Chinese Ovens at Trader Vic’s in Emeryville, photo by Coco Joe, via Critiki

Know your way around a Chinese Oven? Want to be part of the tiki action in the most traditional way possible? This could be your lucky day: Trader Vic’s is hiring for a whole mess o’ positions at the flagship location in Emeryville, which is due to reopen on September 23 after a remodel. When it comes to restaurant positions, you name it, they’re hiring for it: bartenders, servers, dishwashers, prep cooks, all the way up to an event manager, a floor supervisor, the lead hostess and even the restaurant manager.

The full details for these positions are helpfully listed on the Facebook page for Trader Vic’s Emeryville. There aren’t any instructions for applying, and since the restaurant is still closed you can’t drop in—perhaps try emailing tvemeryville@tradervics.com. UPDATE: Trader Vic’s tells me that the best place to send your resumes is hr@tradervics.com.

Pomaika’i!

• Trader Vic’s Emeryville Employment [Facebook]
• Remodel Underway at Trader Vic’s Emeryville [Humu Kon Tiki]
• Trader Vic’s, Emeryville [Critiki]

A felled tiki (temporarily, one hopes) at Trader Vic’s Emeryville

The remodel of Trader Vic’s flagship location in Emeryville has begun, with the in-progress pictures posted to the Trader Vic’s Facebook page. I’ve heard the full spectrum of rumblings on this one, from dire to ecstatic, but the fact that they’re willing to show pictures of the process I think bodes well. (Also: some spectacular pieces were saved from the recently-shuttered vintage Dallas Trader Vic’s that we can probably expect to appear in Emeryville.)

Trader Vic’s Emeryville closed at the end of April for this planned renovation, and the restaurant is scheduled to re-open in late September. Top of my personal wishlist: please make the ceiling in the bar dark again!

• Trader Vic’s Emeryville Remodel photos [Facebook]
• Trader Vic’s Emeryville [Critiki]
• Trader Vic’s Dallas [Critiki]

Forbidden Island, by John Lee/Aurora Select for The Wall Street Journal

We’ve done this time & again… an initial rush at the news that a major publication has written up an article about this nutty tiki craze thing… followed by an immediate let-down that the article was sloppily researched, full of inaccuracies, misses the point, and doesn’t really understand that this isn’t just a tacky, ironic thing to us, that there’s real quality and history here.

But over the past year or two (going back perhaps not-so-coincidentally to about the time that Forbidden Island opened) these articles have been improving, both in the quality of their research, and in the authors’ ability to find a bit of true appreciation; they’ve been coming closer & closer to seeing what we see.

Today, finally, comes the zenith of Polynesian Pop journalism. You can tell right from the title, “Tiki Doesn’t Have to Be Tacky,” that this article isn’t going to be the same old quickie, filler, throwaway article that confuses or even damages the public perception of Tiki.

The impetus for the article is the upcoming annual San Francisco Tiki Crawl, but the article touches on much more than that — aside from giving mention to several Bay Area tiki hotspots, it also explores the very essence of Polynesian Pop. It points out the difference between good tiki and bad tiki (yes! yes! oh, thank you, yes!). The author, Eric Felten, even mentions something I’ve long held to be true — that while yesterday’s PolyPop escapism was about eschewing formality, today’s escapism is more about eschewing informality.

So, thank you Eric Felten, thank you Wall Street Journal, and thank you to anyone and everyone who helped him write this beauty. You’ve done us all a great service, and I’d like to buy you a drink.

• Tiki Doesn’t Have to Be Tacky [The Wall Street Journal]
• Forbidden Island, Alameda [Critiki]
• San Francisco: Tiki Central’s Tiki Crawl 8 [Humu Kon Tiki]

Critiki’s New Look

I created Critiki way back in 2002, and while I’m pretty proud of how well the design stood up all these years, there was no denying that it was starting to look a bit dated. Plus, I have a lot more experience doing this stuff now, and all the little things I knew could be better bugged the heck out of me.

So, I finally took the time to sit down and redo the thing (there is a direct correlation between this and the absence of posts here during the past few weeks). Oh, man, it’s so much nicer to look at now. And nicer to use, too, I think.

Check out Critiki’s New Look

I literally cannot count the improvements I made, but most of them are on the back end, or are so subtle that you won’t notice them individually, but I hope that you can feel the improvements.

One improvement that is more obvious is how much easier it is now to browse through global destinations to find tiki in a given area. Instead of having to drill down all the way to obscure little towns and then back up again, now you can see the area on the Critiki Map as you browse, and it’ll tell you how many tiki locations are in the area.

