Category: Tiki Bar

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New Menu at Zombie Village is a Hit

San Francisco’s Zombie Village launched their first major menu refresh since they opened in 2018, offering several new cocktails and also adding in some classics such as the Port Light and Three Dots & a Dash. Thankfully, our favorite Zombie Village favorites including the Disco Banana, Coco Pandan, and Doc’s Grog remain on the menu.

Many of the new cocktails include coconut, including the creamy Catamaran that features pisco, Jamaica rum, and apricot. This cocktail isn’t too sweet and is supposedly inspired by the Tradewinds cocktail, but the apricot is more in the background. We also liked Over the Garden Wall that has rum, elderflower, coconut, and absinthe – again very balanced and not too heavy on the absinthe or coconut.

Over the Garden Wall

Our favorite new menu item was the Beach Hopper, with rum, cacao, mint, and coconut – this isn’t your grandfather’s Grasshopper but it’ll give you a lot of those same vibes. The balance for drink like this can be tricky and Zombie Village has it dialed in perfectly. We were impressed by the new menu that features 17 cocktails and seems to have a little bit of something for everyone, including cocktails based on bourbon, tequila, and mezcal plus a few well-known tiki favorites including the Mai Tai and Painkiller.

The new menu includes interior illustrations by Tony Canepa and is available for purchase. The menu launched on Wednesday with a low-key launch party that included a DJ set by Woody Miller who is also one of the artists who contributed to the venue. We think this is a great step forward for Zombie Village which previously had been resting on the laurels of the original cocktail menu and hopefully sets the place up for a fresh round of tropical cocktail converts.

Beach Hopper
DJ Woody Miller
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Bamboo Club Revisited

After an exciting day of tasting and socializing at the Rum Curious Summit we decided to keep the party going in a more relaxing fashion by going over to Long Beach’s Bamboo Club for a meal and drinks. The team was able to let us have a larger table for our group and between us and others from the event it was sort of like a final farewell with friends.

There was a DJ playing some great retro tunes including lounge and exotica favorites, and we enjoyed the atmosphere inside this tiki bar with dive leanings. There’s a Bamboo Mai Tai that uses 122 proof Copalli aged rum, which I’m sure would have been my preference had I not been looking to limit alcohol. So I went with the standard Mai Tai with Jamaica and Martinique rum and found it to pretty good especially on a Monday when it is only $8!

We’d only visited once before but Bamboo Club was a fun time and we enjoyed exploring all the little rooms and patio outside, featuring eclectic artwork and cool lighting.

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Strong Water Anaheim is Orange County’s Preeminent Tiki Bar

We had another amazing visit to Strong Water Anaheim, coasting on Nav’s reservation for a totally relaxing Sunday evening over superior cocktails. While reservations are especially important here and can limit spontaneity, it is nice to be able to get them and plan your day around the time. Mrs. Mai Tai and I arrived a bit early and had dinner at the Packing District Food Hall, a short walk away.

After overindulging the previous night I stuck to one cocktail, so I made sure it counted by having Strong Water’s excellent Mai Tai – rich and nutty with some flavorful but approachable rum. It is one of the best Mai Tais of the year so far, once again. Mrs. Mai Tai’s Pearl Diver was also top-notch.

This was the first visit for Nav and Alissa, and the crew made a great impression by being so responsive to food and additional drink orders. We hardly had to wait when the mood struck, but at the same time we were never pestered, a delicate balance. Alissa was impressed by the merch for sale and went home with a mug and the staff took care to fulfill the order. Music was relaxing exotica and vintage music, totally appropriate and setting the mood for great conversation.

Strong Water’s commitment to high quality never seems to waver, making it one of the best examples of the genre. But as with the best tiki bars where quality is a concern, there’s never any snobby attitude from the staff who know you are there to have a great time. And that’s how it went for us, once again.

Pearl Diver and Strong Water Interior
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Lucky Tiki Still Going Strong in West Hollywood

We Lyfted over from Downtown and made it to our reservation at The Lucky Tiki in West Hollywood in the nick of time, just as our friends Alissa and Nav arrived to join us. With a small space and high demand it is nice to be able to score a reservation on a Saturday night. This was our first visit since New Year’s Eve and they’re still serving the same cocktail menu that has a little something for everyone.

I’ve been on record saying I don’t love the standard Mai Tai here, but the staff told me they were working on a new formula. Though the one I received wasn’t the final version thanks to Dave and crew I’m pleased to report it was a lot better. Meanwhile Mrs. Mai Tai got her favorite, the New York Sour riff called Elvis in Hawaii featuring peanut butter whiskey, creme de banana, and a cabernet float. Delicious. As first timers, Nav and Alissa enjoyed their drinks including the Grog, Mai Tai, and Daiquiri.

The “Ghost of Jim Morrison” was playing the part of trickster this evening, as the cocktail of the same name was quite delicious but also super potent – I’m sure the Doors frontman held his liquor better when the L.A. Woman album was recorded in the same building.

It seems like the patio section is a little bit more elaborately decorated since our last visit, and remains a fairly enclosed space where you can hear the music a little better and get a little bit more of that fresh Los Angeles air. But we really like the dark and traditional tiki environment inside where everything is a bit of a higher energy yet still relaxing. The Lucky Tiki concept has been so popular there are plans for a second location which we are eagerly awaiting.

