New Luck Toy: three words that have three meanings in Seattle, WA.
New Luck Toy used to be a cool, kitschy Chinese restaurant that was located in West Seattle. It shut down about a decade ago.
New Luck Toy is also a punk rock band from Seattle.
And as of October 2016, New Luck Toy is a brand new bar in West Seattle!
And they have a slushie machine that pours out frozen Tiki drinks!
Right off the bat, the “new” New Luck Toy has nothing to do with the punk band or the old New Luck Toy. The owners wanted to create an homage to the original location and they created an awesome bar.
New Luck Toy is not a Tiki bar. It’s a Chinese restaurant bar, but it shares many aspects with a Tiki bar. You just have to dig a little deeper to see what’s going on at New Luck Toy. I think it’s pretty awesome!
Tiki bars are faux by design. A Tiki bar is a replica of some tropical or Polynesian getaway. The combination of décor, drinks, and music all help to create the fantasy. You’re not in a bamboo hut on an island in the middle of the Pacific, but you can pretend you are.
When I said that New Luck Toy is a Chinese restaurant bar, I was telling the truth, but not really.
Picture a typical Chinese restaurant in your mind…
The restaurant is in some shopping plaza out of town and usually takes up a big chunk of retail space. The Chinese restaurant is big! What’s even bigger is the menu. A typical Chinese restaurant reads more like a book with page after page of food choices. Usually everyone working is Asian and they might even be from the same family. If you make your way into the bar, it will feel like you walked back in time to the mid-’70s or close to it. Everything you see might actually have been there since the place opened up! Even some of the patrons!
What I just described is not New Luck Toy.
New Luck Toy is an Asian-themed bar, but I don’t believe the owners are Asian.
New Luck Toy serves Chinese food, but there is only a limited menu, as in a half a page worth of dishes…
New Luck Toy is actually pretty small. There are four booths in the front.
New Luck Toy hasn’t been around since the ’70s. It’s brand spanking new!
So what’s going on here at New Luck Toy? Well, as the owners stated, they wanted to create an homage to the original New Luck Toy, but I think it’s more than that. Just like a Tiki bar creating a faux idea of a tropical getaway, New Luck Toy has created the faux idea of a Chinese restaurant bar! It’s awesome and I love it!
Oh yeah, order a Mai Tai. It’s very tasty!
Here is the New Luck Toy website.
And Facebook Page.