Spain in Critiki

Now that things are cleaned up a bit behind the scenes, I’ll be able to add some new features to Critiki. I have lots of ideas for new features, but what do you think? What do you wish Critiki could do?

• Critiki – Guide to Tiki Bars & Polynesian Restaurants

Critiki hits the road: Critiki Mobile

It’s not really quite finished — there are some more tweaks I want to make — but I think it’s close enough that I don’t feel right keeping it from the tiki-lovin’ travelin’ souls of the world.

Critiki Mobile: http://mobile.critiki.com

It’s primarily designed for the iPhone, because a) it’s a dead sexy piece of machinery, and b) it’s what I’ve got. My friend Rich helped me out by letting me poke around on his Treo, and it seems to work just dandy, but I haven’t a clue what issues might crop up on other devices.

It’s been a fun challenge as a designer and a UI programmer to create an interface that works in such a small space with limiting size and interaction constraints. I’m pretty pleased with what I was able to come up with. While he didn’t help me directly, I think I was able to channel some of the serious UI mojo of Hanford Lemoore. Anything I got right was likely inspired by my Hanford exposure, anything I got wrong is squarely on my shoulders.

Nearly everything you can do on the regular Critiki site, you can do on Critiki Mobile — you can search for tiki locations, read the descriptions, look at pictures, find other tiki places nearby, and of course you can take a gander at how locations have been rated. Now, you can even add your own critiki ratings while you’re still in the restaurant! Since it is a phone app, naturally dialing phone numbers takes just a touch, and it’s also hooked into the iPhone’s Google Maps app, which is just ridiculously convenient. Ooh de lally. It makes me want to hit the road.

I’ve also cleared a big ol’ backlog of wonderful photo submissions to Critiki over the past few months — easily a couple hundred new photos!

I’d love to hear your thoughts on Critiki Mobile — as I mentioned, there are some tweaks I want to make (including some fantastic suggestions from my friend Jory), but I’d like to get feedback from a few users before I embark on some of the final fine-tuning. While the development will continue to be focused on the glorious, ovary-quaking iPhone experience, I’d also like to hear how it works (or more significantly, doesn’t work) on other mobile web-enabled devices.

• Critiki Mobile

New Bartender at Tiki-Ti (dramatization)

A dramatic shift, and one that can’t help but make you do a spit-take… word on the street is that Tiki-Ti is training a new bartender.

I only have a few details, sent my way by a little bird who got to see the new bartender in action last Wednesday. He said the new bartender is named Mark, he isn’t a Buhen but rather the son of a longtime Tiki-Ti patron (he is a Buhen after all, see below for an update), and the Ray’s Mistake he made was good.

Tiki-Ti has been a family-run outfit: original owner Ray Buhen was the sole bartender for many years, until his son Mike started helping out; Mike’s son Mike came on the scene with the passing of Ray a few years ago. There are several reasons Tiki-Ti has been family-run:

1. Ray came from a world where your recipes were your currency, your strongest asset, and you sure as heck didn’t teach them to others who could then take them to the competition. Even today, the descendants of some of the original Don the Beachcomber’s bartenders have been so trained by their fathers on this point that they were still wary of showing any recipe notes to Jeff “Beachbum” Berry when he was writing his book on tiki cocktail hisotory, Sippin’ Safari. It’s likely that Ray Buhen felt that only his own family could be trusted with his recipes, and the sentiment has lived on.
2. The drink list at Tiki-Ti is extensive — mind-bogglingly so. And complicated. Even if they were comfortable letting another person in on the family secrets, getting them up to speed would be a daunting task, to be sure, and your average bartender frankly isn’t up to the task.
3. Smoking in bars is illegal in California — not to protect patrons, but to protect employees. Since Tiki-Ti is owner-operated, and thus has no employees, smoking is allowed. Mike & Mike are both smokers.

These three reasons are neat & all, but do they really counteract the plusses of having another bartender in the mix? What happens when Mike or Mike get sick? What happens if Mike or Mike would like, for once in their lives, to get to do something on a Friday or Saturday night? What happens if Mike or Mike decide that even though they really love Tiki-Ti, they want to follow their own dreams? They would certainly be entitled. And when push comes to shove, Mike & Mike just can’t run the bar alone forever and ever. There has to be a plan for either succession, or for closing Tiki-Ti. You can probably guess which of those two scenarios I’d rather see. So, while the news that they have a new bartender is a little shocking, it’s not entirely surprising, and it’s actually totally welcome.