Mai Tai
with GM David Ray
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Eye Candy at Clifton’s Pacific Seas

Pacific Seas is the exotic travel and South Seas themed bar inside Clifton’s Republic in downtown Los Angeles, but since it is only open on weekends and has an up and down return from COVID it has been many years from our last visit. We made sure to visit on this trip, securing a reservation right at opening at 6 pm Saturday.

None of the speakeasy or dress code rules of years past are enforced at opening, but we still wore aloha wear and joined the line to get in. We made our way upstairs, eventually finding the secret entrance and then exploring upstairs until we found the venue. The interior here is of the same quality as a Disney queue with so many items to look at and so many tikis too. Ambient music with an electronica lean was playing, a precursor to the club music that plays later in the evening.

We were seated on the floor at a table, rather than in the more decorated booths – a disappointment. But, our server was very friendly and efficient, working solo during the first hour across the entire floor. Also working solo was a young bartender who wasn’t exactly killing himself to work through orders so our drinks took some time to arrive.

The venue asks if you’re there for drinks only or for “drinks and snacks” – yet some of the menu items included a burger and the very large chicken sandwich that I had, so “snacks” is a weird label. The food here was pretty good and was delivered before our drinks were.

It appears all the cocktails are batched, which meant that Mrs. Mai Tai got the last Jet Pilot during service even though it was only just after opening, so one wonders if they’re batched only on Fridays. The Himalayan Mai Tai includes some mango liqueur but is actually a pretty good Mai Tai since it includes overproof Jamaican rum and Copalli rum. However, the Saturn did not taste like any Saturn I’ve ever tried. So the cocktails were hit and miss, and going off menu seems very risky.

Mai Tai

Still, the eye candy in here is amazing and Clifton’s Pacific Seas is a must-visit for any tikiphile. We really enjoyed the energy and overall our food and service were pretty good. We hear the people watching can be good later when it is a nightclub vibe, if that’s your thing.

Saturn
Jet Pilot
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Honest Review of The Cane Tiki Room

Most of the things posted to this feed aren’t reviews per se, but trip reports of my experience. There’s certainly some overlap in material but a review to me adds editorial content that is usually not present in my posts.

Mrs. Mai Tai and I stopped overnight in Paso Robles and had a later dinner at Cane Tiki Room which we visited once before. We enjoy the clean but well-done Polynesian decor, and the staff was just as friendly as last time and worked with us when we arrived early for our reservation. Music on a Friday night was upbeat and funky, 1970s-leaning and anything retro is fine with me. I didn’t love the spam musubi which was a bit overdone and covered with sauce, but the dumplings, teriyaki chicken bowl, and lettuce cups were wonderful.

On our last visit I liked most of the cocktails except the Mai Tai which used a funny tasting mac nut orgeat. They’ve since reformulated with traditional orgeat but are now using Planteray Original Dark as the base rum, with an optional float of Goslings. Original Dark is not a strongly flavored rum and contains a lot of sugar, so the Mai Tai was not a punchy as I think it ought to be – and Goslings wouldn’t have helped as it too is not a strong flavor. With a Mai Tai you want to taste the rum and it really ought to be more rum forward.

I also tried a Chartreuse Swizzle that was much better with some tangy pineapple juice working well with the herbal liqueur. Mrs. Mai Tai had the Lapu Lapu, a juicy but well-balanced cocktail that is served in a cute pig mug (none for sale at the time, though). These two good cocktails were well-executed.

We also visited Eleven Twenty Two, a speakeasy owned by the same restaurant group, and were completely blown away by the drinks. While this serves a more cocktail-oriented clientele, the price of the drinks were comparable. So, we know the group can make better cocktails and while we understand the people coming to a tiki restaurant are different than a speakeasy we do think Cane Tiki Room should be doing better with the cocktails and especially the Mai Tai. Use a punchier rum, please, even if you have to bump the price up from $14.

Having some great cocktail options in a town known for wine tourism isn’t too shabby, and with the friendly staff and full menu Cane Tiki Room is a great option for more than just a quick stop for tropical drinks.

Dumplings
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Daywalker Relief at Pagan Idol

Popped into Pagan Idol on our way to the Go-Go’s show on Tuesday after dinner. I threw my back out on Monday but thankfully there was relief in the form of Pagan’s signature Zombie which is called the Daywalker. This longtime favorite was just what I needed and while I’m not a connoisseur of Zombies I did think it was really great.

Mrs. Mai Tai had the Banana Be’ with butterscotch, cinnamon, pineapple, and coconut which we both also really liked, creamy but not overly sweet and very well balanced. This was my third visit in the last couple months and have had great cocktails each time, so I probably should come more often to try some of the other menu items.

Service at Pagan Idol on a weeknight is a little bit of an unknown, since they only open the back room when warranted by the amount of guests in the venue. We like the front room and sat at a table by the fish tank, but it did get a little crowded when a couple large groups came in.

The Go-Go’s played very well over at the Warfield and sounded pretty good despite some mixing issues by the sound team. This is now the third or fourth tour we’ve been to since they announced they were retiring in 2010. LOL.