Our menu gnomes have been hard at work putting together our exciting new Cocktail Menu concept.
The new menu will be a beautifully illustrated A3 menu in the style of menu common in the middle of last century. Below is a sneak peek at one of the hand illustrated colour effigies of our wonderful tropical drinks. The drink in question is a Zombie :
Don the Beachcomber’s classic Zombie represents all that is great about Tiki Drinks – heaps of great Rum, fresh fruit juices, bold flavours and a bit of showmanship, our Zombie is good old-fashioned fun. Full of four premium Rums, lime, lemon, passionfruit and pineapple, our Zombie is brought to life with a bit of fire and some Voodoo magic… Don’t singe your eyebrows!
The superb illustration was done by friend-of-the-bar Fiona Palmer a gifted Melbourne illustrator and designer. The colouring was done by her partner Mike who is also an illustrator working in graphic design and is responsible for our great tribal tiki logo. The two of them have been dragged kicking and screaming into producing Tiki themed work for us against their will and have embraced the aesthetic with gusto.
Here is a great example of a vintage illustrated Tiki bar menu that I found on display in a Hawaiiana exhibit in Waikiki Beach. Our menu will be like that but better!
As Tiki Lounge and Bar’s Chief Bartender, I was recently invited to be interviewed by Koop Kooper, the “Lounge Lothario” on his excellent Cocktail Nation podcast. If you haven’t already checked out this great Australian podcast focussed on all things lounge, then get along to the website at cocktailnation.podomatic.com. We chatted about the ins and outs of Tiki cocktail making, Beachbum Berry’s wonderful book on Tiki drink history Sippin’ Safari, and our recent Cinema Exotica event.
A few weeks back Co-owner of Tiki Lounge and Bar, David Backler, appeared on Cocktail Nation. Be sure to check that one out too!
Last night’s Cinema Exotica was an unmitigated success! Many thanks to the Graveyard Tramp (check out his great blog) for delving into the archives and producing some great cinematic entertainment!
I’ve included a photo of our enthralled audience enjoying the b-grade horror feature “Homicidal”, but the barstaff’s vote for best part of the night goes to the incredibly classy and high-brow moving pictures of topless go-go dancers of the 1960s. Very artistic!
If you have photos of the event that you would like to share in our gallery please send them to photos@tikiloungeandbar.com.
We will be holding more of these nights in the near future - Keep your eyes on the event calendar.
We recently received an email in our photos@tikiloungeandbar.com mailbox containing 3 wonderful pictures of some paintings by Melbourne-based artist-on-the-rise Paul Hughes. Paul’s works are fantastically optimistic and nostalgic mixes of, as he says, “Sea faring,Surfing,Tiki Trading and Robot Art” - something like Shag meets the Brady Bunch. Below is one of my favourite pieces featuring a recurring robotic character with a nod to Gilligan’s Island and Lost in Space. Paul’s paintings have been shown at the Frankston Arts Centre, and he can be found lurking around Myspace at http://www.myspace.com/artofpaulhughes.
Thanks for sharing your art, Paul. Hope to see you round the bar some time!
Also, to anyone that has any photos of the bar that you’d like to share in our gallery, please email them to photos@tikiloungeandbar.com and we’ll see to it that they make it on to the gallery page.
We now have a flashy new Flickr album for photos of the bar! You can see the gallery in this here site at http://tikiloungeandbar.com/gallery (also from the “Gallery” link in the navigation bar up the top there) or find us on flickr.
One other thing that we’ve done is set up an email address that you can send your own photos to. If you send an email to photos@tikiloungeandbar.com with a photo attached, it will automatically be added to the Tiki Lounge and Bar album in flickr!
Please share photos of your Tiki Bar experience with us!
You may remember me talking about a podcast that I do called SOUSED. Well, earlier this year we shot a video for SOUSED showcasing a number of Melbourne’s prominent cocktail bartenders showing off the face they make when shaking a cocktail - popularly believed to be the face one makes when making love.
Anyway, I thought I’d include part one of the video here coz it features the wonderful Tiki Lounge and Bar! Enjoy!
This Friday we will be starting our weekly Friday afternoon Sausage Sizzle! It’s a very simple concept - drop by for a drink (at happy hour prices!) between 5 - 7pm on a Friday afternoon, and we will reward you with a freshly sizzled sausage! We might even throw in some bread and tomato sauce! Ain’t that generous? Sadly we won’t have any “Purplo’s” available even though they ARE the honey Cocktail Sausage (it’s amazing what you find on Google Image Search these days).
The address again for those of you who might have missed it up there in the page banner is 327 Swan Street, Richmond. Look for our snazzy new Matusalem cafe screens!
We wanted to bring your attention to a great little art show that is opening here in Melbourne that is being run by “friend of the bar” and Tiki enthusiast Rohan Pugh. The show is called “Kustom Island” and will feature the works of Tiki Artist THOR (one of our favourites at the Tiki Bar - that’s his work at the bottom of this post), Ian McCausland (known for designing psychedelic festival and tour posters for rock acts such as the Rolling Stones and The Who), pinstriper Doug Dorr, and Stephen Prictor (a local Saint Kilda artist and darling of the local pub music scene).
It looks like a doozy of a show and it will run for a fortnight.
Where: Kuston Lane Gallery 8 Lutton Lane Hawthorn.
When: Opening Sunday May 4 (May the fourth be with you!) til Sunday May 18.
For further info email fauxpainteffects@bigpond.com.
Looks like I’m not the only one from our humble bar venturing into the brave new world of Podcasting - one of my bosses, Dave Backler, was interviewed by the “lounge lothario” Koop Kooper from the Cocktail Nation podcast.
The interview is wonderfully evocative of the bar, and I reckon Dave has done us proud with his performance here.
Be sure to check out Episode 10 (Dave’s interview is about 1 quarter of the way through the show.) at the Cocktail Nation Podcast.
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