What does it mean? Heck, I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Mike & Mike. It’s not likely that they’re going to give up smoking, so I suspect that they’ve made this new bartender part-owner. They’ve probably been training him for quite a while behind the scenes, and they’ll probably start him out just focusing on part of the drink menu initially. Those are just guesses on my part, though.

So, swing by Tiki-Ti and give a warm welcome to Mark!

UPDATE: I just chatted with Tiki-Ti regular Miles Thompson and got more info: Mark is a Buhen, he’s Mike’s son and Mike’s brother. That makes oh-so-much-more-sense, and is wonderful news.

• Tiki-Ti
• Tiki-Ti [Critiki]
• Sippin Safari [Amazon.com]

Michael, photo by Biotron2000

Fulton Burley, who was the voice of Michael the Irish Parrot at the Enchanted Tiki Room, passed away this past Monday at the age of 84.

Wait, wait, we forgot to wake up the glee club!

Burley was better known for his many performances as the host and master of ceremonies at the long-running Golden Horshoe Revue. Burley was honored as a “Disney Legend” in 1995. He was married to his wife Terry for an amazing 62 years, until she passed this past January.

Laughing Place has a nice, long tribute, with quotes from his performing partner Wally Boag. [via The Disney Blog]

• Legendary Golden Horseshoe Performer Fulton Burley Passes Away [Laughing Place]
• Disneyland Golden Horseshoe Performer Fulton Burley Passes Away [The Disney Blog]
• The Enchanted Tiki Room, Anaheim [Critiki]

Chin Tiki, photo by Feelin’ Zombified

It’s been a while since my last update about the Chin Tiki in Detroit. It’s been a very, very long time since Chin Tiki was operational — 1980 — but all the interiors were still there sitting unused in the decades that followed, leading locals to hope that perhaps Chin Tiki’s days were not quite over. But Marvin Chin died last year, and I believe much of the decor was sold or moved to his son’s restaurant, Chin’s in nearby Livonia.

The parking lot surrounding Chin Tiki had been sold years ago to Ilitch Holdings, and in February of this year, they took deed of the restaurant building, too. According to The Detroit News, Ilitch Holdings has been quietly purchasing other properties in this desolate area of Detroit, leading to speculation that there may be plans to build a new hockey arena — Mike Ilitch owns the Detroit Red Wings. Even if a hockey arena isn’t the ultimate outcome, it appears likely that the Chin Tiki building is destined to be razed for a larger development — developers don’t buy up four blocks of contiguous land because they really like the sidewalks.

• Ilitches’ downtown power play [The Detroit News]
• Chin Tiki in Detroit: An Update [Humu Kon Tiki]
• Chin Tiki, Detroit [Critiki]

Beverly Hills Trader Vics

Breaking news from Atomikitty: The Beverly Hills Trader Vic’s last day of operation could very well be Tuesday, May 1.

I just finished up my bartending shift at Saints and Sinners, and one of my customers happened to be a bartender over at Trader Vics Beverly Hills. This person (who asked to not be named) told me that the staff has a ‘meeting’ tomorrow @ 10am, but as of now, the last day on the schedule is this Tuesday May 1st!

That certainly doesn’t bode well. It sounds as if the bartender was fairly convinced that this is the end for the Beverly Hills Trader Vic’s. While it could be quite some time before any construction starts on the new tower at the Beverly Hilton, there’s nothing stopping them from shutting down the restaurant now. Doing so sooner rather than later lets them do it relatively quietly, and makes one of the arguments against this very unpopular development moot.

More updates as more information comes out (particularly after tomorrow’s meeting with staff), but it doesn’t look good — I’d suggest heading there tonight to pay final respects and get your last good Navy Grog.

UPDATE @ 11:55: Brain says in the comments:

Trader Vics is closed. Last night was the end.

If true, this morning’s meeting is likely all about final paychecks. Still waiting to hear confirmation, but it doesn’t look good. Stay tuned…

UPDATE @ 12:05: I just got off the phone with the Beverly Hills Trader Vic’s. I spoke to a very flustered woman, who clearly didn’t know what she was supposed to say. When I asked if they were open, she said “no.” When I asked if they were closed forever, she became even more uncomfortable, and stammered out that they were closed “for renovations.” When I asked if it was still going to be Trader Vic’s, she hemmed and hawed and said something about the bar moving to the hotel, and that she didn’t know if it was still going to be Trader Vic’s. That sounds to me that after 50+ years, Trader Vic’s Beverly Hills is gone.

UPDATE @ 12:35: Eater LA has heard similar rumblings…

UPDATE @ 1:10: When Eater LA called Trader Vic’s, they got the same spiel, and were told that Trader Vic’s specialty cocktails will possibly be available at Circa 55, which is a newer restaurant near the pool.

