Since that fortuitous day I found Latitude 29 (and returning twice more on the same trip), I’ve come to grasp the potent appeal of this subculture. First, the immersive setting is paramount. “Ideally, when you walk into a tiki bar, it’s like walking onto a movie set,” says Garret Richard, who is the chief cocktail officer at Sunken Harbor Club and co-author of Tropical Standard. This idea has been a key pillar since the very beginning. “Donn famously hooked up a hose on the tin roof of his Hollywood location and would turn it on at night to trick his guests into thinking it was raining outside,” Smuggler’s Cove owner Martin Cate tells me. Nearly a century later, this craving for escapism hasn’t faded, with immersive experiences trending across industries. “You see bars designed like spaceships, train dining cars, or crashed airplanes; all of these places are trying to transport guests somewhere else,” says Alex Lamb, director of the documentary The Donn of Tiki. “In a lot of ways, that traces back to Donn Beach’s original goal of giving people not just a drink, but an experience.”
The cocktails themselves deserve their own dissertation. While many trendy tipples of our times rely on minimal ingredients, layering to achieve complexity is a hallmark of tiki cocktails. A return to fresh juices, homemade syrups, and evocative spices swirl together for cocktails that are both bold and balanced. (A recent drink order at Sunken Harbor Club combined a blend of Martinique rhum with wormwood amaro and falernum—heaven!) And though rum is the focus of most tiki menus, other spirits are entering the conversation. “Contemporary recipes in today’s neo-tiki bars use different base spirits,” Berry explains, “a lot more gin and whiskey, cachaca, pisco, tequila and mezcal, to keep up with modern tastes.”
So what keeps me coming back? The thrill of being transported to another reality while sipping on something special, ultimately. It would be easy to write this notion of tiki off as kitsch, but upon examining the history and cultural context of the genre, I’m left eager to learn (and taste) more. Tiki’s origins are rooted in colonialism and imperialism, but with this revival, the insensitive iconography is giving way to a reimagining of what an immersive experience can look like.
Below, a brief guide on where to order your next tropical cocktail.
4427 Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90027
“The Tiki-Ti has been family-owned since 1961. The house specialty is the Ray’s Mistake, a secret recipe that regulars (myself included) have been trying to figure out for decades. If you’re not driving, try a Great White Shark, which has a bite like one.” —Jeff Berry
100 2nd Ave, New York, NY 10003
Billing itself as a “tropical hellscape,” this satanic tiki bar serves up tropical classics in a goth-inflected setting, complete with an eight-foot altar and bat taxidermy.
650 Gough St, San Francisco, CA 94102
Named one of the World’s 50 Best Bars, this San Francisco tiki destination feels like the belly of a pirate ship, complete with over 1,300 rums.
