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Phone Rodeo With Sharon Stewart This Week! · Mega Rock On Demand

• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's Friday afternoon, and that means it's time to light the torches once again for Tiki Talk.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Ben Willis with you.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: When you talk about classic, grand, big tiki temples, in the modern tiki movement, there are a few that thankfully still exist to this day.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: The big one, and the biggest still remaining, is, of course, the grand sprawling estate of the Mai Kai in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Another big one, of course, being Kowloon in Saugus, Massachusetts, just north of Boston.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: And up until 2018, of course, we still had in Huntington Beach, California, Sam's Seafood, which had been there since 1960 or so, then at that point had been rechristened as the New Don the Beachcomber Restaurant.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Sadly, that has since closed.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: As is the fate of 99% of the classic tiki establishments that were purpose-built as Grand Tiki Palaces.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the losses that to me and to many others that kind of hurts the most is the loss of the Kahiki Supper Club.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: And of all places that they built this, Columbus, Ohio, considered by a lot of people in the movement as the most elaborate and one of the largest tiki temples and tiki restaurants ever built in the United States.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: And for a long time, it was the only grand tiki establishment in the entire state of Ohio for most of its history.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I will not pretend to be an expert on the Kahiki or its history.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: For there, I will defer to a character known on the Tiki Central forums and beyond as Tiki Skip, who is an Ohio native and has a strong connection with the history of the Kahiki Supper Club.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: And on the Tiki Central forums, he was kind enough to put together a timeline of the history of the Kahiki.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Ohio restaurateurs Bill Sapp and Lee Henry previously had a smaller tiki bar known as the Grass Shack, which burned down in the late 1950s.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: And in response, rather than throwing the towel and going a different direction, the two of them came together and said, Let's make the biggest possible tiki restaurant that we can imagine.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so, February 20th, 1961, they opened the Kahiki.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And if you want to see some pictures of what this looked like, check out our post on our Facebook page at Mega Rock PA.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Not only do I have some pictures of the massive A-frame building that this was all put under, but we also have some pictures of the cocktail menu of what you could order at the Kahiki.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Check it out.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: But the Kahiki was a literal Polynesian thatched roof village built under a giant A-frame meeting house style roof, with 20-foot-tall, flaming Moai statues flanking the door at the entrance to the restaurant.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Water features, plants, tribal drums emanating from dark corners, and of course the centerpiece, the towering Moai-faced fireplace facade, staring down across the entire village like some dark idol.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: His mouth, the entrance to the fireplace itself with flames licking up.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: When you talk about making a first impression when you walk into a place, it could not have been a bigger shock than to walk in from the streets of Columbus, Ohio, into the Kahiki.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: And by 1997, the Kahiki was still not going strong, but was still in business.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, it was put on the National Register of Historic Places, at that time the only Tiki establishment on that list.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Sadly, just three years later, the current owner of the Kahiki sold the site to Walgreens, shut down the restaurant, demolished it.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Thankfully, a lot of the artifacts, including the Moai and the fireplace facade, were salvaged and live on elsewhere.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: But the wonderful giant A-frame building, everything inside, ultimately met the fate of the Wrecking Ball, and Walgreens built a drugstore on the site, which in turn, during the COVID era, itself shut down.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: And now the Walgreens is a Volunteers of America thrift store.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: I guess the circle of life continues.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Thankfully, new tiki life has been breathed back into the Columbus area.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: In 2019, the Hulu-Huly Tiki Lounge was opened in Powell, Ohio, a suburb to the north of Columbus.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: And in September of just last year, one of the Moai from the entrance to the Kihiki was fully restored.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Its new place of honor at the Hulu Hulu Tiki Lounge, and its torch, flaming out of its head, was lit once again.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, just like most other large tiki chains or restaurants back in the day, the Kihiki had several pieces of custom drinkware that they would serve their cocktails in, one of which, famously, is the Headhunter Cocktail, which came in a very distinctive, almost pear-shaped mohai mug to kind of resemble the statues out front of the restaurant.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: And we have Tim Glasner of Swankpad to thank for preserving what we believe to be the original recipe for the Kahiki's Headhunter.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: There are several recipes floating around out there, but this recipe supposedly came from one of the bartenders.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: So at least this is the headhunter from the Kahiki as it was served late in its history.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: Originally, this would have been prepared with a spindle blender, you know, a milkshake mixer, a Hamilton beat, something like that.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: I've got one, they're fun to work with, but if you don't have one to work with, you can do the same thing with some very well-crushed ice and a shaker.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: To our mixing tin, we're going to start off with an unusual ingredient that is not found in a lot of tiki cocktails, because quite frankly, it has a very understated flavor.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: 1 ⁇ 2 ounce of guava juice.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: You can use either fresh guava juice, or if you like yours a little sweeter, maybe go with the guava nectar, as you can find in your international aisle quite often.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: 1 12 ounce of fresh-squeezed orange juice, and 1 ounce of pineapple juice.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Right away, if you know anything about drinks in Hawaii, this should jump out at you as pog juice, pineapple, orange, and guava juice, which is a common juice cocktail in Hawaii.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: So to our pog mix, we're going to add 1 ounce of gold rum, something like an aged Bacardi would be perfect here, and 1 ounce of white rum.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Going to add some crushed ice to our drink mixer tin.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: Mix that on high for about 10 seconds.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Pour unstrained into a tall mug if you have a Moai mug or even a Kahiki Headhunter.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is your opportunity to use it.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: The traditional garge of the Kahiki was a pineapple cube and a maranchino cherry skewered onto a cocktail pick with a nice little sprig of mint in its background.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: And there you go, it's the Headhunter cocktail as served at the sadly lost Kahiki Supper Club.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: So, until we meet another island out there somewhere, this is Ben Willis saying Aloha, and leaving you with the classic from one of the biggest names in instrumental surf rock of the 20th century.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's The Ventures and New Orleans on Tiki Talk!