Review

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Mister Tiki blows a gasket

By Larry Knowles

February 13, 2006

San Diego--I dropped by Mister Tiki Mai Tai Lounge on Fifth and hoped that the experience would be anything but “nice.”

You see, there’s an inherent cynicism in being a restaurant critic. You want things to go wrong. When everything goes right, you have nothing to write about, and you end up using bland adjectives like “great,” or “outstanding.” Who wants to read about that?

I thought I’d picked the wrong place. Tiki, after all, was a mild-mannered chieftain, the son of the sun, who led a peaceful fair-skinned race across the Pacific 1,500 years ago to colonize the Polynesian islands. He tended to avoid conflict rather than start it.

The bartender came over and dropped a coaster in front of me. “What the fuck is this?” he snapped at a waitress. “Where’s the fucking slip?” he added a minute later.

He had drinks to make and he made them violently, yanking four bottles at a time from the well, jerking them upward, and dropping them into their slots. Glass clanked against glass. The guy looked pissed.

“What do you recommend?” I asked.

“A Mister Mai Tai,” he said sullenly, adding something like, “It’s the only thing to get here.”

So I went with that and got a little food, too: the Kung Pao chicken wok.

Then things got interesting. The feel-good Tiki vibe all but disappeared.

“Where’s our useless hostess?” he asked a waitress. An aside: Hostesses generally are useless. All they do is sit people in your section without telling you and clear a glass or napkin off your table just to make it look like they’re helping you out.

I was with him. I just didn’t want to hear it.

Over the next several minutes, he sneered about a couple of things, stalked around the bar, and called me “bro,” which I don’t really like. I have a bro, and it wasn’t him.

The businessman next to me asked what I was doing there. “I’m actually writing a review of the place,” I replied.

He raised his eyebrows. “You should have some good stuff to write about.”

The bartender was clearly having a bad night, and I have to say, for the state he was in, the service was excellent. My drink was stiffer than an Easter Island moai, and the Kung Pao chicken came out in about eight minutes.

However, the scene behind the bar got more bizarre.

Our bartender mixed drinks in an increasingly hostile manner. (No, really.) At one point, he was mixing some sort of drink in front of us and just got too physical. I’m not sure what he did, but his tumbler shattered and sprayed shards of glass all over the place. There were pieces on the bar, in the well, next to my plate.

The businessman gave me a this-ought-to-be-an-interesting-review look. The bartender stormed off to take care of his thumb, which had been cut up.

I was pecking at my food when a new bartender arrived and cried, “Don’t touch that!”

I did as asked.

“We’ll get you guys set up with new food and drinks,” he stated. He went on to explain that all of the computers were down and that the bartenders were doing everything “blind.”

Within five minutes, I had a fresh drink and a new plate of food. Our original bartender returned ten minutes later and apologized sheepishly for the scene. When the bill came, my meal had been comped.

A nice way to finish up, and Tiki would have approved.

Mister Tiki Mai Tai Lounge

801 Fifth Ave.

San Diego, CA 92101

619.233.1183