If Trader Vic’s veteran bartenders decide to make the move to Circa 55, the drinks should still be pretty good, but if the bartenders decide they’re done with the Hilton, I’d guess the drinks would be iffy. Some of the Trader Vic’s bartenders have been there for a very, very long time, and I wouldn’t be surprised at all if some of them opted to retire instead.

I would love it if some of the bartenders decided they’d like to semi-retire in the Bay Area and sling Mai Tais at the Palo Alto Trader Vic’s part-time, but I’m not holding my breath.

UPDATE @ 3:45: An eyewitness report from Tom Slick:

I just got back from Trader Vic’s, and I can confirm with authority they are no longer open to the public. I took a few photos, and was immediately sweated by the beverly hills hilton police as to why was I taking pictures. I told them I was an urban archeologist taking pictures of americas mid century architecture.haha, well they were very uneasy, and asked me to leave the property and to take pictures from the sidewalk. I asked if I were doing something wrong, and the suit told me not really, but the (get this!)owner doesn’t want anyone on Trader Vics property other than the people setting up a private party & private party invitees. I can only assume from this point that it is an employee farewell party.
I asked if I could come to dinner tomorrow night instead of tonight…”probably not”…..
The 2 black suits with ear pieces were guarding the entrance to Trader Vic’s. There WAS activity going on inside, and I did see toolkits. Setting up for a private party seemed to be legit, but the suit wasn’t saying who the party was for…I can only guess…

UPDATE @ 5:45: Eater LA has a press release from Trader Vic’s:

From the press release: “The new Trader Vic’s Lounge will be located next to the new Circa 55 restaurant and the Aqua Star pool area. The menu will feature Trader Vic’s signature drinks including the world-famous Mai Tai, invented by Victor “Trader Vic” Bergeron, the Scorpion Bowl and appetizer plates that are ideal for sharing with friends. … ‘We are pleased that the popularity of Trader Vic’s continues to grow around the globe,’ said Robert Davies, President and CEO of Trader Vic’s. ‘Our loyal patrons and hotel guests can be assured that while the atmosphere may be more casual, our new Beverly Hills offering will continue to reflect the finest of our company’s island-style service and culinary quality.’ ”

By “more casual” he must mean smaller and less, um, tiki. Sure, some of the decor will be moved over, but it’s still basically a renovated lounge filled with Trader Vic’s memorabilia. Nonetheless, the new lounge will reopen on May 3. We’re told GM Chai Rojana will still be running the show, and many of the bartenders will move to the new digs.

The word that the bartenders and GM are being retained is good, but contradicts what Atomikitty had heard — that the bartenders were worried about their ability to find new jobs. Eater LA is waiting to hear solid confirmation that indeed the highly-skilled bartenders — who should be treated as the treasures they are — have not lost their jobs. It would be shameful if they were given reason to suddenly worry about their livelihood.

This sucks.

• Trader Vic’s Bev Hills closing THIS TUESDAY???!!! . . . [Tiki Central]
• Latest News on Trader Vic’s Beverly Hills [Humu Kon Tiki]

Sippin’ Safari, by Jeff Berry

Tikiphiles have been anxiously awaiting Jeff “Beachbum” Berry’s new book, Sippin’ Safari, for many months now. The release is finally drawing near, and Berry will be giving seminars at both Hukilau and Tiki Oasis this summer. Now comes another exciting development: Beachbum Berry’s Grog Blog. Yep, Jeff has added a blog to the site. Welcome to blogland, ‘bum!

I’m incredibly excited for Sippin’ Safari. Jeff has put incredible effort into rooting out the history of Polynesian Pop. It’s a colorful history, and has been well-documented in images — but there are a lot of stories to be told, and Jeff has been finding them, and documenting them. Those who were at Jeff’s seminar at last year’s Hukilau got a taste of what Sippin’ Safari holds. This is not a recipe book (though some recipes are included — thanks to his tireless efforts to track down original bartenders). This is a book about how tiki came to be — not about the world it grew up in, but how it actually, really came to be — how Don the Beachcomber built his dream into something that sparked the imagination of the era.

So, it’ll be really cool. You can preorder it now at SLG Publishing, and be sure to catch Beachbum Berry in person at Hukilau or Tiki Oasis if you can. And read his blog!

• Grog Blog [Beachbum Berry]
• Beachbum Berry’s Sippin’ Safari [SLG Publishing]
• Tiki Road Trip, 2nd Edition Coming in May [Humu Kon Tiki]