Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Tiki time in Dallas with re-opening of Trader Vic’s

By Teresa Gubbins

DALLAS — Time to brush up on your Mai-Tais, your Fogcutters, and all your fruity cocktails, now that Trader Vic’s, the Polynesian restaurant-bar located at the Hotel Palomar, is re-opening on Thursday.

The Dallas branch of this California-based chain first opened in 1967, at a time when mixing pork with pineapple seemed wildly exotic to white-bread America. Once other, more refined ethnic foods began to invade the country in ‘70s, Trader Vic’s fortunes faded.

But for 20 years, tiki culture simmered as a campy underground movement, especially in Southern California. That helped lay the foundation for Trader Vic’s inevitable revival.

The Dallas Trader Vic’s is cherished abroad amongst tiki cultists because it remained untouched for decades after the place closed in 1989, with the room and its contents frozen in time.

Recognizing the reverence for original fixtures -- and the credibility that brought -- developer Realty America Group tiptoed carefully through the remodel, says manager Rock Gennaro.

“Here, look at this, it’s the original flocked wallpaper,” he says, stroking the wall appreciatively.

The 8,000-square-foot space includes a dark hideaway bar called Hinky Dinks (what Trader Vic’s was called when it first opened in San Francisco in 1932), and three semi-circular booths facing the main dining room that reek “VIP.”

Still intact were the paper lanterns, the jade-green ceramic room dividers, and the two original “Chinese” ovens, shaped like barrels and standing nearly four feet tall in their own glass cage -- massive crockpots used to slow-cook the meats for 12 hours or more.

What is lost is the original tiki, a 12-foot totem that stood lonely for years on Mockingbird, exposed to the sun and elements and passing traffic. (Founder Victor Jules Bergeron would actually go to islands in the Pacific and basically steal these religious objects from the natives to bring back and display in his restaurant chain.)

Efforts were made to preserve it, Gennaro says, but a termite infestation has rotted it from the inside and the thing can’t be recovered. They’ve built a clone that's posted at the entrance -- one we can venerate during the lifespan of this latest tiki revival, however long it may last.

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