Tag Archives: Tiki

Trader Vic’s Los Angeles – L.A. Live Downtown

Posted by The Tiki Chick in Bar & Restaurant Reviews and tagged with , , , ,

While many major cities lack even one Trader Vic’s, Los Angeles is lucky enough to have two! (Sort of. The Beverly Hills “lounge” is a story for another time.) This is one of the newer locations of this historic tiki chain—it opened in 2009 in the LA LIVE complex downtown.

Being so close to Staples Center, the bar is the perfect spot for a postgame drink—win or lose. Suffering Bastards are particularly popular when it’s the latter. Happy hour is Monday through Friday from 3 p.m.-6 p.m., offering discounted appetizers and a handful of $6 cocktails (Mai Tai, Bahia, Navy Grog, etc.).

The dining room does an elegant take on tiki decor, with high, angled ceilings, lots of bamboo, lanterns, green booths, green Chinese tiles and beautiful tapa cloth covering some of the walls. It’s a lovely oasis amid all the glass and steel of downtown.

I always try the signature drink for each location, here it’s the Big Kahuna ($12) made with light rum, undisclosed fruit juices, passionfruit, grenadine and brandy. Even better, you can order it in a Tiki Farm mug specially designed for Trader Vic’s LA. We also opted for the Peach Tree Punch ($10), a sweet slushie-like drink with light rum, peach, orange and coconut

It’s widely assumed that the food at tiki spots usually doesn’t compare to the quality of the drinks, but Trader Vic’s has a reputation for serving pretty good grub. The meal starts off in a unique way, with bread and peanut butter!

The Bongo Bongo soup ($8) is a classic Trader Vic’s dish, and according to Jeff Berry’s Taboo Table, this velouté of oysters and spinach was inspired by a special type of clam the Maori ate in New Zealand. It kind of looks like a swamp and it has a very distinct flavor that’s not for everyone, but I liked it.

Mr. Baseball is a bit of a pyromaniac so he loved that the Beef Cho Cho ($11) was served with a mini hibachi to finish cooking the seared steak with soy sake sauce.

And what could be a better follow-up to meat than…more meat? He thought the wasabi crusted filet mignon ($32) was well-prepared but he wasn’t so crazy about the smoked Asian ratatouille. It looks like they’ve added Hawaiian spiced fries to this item since we dined there awhile back.

I was really blown away by the chai tea duck with yam-scallion puree, long beans and sherry ginger reduction ($24). It was so tender and flavorful. Overall we had a wonderful meal and our server couldn’t have been nicer.

Trader Vic’s has also teamed up with the Regal Cinemas at LA LIVE to offer a dinner and a movie special that includes a three-course meal and movie ticket for $30 per person, just in case you needed yet another reason to get down there.

Trader Vic's on Urbanspoon

UPDATE: Sadly, Trader Vic’s LA closed March 18, 2014.

The Terrace at Trump Tower Chicago Turns Polynesian

Posted by The Tiki Chick in Bar & Restaurant Reviews and tagged with , , , , ,

The Tasting Table Chicago newsletter tipped us off that The Terrace at the Trump hotel in Chicago was featuring Polynesian-themed food and drinks this summer. We were in the Windy City for Memorial Day weekend, so I insisted we check it out.

This proved to be a bit more difficult than I thought it would be with all the wacky weather we had. The first night we tried to go, The Terrace was closed because high winds were knocking glasses right off the tables!

But when we did make it up to the sixteenth floor (next to restaurant Sixteen), I was absolutely blown away by the view. You could walk right up to the glass divider, with the Wrigley Building and Tribune Tower front and center, and the river below.

The hostess led me, Mr. Baseball and his brother and sis-in-law to this spacious, freestanding booth. We thought it was pretty neat until we noticed that it was already inhabited…by about a dozen big spiders that had spun their webs between the bamboo.

Generally speaking, tiki drinks are not cheap—and if they are you can bet you won’t be getting something made with quality rum or fresh juices. But throw in a swank setting with a killer view and the prices can get pretty outrageous. (Expense accounts definitely recommended here.)

The summer cocktail menu features eight “Divine Nectars” and we tried half of them. The best of the bunch was the Motu-Ahe ($19), made with Cruzan light rum, dark rum, papaya, mango and guava juice. The other two were good but I wasn’t as wowed by the Coconut Castaway ($23)—the bar was out of coconuts so this concoction of Ciroc coconut vodka, pineapple juice and Ketel One vanilla was served in a melon instead—or the The Lagoon ($18), composed of light and dark rums, blue curacao, grenadine, pineapple, orange and lime juice.

