Do you know what’s better than reading about people’s tiki adventures? Watching those adventures on TV! Tiki Hunting is Cacalito and Monserrat’s YouTube show where they travel across the country visiting tiki bars. From their videos, you get an overview of what the bar looks like outside and inside, a wide sampling of the cocktails and a little history of the venue thrown in for good measure! I’m always blown away by the production quality and editing each video has and Cacalito and Monserrat’s chemistry is fun to watch. Keep an eye out for Tik Hunting because they might be coming to your city soon!
What is the tiki scene like where you live?
We live in Ft Lauderdale and we have the Mai Kai and forty minutes away down in Miami, we have the Kaona Room. In South Florida, we don’t have a lot of options due to its more “Florida Tiki” but we are getting more establishments especially in the Orlando area. In Orlando we have Suffering Bastard, Permanent Vacation in Maitland, Trader Sam’s in Disney and soon to be the new Don the beachcomber. These past five years have been rough as we almost lost the Mai Kai due to the roof caved in, so we had to wait until restauration was complete. We had Esotico/Kaona room which helped to fill the void. Esotico has closed , but Kaona room is serving up great drinks and its 100% Tiki till this day. The Mai Kai reopened and now it’s more gorgeous than ever.
What brought you into the tiki lifestyle and how long has it been part of your life?
We have always enjoyed Tiki drinks. In 2006 , always after work my wife (Monserrat) we used to do the Mai Kai Happy hour every Friday. We used to see Tiki folk dress up and walk into the door and we were like “what is that?” we loved those get ups but we would not dare to dress up that way. Until 2016 when we went for a California trip. In False Idol, we had a revelation. The glass float storm was upon us and we looked up in amazement and said “ we have to have a bar like this at home. We went back home and started building a corner bar and started sending Christmas card videos to friends. We enjoyed tiki drinks for a long time , but I would say we been fully into Tiki for ten years now.
When and what made you decide to start making Tiki Videos?
We went to plenty Tiki locations in 2016, from San Diego to San Francisco, and we recorded little one or two-minute videos for friends to send back home to Florida. One friend said you should put them on YouTube and that’s how our videos started. I was also influenced by Tiki with Ray, Adam the Woo and Ramdonland YouTube videos in an effort to record cool locations. I thought it wouldn’t be cool to capture these places like a fly on the wall and having you walk with us into a tiki bar with exotic music and the fun it involves. We don’t talk in our videos or do interviews, we just want to get the eye candy of drinks and what the locations look like. Ray Wyland was more of my inspiration as he was more educational and guided me through YouTube as I was new to this. The videos started in 2019 prior to Covid, and we are still capturing locations until this day on YouTube.
What is your favorite Tiki bar that you made a video for?
Each one at that time was my favorite. Each one is so different, sure the plot is the same as Monserrat walks in as I run after her and she orders the drink for me! But the art of every location and drinks is so unique. If there has to be a favorite video for me, it would Bahi Hut because of the retro aspect and Tiki Ti because it’s my favorite all-time bar. Yet, I would always love my video love letters to the Mai- kai. All the videos are my favorite. They are all my children. Some are better than others and some are runts but fun nonetheless lol…
What tiki bar/city would you like to visit next?
I would like to redo some of my early videos. The ones we started with, like False Idol and Tonga room. These videos are only two minutes long and badly done in my opinion. I believe those need to be captured again and add more eye candy. We went to smuggler’s Cove, but I never captured it and I also want to capture Zombie Village and Forbidden Island. There are so many we have not covered yet and even ones in Florida we need to make time for!!??
If you could go back in time, what tiki bar would you like to see?
Oh, god, too many to count. Kahiki, Aku Aku in Las Vegas, Don the beachcomber Both original locations and Chicago. Steve Cranes “The Luau”, Original Trader Vic’s in Oakland. The list goes on .. I could just go to all of them. I wish I could just have a moment in time with all of them. Also, back in 2016, we opted out of seeing Oceanic Arts to see Don The beachcomber in Huntington. We did capture Dons but missed out on meeting Bob and Leroy. I wish I could go back in time and rethink that.
What does the future hold for Tiki Hunting?
We plan to capture every tiki bar we possibly can until we can’t anymore. As we always say,“ A tiki bar is a portal to paradise in which it can open and close anytime. One portal closes and another one opens, so be sure to go through that portal before it becomes history”. So many tiki bars are here and gone tomorrow, so we like to save these moments in time for commercial and home tiki bars.
Anything else you would like to add?
It has been five years since we began making these videos. They began as our memories of the tiki bars we encountered. We wanted to bring new people in and introduce them to these underrated gems. As much as we were new back then to this world, we wanted people to join us in having a good time. We never wanted to exclude or say what tiki is. We just wanted you, as the viewer, to go in this featured tiki bar and make your own judgement. We never criticize or review a bar. That is up to the customer/viewer. We want the viewer to go and experience the tiki bar themselves. Also, we want you to support your local Tiki bar. A tiki bar can always change “look” or management and even the drink menu. People always ask us “why you feature that place?” I always say well at one point they had great drinks!! A Tiki bar will always evolve and either have new bartenders or ownership. They either get better or become a shadow of what they were. Many are just remarkable and some fade into obscurity. So, like we say, “capture that moment in time before that portal closes”. Through its heyday, many tiki bars have opened and closed, and we only have pictures or vintage menus. We hope to record that moment in time and hope you can join us for a drink or two or three…
Tiki Hunting on YouTube