Hot Lava (a.k.a "How Bowers") plays baritone ukulele and sings with America's best tiki music band, 
Trader Vic’s new Mai Tai Bar restaurant concept
Trader Vic’s just launched a newly redesigned website and one of the sections has artist renderings and a description of a new concept restaurant from the company, “Trader Vic’s Mai Tai Bar.”
According to the site:
Our exciting and informal new concept features shared food and spirits with your good friends, and with new people you will meet - it’s just perfect for today’s casual lifestyle. Kick back and relax in our warm tropical atmosphere while enjoying our original world-famous Mai Tai cocktail, invented by the Trader himself, or enjoy a host of other famous and exotic tropical drinks as well as new wave cocktails, classical cocktails, wine and beer.
Share some tasty food from our Tidbits Menu such as Sushi, Sashimi, Spare Ribs, Fried Prawns and Potstickers. Feel even closer to your good friends by sharing a great concoction like a Scorpion Bowl for Four, or a Tiki Bowl for Two or a Rum Barrel full of rum and fresh fruit juices, and many other exotic drinks that have made Trader Vic’s famous throughout the world. Or feel like the old chiefs of Polynesia and share in the ceremonial Kava Bowl.
There of course will be daily specials of fabulous food that starts with delicious appetizers and continues right through to the end with something that will satisfy even those with the biggest sweet tooth.
Your entire experience at our new Mai Tai Bar will be fun, fun, Fun! Live bands will be featured to entertain you with great music. You will be our guests and you are so very important to us. We don’t want just patrons - we want you to become our good friends and know that you always have a warm, relaxing and genuinely fun place to frequent. We will make your experience at our Mai Tai Bar not only a great place to come with your pals but also a relaxing place to make new friends!
There is currently one location open in Spain and the company is actively looking for franchisees. Could a less-upscale version of Vic’s take the nation by storm?
August 1st, 2006 at 3:01 pm
They actually re-packaged the bar here at the Palo Alto Trader Vic’s as a new “Mai Tai Bar” a couple months ago. All they did was take a booth out, expand the bar size a smidge, paint the ceiling red, and add a couple blah items to the bar food menu. Woodfired pizza anyone? Welcome to 1996! Much of my love for Trader Vic’s comes from it being stuck in the past, but not that past! At any rate, it was overall a harmless (and almost totally unnoticeable) change.
When we were there a couple weeks ago, there was a live band playing, and they were surprisingly good.
It makes sense for Trader Vic’s to try launching some smaller restaurants — a full Trader Vic’s, with its not-cheap-to-install Chinese ovens, is a huge risk. I like the idea of a mini Trader Vic’s focusing on the drinks — that’s what sets Trader Vic’s apart, and hopefully with a smaller space, they can afford do something more impressive with the decor than the recent full-fledged Vic’s restaurants have been.
August 1st, 2006 at 8:59 pm
[…] I learned on the Tiki Talk blog about Trader Vic’s intention of starting a new line of their restaurants, called Trader Vic’s Mai Tai Bars. They’re scaled-back versions of Trader Vic’s restaurants, featuring a large drink menu, but a very small food menu centered on appetizers, with a few sandwichy-type items. Most notably absent is the hallmark Chinese ovens; these suckers are large and not easy to install, work with, or design around, so while it feels sad to see a Chinese oven-less Trader Vic’s, it does make sense. […]
August 2nd, 2006 at 8:36 am
Expense of Trader Vic’s? Try the head chef, at $100,000+ a year salary to start! Those ovens are not a biggy. Even this tiny Mai Tai bar kitchen will cost $150,000 to outfit. That’s a drop in the bucket compared to a full blown Vic’s.
The Spain location is not open yet. The Hawaii location (pictured on the Spain website) is likely to open first. It looks awesome.
I think this could be huge. Maybe 50 of these opening in the US. I am working on bringing the next one here to Knoxville. Hans and Sven of Trader Vic’s (President and Vice PResident) were nice enough to call me right away on my inquiry. They both helped us make Hukilau 2002 happen (Hans personally paid the crazy $2,000 fee Trader Vic’s Atlanta charged us on the Wednesday before the event!), so these guys are very hip to what we tiki people do. He allowed that I could bring in my own carvers and my own decor rather than the usual of having to buy it from them. He knows my plans are right along the Trader Vic’s line, so, no worries. I must say, Hans is a very nice man and I hope I can bring this together. This is, after all, what many have done over the years, not unlike our own Martiki. Learn from Trader Vic’s and then break out and take that knowledge into a less up-scale copy of Trader Vic’s. It could be huge!
August 2nd, 2006 at 9:34 am
[…] I was keeping this on the DL as I heard about it through the FOM earlier, but since Tiki Talk and Humu Humu blogged it, I thought I would too. […]