Raising the bar: tiki

File under: drink, nightlife, Wellington

Following on from my suggestion of a classical music pub, here's a more conventional suggestion of a bar that Wellington lacks: a tiki bar.

I know that it's much more contemporary and culturally appropriate to visit a café (like Malo or Coco) that serves relatively authentic Pacific food amid tapa cloths, rather than reviving a tacky American cartoon version of a South Seas paradise. But don't you sometimes get a hankering to kick back to the exotic stylings of Martin Denny while knocking back the Mai Tais at Trader Vic's? No? Must just be me then.

Monsoon Poon does something vaguely similar with "Asian" themes (and we all know what Tze Ming Mok thinks of that), and Harem offers a deranged version of the Middle East, but we don't have anything similar for the Pacific. In the meantime, we'll just have to make do with trawling through Hunters & Collectors for vintage Hawaiian shirts, buying some tiki mugs from Eyeball Kicks, filling them with Universal Fruity Drinks and wandering down to the Lagoon for Hula Laguna and the Late Night Luau next Sunday. Liquor ban? What liquor ban?!