The TV show Portlandia has made the city of Portland famous. It’s a really funny show that pokes fun at some of stereotypes about Portland’s residents. The parodies are pretty much spot on. Portland has a very big cycling scene, cute little shops selling bric-a-brac, punk rockers, hippies, punk rock hippies, and more organic food shops that anyone could ask for. But when I think of Portland, I think of one thing: Tiki bars! Portland has not one, but three! It has the Alibi, Trader Vic’s, and last but not least, Hale Pele.
When you have a friend come into Seattle from the East Coast and he likes Tiki bars, there is one place you have to take him. Sadly, that place is not in Seattle but in Tacoma! It’s the Tacoma Cabana, to be exact. Tacoma is about 45 minutes south of Seattle (with no traffic). For a bar to worth such a drive, it must be good!
I live in Seattle. I love my city. There are tons of things to do. There are more than enough restaurants, bars, coffee shops, places to buy cupcakes (I love cupcakes!), etc. But sadly, Seattle is lacking one important thing: a really great Tiki bar!
Sure, there is The Lava Lounge in Belltown, but it’s not really a Tiki bar in a traditional sense. I’d go there to hear some punk rock and drink a couple PBRs! I wouldn’t go to hear exotica or to order a Mai Tai, though.
There is Hula Hula, which actually is the first Tiki bar I ever visited. It started my love affair with Tiki! (I will be doing a review of Hula Hula really soon.) At first, Hula Hula had it all going on. It had a very large menu of drinks, plenty of surf music, and awesome decor. But over time, Hula Hula started putting up large screen TVs and eventually it became more of a karaoke bar. Don’t get me wrong, I have spent some time on Hula Hula’s stage singing my favorite tunes from the ’80s while I had a few cocktails in me. But I digress…
So I started searching online for Tiki bars outside Seattle. I found one here and there, but the “Tiki bars” I discovered were pretty lame. Throw the word Tiki in front of a guy’s name. Put up a Tiki head somewhere. Throw up some bamboo, offer some “blue” cocktails, and there you go: a “Tiki” bar!
This is the first of what I hope to be many Tiki Field Reports. What is a Tiki Field Report you might ask? A Tiki Field Report is going to be a review of a particular day visiting a Tiki bar. It will include pictures and information on who came along, what did they drank, what they thought, who was bartending, etc. I would like to get my friends involved with this blog and I think this is a good way of doing that. A Tiki Field Report is not going to be the same as an official Tiki bar review. A Tiki bar review will be just about the bar, giving an overview of what the place is like, how the drinks are, what kind of music they play, the bar’s history, and so on.
First Field Report, The North Shore Lagoon in Bothell, WA.
Hey gang! This is my first Tiki bar review and I figured I wanted to keep it sort of local. I live in Seattle. Bothell is about 25 minutes away (with no traffic). In Bothell is a Tiki bar called North Shore Lagoon. Before I begin with the review of the Tiki bar itself, I need to give a little background about the North Shore Lagoon.
The North Shore Lagoon is part of the McMenamins Anderson School. If you’re not familiar with McMenamins, they are a bar and restaurant chain that buys and restores old, classic, historical buildings and turns them into pubs, restaurants, movie theaters, and hotels. The cool thing is they maintain the integrity the of the buildings they acquire. They have places all over the Pacific Northest including Portland, Centraila, McMinnville, Mill Creek, and now Bothell.
What McMenamins did with the Anderson School is completely turn the entire school—which is several buildings—into a large entertainment complex. There’s a fine dinning restaurant, a pub, a movie theater, a convention center, a hotel, and last but not least, a Tiki bar, which of course is the North Shore Lagoon.
