There have been many tiki bars/restaurants that have come and gone over the years. Sometimes the building is demolished and something new is built, sometimes the building gets “repurposed” and becomes another business entirely, or the building is just abandoned and left to rot away. Sadly, when a tiki bar is gone, it’s gone for good and all that is left is the memories of the patrons who were lucky enough to go when the bar was still open …
A couple years ago, I was rolling though Indiana on one of my Tiki Road Trips and stopped in Indianapolis to visit my good friend Bob Cripe. Bob is Indianapolis’s own tiki historian. If something tiki happened in the Circle City, Bob knows about it. There weren’t too many tiki bars in Indianapolis over the years but there was one in particular. It was called Knobby’s Mai Tai Restaurant and the building is still standing! I had to check it out!
There wasn’t much left of this tiki bar and I understand that the building was used as a karate school. From looking at the ruins of this building I’m guessing karate hasn’t been practiced here in a long time.
Knobby’s Mai Tai Restaurant is an important piece of Indianapolis’s Tiki history. Bob compiled as much information and pictures as he could and asked me to try to put it all together. I was happy to oblige. What follows is bits and pieces of Knobby’s history. There are some pictures, and quotes and newspaper clippings. Knobby’s Mai Tai Restaurant seemed like a really cool place, hopefully you will get the same impression too …
Some famous people who visited: Johnny Cash, Kingston Trio, Colonel Sanders
The ladies wore Sarongs or a yard and a half of material that was held by a safety pin.
They had a huge tropical salt water fish tank.
Every Friday and Saturday they would have real Polynesian dancers and a ukulele player.
From the time she was 21-31, Paula McRill was a manager and bartender at Knobby’s Mai Tai for 10 1/2 years.
Happy hour was always packed and their food was delicious. They had a lunch buffet and a party space downstairs.
Popular Cocktails
The Knobby Eruption- Shared in a huge bowl for four is light rum, 7-Up and 151 rum lit on fire.
Navy Grog- Brandy, light rum, lemon juice, cinnamon or nutmeg with a core of ice that you put a straw through in a tumbler.
Polynesian Maiden – Served in a coconut glass, vanilla ice cream, coconut milk of Orgeat syrup and light rum.
The glass with the dancer on front was from a drink called the hula girl.
Big Kahuna – Dark rum and pineapple juice. Knobby’s had orchids flown in from Hawaii
Blue Hula Girl was the same as the Mai Tai but in the blue hula girl mug.
A personal memory: Knobby liked to touch my Mom’s butt, my Dad Kissed Knobby’s wife, My Mom kissed some other men and all the Dancers would take off on their husbands and boyfriends with other coworkers and patrons. Lots of funny business!
By CONNIE ZEIGLER Urban Times contributing editor: Local devotees waited a long, joyless four years for another Tiki destination to open in Indianapolis. That Tiki wonderland, a “Polynesian style restaurant/lounge,” according to one of the numerous want ads that manager Jim Graham ran in local newspapers in 1968, was Knobby’s Mai Tai Restaurant and Kahuna Lounge. Nestled inside an “ordinary drive-in restaurant” building that was rejiggered by Bill “Knobby” Knoll into a breeze-block decorated “long house” with a high-peaked roof, the Mai Tai restaurant and Kahuna Lounge offered “the luxurious beauty and friendly atmospheres of the South Pacific,” according to a March 19, 1978, article in The Star. The building, most recently a karate studio, still stands at 38th and Shadeland.
Inside the lounge, “gaily garbed, comely waitresses, grass-thatched walls, colorful exotic lighting and relaxing but interesting entertainment by singer Eddie Mack,” took Tiki to a whole new level here. The waitresses could be prevailed upon to dance the hula or break into a “South Seas duet” with Eddie. The drink specialty? Mai Tais, of course!
The Kahuna Lounge had a long run in Indianapolis, operating for a least a decade. A certain Urban Times historian might have visited it herself, in fact. But by 1980, it is no longer shown in the City Directory. Victim to the whims of the shopping mall generation. Today, The Kahuna Lounge is the stuff of legends to Indianapolis Tikiphiles: a local realtor recently suggested that the building should be listed on the National Register of Historic Places (an idea worth considering); A Kahuna lounge tiki cocktail bowl sold for a few hundred dollars last year at a local Tiki event.
Mai Tai Restaurant also went by the names Kahuna, and Knobby’s Mai Tai; the chronology is not clear. During the time it was Mai Tai, the name Kahuna Lounge seems to have been used for the bar area within the restaurant. The restaurant is perhaps most notable as an excellent example of the sort of design theft that happened during the height of Polynesian restaurants: all of the graphics for the restaurant, including Mai Tai’s logo tikis, menu design, even the lettering used for the Mai Tai logo, were lifted completely from the Tahitian. The Mai Tai’s building has a tall, peaked A-frame roof. The building still stands today, and houses a karate school.
Thank you very much Bob for compiling all this information on Knobby’s Mai Tai!
Loved this article and would love to read more about other lost Tiki palaces.
Stellar local research and collection of artifacts!
I remember my sister’s wedding reception, dinner was there probably around 1973, great time!
The photo at the top is of Knobby’s Restaurant, located at 52nd and Keystone (since demolished). I remember the radio ads for Knobby’s and Knobby’s Mai-Tai: they were two different places. I visited Knobby’s for lunch in the mid ‘70s; there was no tiki theming that I remember.