![]() Through the doors is the back room where bands set up later in the evening. The front room is long and narrow, with round red vinyl booths and a thatch-covered bar trimmed with bamboo and lit by green and orange pufferfish lanterns. The middle one was designed to blow smoke out of its nostrils! (Though some may argue it’s more of a punk rock bar with a tiki theme.) Before you step inside, be sure to take a look at the window display full of tiki mugs, hula girl figures and other tchotchkes.įlanking the door on the other side are these big tikis from Mai Tiki, the company started by the late, great artist Wayne Coombs. Otto’s Shrunken Head opened in 2002 and has stuck around even through the years when tiki bars weren’t as hip as they have come around to be again. It’s located in the East Village (quite close to Obscura, the curiosity shop from the “Oddities” TV show that was also on our tourist itinerary). The former were newcomers to the scene but Otto’s has been around for more than a decade. Thank goodness for that.Things haven’t really worked out well for the New York tiki bars ( Lani Kai and PKNY) that I’ve visited and blogged about, but I guess I’ll tempt fate by finally writing about Otto’s Shrunken Head. Either way, the LuWow is still ridiculous. Maybe that’s Skipper Josh’s sense of humour, or maybe it’s pure coincidence. It’s all set to a soundtrack that spans everything from Elvis Presley’s Do the Clam to modern surf rock such as Zombi Hut by the Tiki Tones.Īs I get up to leave, Under the Sea begins to play on the speakers. Rattan and bamboo ceilings, booths made from repurposed car upholstery, fishing nets, fake plants and flashes of leopard print adorn the 50-person room, which is aglow in green and blue lights. Tikis are everywhere you look – Skipper Josh built most of them himself. There’s Jamaican fried chicken and crisp tempura-like prawns to snack on while downing your Voodoo Volcano or Gruesome Grog. Head chef Jun Lee also worked at Hana and, as with all things tiki, his menu has a lot of cultural influences. It’s in the space formerly occupied by Hawaiian-themed restaurant Hana. There’s a greater focus on food at the new LuWow. And instead of a Long Island Iced Tea there’s an Easter Island Iced Tea, which adds coconut tequila and blue curacao to the classic five-spirit cocktail. Other cocktails include a classic Mai Tai the Pain Killer, a pineapple and orange-juice punch combining dark rum and coconut and the Bo-Na-Na – banana, pineapple and passionfruit mixed with rum and coulis. It’s a highly alcoholic, dangerously easy-to-drink cocktail. ![]() A very boozy falernum (a sweet alcoholic cordial made from lime zest, spices and almonds) is added in for good measure. It uses three kinds of rum shaken with grapefruit and pomegranate juice. ![]() It’s the fantasy,” says Skipper Josh.Īny tiki bar worth its cocktail salt should know how to make a good Zombie, and LuWow 2.0’s is a doozy. “There’s something about tiki bars that’s eternal. And it’s nice to have a point of difference to Melbourne’s countless serious bars. Tiki can rightfully be viewed as reductive in the way it lumps dozens of island cultures together under the one “exotic” banner, but its proponents see it as a good-natured, affectionate flight of imagination. Tiki culture (and bars), on the other hand, is a heavily romanticised colonial interpretation that exploded in popularity when the US emerged from World War II with a renewed taste for rum – and all things Pacific. Tikis themselves are stone or wooden humanoid totems found throughout Polynesia they often represent deified ancestors and mark the boundaries of sacred sites. The tiki-bar aesthetic typically combines visual and cultural motifs from coastal Africa, South America and islands throughout the Pacific (especially Polynesia) and the Caribbean. Tiki bars began popping up at the end of Prohibition in the United States following the opening of Polynesian-themed Hollywood bar and restaurant Don's Beachcomber in 1933. If you’re unacquainted with tiki bars, here’s a crash course: It's now re-opened, this time in the CBD. But the original LuWow called it a day at the end of 2016 when its lease expired. ![]() It had a reputation for loose evenings and earned a place in many hearts. It turns out drinking from ludicrously large tiki mugs is a great social leveller. It was the kind of place that attracted everyone: uni students, ironic navel-gazers, hens’ nights and lovers of tiki. At the time Broadsheet described it as “a mecca to both tiki and fun”. When it opened on Johnston Street in 2011, the LuWow was a little bit bar and a little bit nightclub. ![]()
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