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Mai Tai Event at Tikeasy in Livermore

Livermore’s Rosetta Roasting coffee roastery is going full tiki for their evening cocktail persona and adopting Tikeasy as the branding for their summer program. We’ve been big fans of the Nightcaps at Rosetta evening cocktail offering, but have certainly noticed a gradual shift to more tiki decor taking over the back half of the venue. The dimly lit booths work great with exotic music and superbly executed tropical cocktails, and nobody would peg this as a tiki bar from the outside. It’s a speakeasy, tiki style.

The official launch of Tikeasy will be Sunday, May 24 from 5-11 pm. The team will have Mai Tai Flights available with some great Mai Tai variants, plus a full tiki cocktail menu featuring classic and acclaimed originals. Plus I’ll be there to mix and mingle to talk Mai Tais with those in attendance.

This is a low-key event of casual conversation over cocktails, not a seminar, so there’s plenty of time in the evening to swing by. This being the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, if you’re not working on the Monday you have no excuse not to come and we expect to see you in attendance.

The team behind Rosetta Roasting are true believers in tiki, and they’re taking a chance by trying something a little different in downtown Livermore. So, even if you can’t make the event on May 24, I hope you’ll check out Nightcaps at Rosetta and the Tikeasy this summer.

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Phoenix Rising at Dr. Funk Tiki Bar San Jose

This Dr Funk original features mezcal, rum, Aperol, coconut, pineapple, and fire! It’s still really great and the flame last night was quite impressive. Mrs Mai Tai let it burn all the way down, leaving a charred breadcrumb at the top of the drink, but still really good.

Meanwhile I ordered an off-menu Three Dots and a Dash that tasted fantastic and just like it should be with juices and spices. The team at Dr Funk really nailed this.

My second drink was the Mai Tai, still amazing and made with Jamaica rums. This one was even better than the Mai Tai I had here a couple months ago, bold and flavorful but still balanced, one of the best of the year so far.

We also talked to the crew about the upcoming Luau at Dr Funk, very traditional including music, food, and drinks. Get your tickets now.

Three Dots & a Dash / Dr. Funk Mai Tai
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San Francisco Icon Tiki Bob at Honey Honey

Look who we found on the way to Zombie Village, the original Tiki Bob at the corner of Post and Taylor. He looks freshly painted and the current building occupant Honey Honey recently embraced Bob’s color scheme by changing from green to brown.

This was the original home of Tiki Bob’s, opened in 1955 when a disgruntled Trader Vic’s bartender opened his own place a block away from his former boss. This location closed in 1983. A second Tiki Bob’s location opened in the building that currently houses Pagan Idol during the 1960s.

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Trader Vic Footage from “Donn of Tiki” Documentary

Trader Vic’s Emeryville hosted a special showing of a deleted scene from the acclaimed The Donn of Tiki documentary, highlighting archival footage of Trader Vic plus commentary about Vic from luminaries and experts. The showing followed a screening of The Donn of Tiki film nearby, plus the Mai Tai Lounge being open on a Tuesday as part of the Hinky Dinks Speakeasy that Vic’s has been running for a couple months.

Having seen the film before, we skipped the showing of the film and spent time in the lounge (we did buy tickets for the film, though). We enjoyed our past visit to the Hinky Dinks Speakeasy, previously held in the intimate Lanyu Room. This week the Tuesday speakeasy was hosted in the larger Mai Tai Lounge space, featuring a cocktail menu of Don the Beachcomber and Trader Vic’s favorites plus some small bites. Music as always was pitch perfect 1940s era music from DJ Speakeasy Ray, who even showed us some rare vintage relics in his collection.

I really enjoyed the Three Dots & a Dash that used Kuleana Hawaiian Rum Agricole in place of the Martinique rhum that is normally used and I also liked the Shark’s Tooth that was light and refreshing, though Mrs. Mai Tai wasn’t a fan. I appreciated the inclusion of the Mai Tai on this special menu (reminder to you know who about who invented it), but we went with the Scorpion instead. The Scorpion can sometimes be too tart, but it was in balance on this visit.

Scorpion

As the filmgoers returned from the movie, the bar filled with people trying to get one final cocktail and then we were ushered into the Lanyu Room to watch the ten-minute deleted scene. If you’ve seen The Donn of Tiki film, you wouldn’t be surprised that the discussion of Trader Vic featured notables such as Eve Bergeron, Marie King, and Tim Glazner. There was also some archival footage of an elderly Trader Vic reminiscing about his career. This was such a treat, informative and entertaining.

We also spoke with Donn of Tiki director Max Well about plans for the VOD home video and Blu-Ray release of this incredible documentary, to be released very soon.