A hop and a hula dance away, Tiki bar culture returns to Edmonton (2023)

Article content

Are we on the cusp of a Tiki revival in Edmonton?

“It feels like there’s been a subculture of people around it in town,” says Scott Dodds, owner of the downtown Honi Honi Tiki Lounge, which opened back in January of this year. “Someone brought their mom in last week, and she said ‘I’ve been waiting for this bar my whole life.’”

Dodds estimates that his customer was in the 60-year-old range, which means she caught some of the afterglow of the first wave of Tiki establishments in the city. While Tiki was popping up throughout America from the 1920s and on, grabbing influences from Hawaiian, Polynesian, Caribbean culture and more, Edmonton had to wait until 1963 when The Beachcomber opened its doors. It was a hit. Edmontonians loved the downtown eatery, relishing the rattan chairs, Hawaiian masks on the wall, Tiki statues, and the list of cocktails with names like Samoa Fog Cutter and Volcano Cooler.

By 1977, Journal columnist Bob Remington wrote an article comparing The Beachcomber to the Tiki Tiki Polynesian Restaurant, another downtown establishment that opened in 1970, which boasted a floor show involving fire and hula dancing. It was a fine time for those who loved exotic drinks, Hawaiian music, the oeuvre of Les Baxter and Martin Denny, dance shows, hula girls and Polynesian food. Even SCTV got in on the action in 1981, airing a Chinatown parody called Polynesiantown.

Article content

Article content

The ending, which was filmed outside on 81st Avenue across the street from Strathcona Spirits, took place just a hop and a hula dance away from Tiki Tiki on Whyte, which opens in late May.

“When I was really young I was brought to one of the Tiki bars in Edmonton,” says Tiki Tiki on Whyte co-owner Lonny Seguin. “I remember getting a glass that was shaped like a Buddha, it was a very memorable experience. So when Covid hit I decided to re-ignite my love of Tiki. I jumped on Amazon and every website I could find and ordered as much Tiki as I could find.”

Eventually Seguin decided that his apartment had limited space for the party he wanted to get going and took over from where Pho Boy was on Whyte. Where the 40-seat Honi Honi concentrates heavily on the cocktail side of things, Seguin sees Tiki Tiki as a gastropub, a fifty-fifty split of food and drink. There will be plenty of cocktail options to be sure, but also menu items like poke bowls, loco mocos and mac ‘n cheese butter chicken.

Article content

“There are lots of fun foods and you see a lot of fusion,” Seguin says. “It’s like Polynesian food is a sort of Asian fusion barbecue, kind of a comfort food. Then you have the addition of spam, which is cool, and there’s so many spam type things that we want to bring into our restaurant as options for people.”

There’s already considerable chatter on the street about Tiki Tiki on Whyte. Dodds reports that Honi Honi has been packed out since opening earlier in the year in the ICE District, with more than a few being lifelong Tiki enthusiasts like Marty Macauley.

“My dad built a Tiki bar in his basement in 1968, so I was kind of into it even when I was a child,” says Macauley. “In 1990 I got back into it again, adding to what my dad built. The last several years I’ve increased the collection a lot, with stuff from both the Beachcomber and the Tiki Tiki Polynesian Restaurant.”

Macauley’s family were lucky in that a lot of what they used to build their bar was bought from a place across the road from them called Polynesian Imports. Taking advantage of the fad for all things Tiki, the store supplied enthusiasts with bamboo, wood carvings, sea shells and more. When it closed in 1977 that seemed to presage the end of the vogue, though both restaurants stuck it out for a while longer.

“The Tiki Tiki made it to 1990, but it wasn’t so good towards the end,” Macauley notes. “It was on the downhill slide. But it was only a little while later that a bit of a Tiki revival started.”

There may have been aficionados in town who participated in that revival with basement bars, but aside from the now-shuttered Monkey Island Tiki Lounge & Grill on Whyte there appears to be no commercial manifestations of Tiki in Edmonton. When Tiki Tiki on Whyte opens later in May, Edmonton will have two places devoted completely to the culture, with all of the expected drinks, food, and artifacts in place. In other words, Tiki bars run by actual Tiki nerds, slapping their own money down on a tropical dream.

“I had to sell my townhouse in order to fund this bar but my budget was still pretty small,” says Dodds about Honi Honi. “I have 800 feet of trim that I’ve personally carved because I was like ‘hey, I want to do this, this is going to be fun.’ I had to figure out how to do it myself without making it look cheap. When people came in they were blown away by the bar, all of the masks I had ordered from the States, everything about the place. The cool thing is that people are so excited for this bar that they bring me gifts, like a paddle that they’ve been saving. I think it’s kind of fun for them, because they can come to the bar and show friends the piece of art on the wall that they donated.”