Special places archive
March 2001
The Kahiki Supper Club
Until I found this web site the name tiki restaurant meant nothing to me. This piece from the Atlantic magazine describes one, and a campaign to save it. It’s an engaging story subtitled How do we distinguish the historic from the sentimental? There are links to other web sites about these special places.
Built in 1961, the Kahiki wasn’t the first tiki restaurant in the nation (that honor goes to Don the Beachcomber’s, in Hollywood, which opened in 1934), but it may have been the most elaborate. Last June, The New York Times dubbed the Kahiki “the grandest and best-preserved of a nearly extinct form of culinary recreation.”.