The Terrace is open until 12:30 a.m., but the kitchen closes earlier. Mr. Baseball went for the marinated beef and pineapple skewers with Thai peanut sauce (they were tasty, but twenty bucks, really?). Also on the menu were seafood platters, sushi, curries and other global eats. I can’t resist a whimsical dessert, so I got the Mai Tai Push Pop ($13) with Mai Tai sorbet, Myers’s rum and guava gelée. It was just like the push pops I remember from being a kid, except alcoholic (and expensive).

Us ladies decided to close out the night with the Tahitian Traveler ($34), served in dramatic fashion with wisps of dry ice materializing from the hollowed out pineapple. I never would have guessed at all the liquor they loaded in it: Belvedere vodka, Beefeeater 24, 10 Cane, Cruzan rum and Amaretto.

The official Trump web site steers away from the “T” word (instead saying the theme is “Polynesian Chic”) but I did spot some tiki masks around the bar. The prices might still be causing me sticker shock, but the view is worth a million bucks (or two, just ask Patrick Kane).

The Terrace at Trump International Hotel & Tower Chicago
401 North Wabash Ave., Sixteenth floor
Chicago, IL 60611
312-644-0900

The Terrace at Trump on Urbanspoon_)

Chef Shangri-La – North Riverside, IL

Posted by The Tiki Chick in Bar & Restaurant Reviews and tagged with , , , ,

A few months ago, Mr. Baseball and I had the pleasure of visiting Chef Shangri-La, a Chinese restaurant in North Riverside in the western suburbs of Chicago. It was opened in 1976 by Paul Fong, a chef from a restaurant called Shangri-La (hence the name) who had also worked at the original Don the Beachcomber and Mai-Kai before that.

Mr. Baseball wanted to know how a Chinese restaurant could be tiki, so I explained that when Donn Beach opened his first Polynesian-themed restaurant in the 1930s, his chef was Chinese. Cantonese cuisine seemed “exotic” enough for the time and it became popular with tiki spots. Likewise, Chinese restaurants around the country embraced the trend by adding tropical drinks to their menus.

The decor is kind of eclectic, with Chinese touches mingling with Christmas lights and tiki masks, but most impressive are the Orchids of Hawaii lanterns and large carved Witco tikis. According to Tiki Modern, the restaurant acquired the Witco pieces not long before the iconic furniture company shut down. (This was after the mid-century heyday of tiki, after all.)

It just happened to be the third Saturday of the month, when the restaurant hosts an event called “An Evening in Shangri-La” with live bands and a free tiki-themed raffle. We were lucky enough to win a neat Exotica 2003 poster (now up in my tiki room) and we thoroughly enjoyed the sounds of The Western Casuals, especially their cover of “Folsom Prison Blues.”

I love crab rangoon, but Mr. Baseball doesn’t like seafood so we started off with an order of potstickers ($5.50). These suckers were huge!

And it was a cold November night (I know, I’m trying to catch up) so Mr. Baseball warmed up with a bowl of wontwon soup ($5.25).

I was quite pleased when the “Volcano Beef” ($13.95) arrived at our table and it was ON FIRE. It wasn’t as pyrotechnic as the Flaming Ambrosia at Kowloon in Boston, but still a nice touch.

Fortune cookies and almond cookies come with the bill. I don’t think either of our fortunes were very exciting since I didn’t think to hold on to them. (As if I wouldn’t have lost them by the time I finally got to posting this.)

What also makes Chef Shangri-La stand out is that they serve their own original cocktails in addition to classic tiki drinks like the Fogcutter, Navy Grog, Scorpion and Mai Tai. For the first round, I went for their signature Dr. Fong (seen in the pic at the beginning of the post) but I preferred the Port of Love. After dinner, we went to the bustling bar area where there’s a few booths and a circular bar capped off with a thatched roof.

I thought the drinks were pretty good for the price ($6.50 for small, $9.50 for large) and we had a ton of leftover food. It’s quite a trek from the north ‘burbs, but I’m looking forward to getting back to Chef Shangri-La again when I have the chance.

Chef Shangri-La
7930 W. 26th St.
North Riverside, IL 60546
708-442-7080

Chef Shangri-La on Urbanspoon