Lauhala House

Texas doesn't have much of a tiki culture, historically speaking. There've been Trader Vic's and Don the Beachcomber's in Houston and Dallas, sure, but there's bnever been much in the way of homegrown tiki culture. Several things contribute to this, chief among them being Texas' restrictive liquor laws during the heyday of tiki, and the combined fact that winters are generally mild for much of the state and a significant amount of the land is either clay soil or shallow limestone. Why's that matter? Well, mild winters mean the foundations for homes don't need to be dug deep below the frost line, eliminating basements as a standard feature of homes. And even if residents wanted to add basements anyway, limestone and clay aren't conducive to cost-effective basement digs. The lack of basements corresponds to a lack of underground rumpus rooms and/or tiki bars. The liquor laws precluded the consumption of Mai Tais. Tiki was essentially stillborn in Texas.

A few tiki outposts managed to beat the odds for a while. One was Lahala House in Corpus Christi. Not much is known about it, other than it was primarily a seafood restaurant destroyed by Hurricane Beulah in 1967. THere's a single image of the dining room online, taken from a vintage postcard. Aside from that, nobody I'm aware of even knew what the outside looked like, until now. I recently scored a menu from the place off Ebay, and I have to say, I'm pretty jazzed about it.

Now we know what it looked like. And by golly, it really was right on the water.

The menu opened, with a clip-on bar insert.

The menu sans bar insert. The offerings look like a typical Texas steak-and-seafood restaurant, as opposed to the Chinese offerings many other tiki-themed establishments offered.

The menu also had bar offerings printed on the back, which makes me wonder why the insert was necessary.

As you can see, the bar offerings on the menu and the insert are nearly identical. Maybe the insert didn't originally go with the menu, but was available at the bar? Was there a separate bar area in the restaurant? I have no idea. Note that there are no real tiki cocktails on the menu. I'm assuming sales of spirits such as rum were restricted. Hard to enjoy a Mai Tai without rum!

As if finding the rare menu wasn't enough, just a few days after the menu arrived, a separate Ebay seller posted a matchbook cover! I snapped it up, of course.

The interior contained a miniature menu. That's clever, but anyone reading it has to have excellent eyesight. That print it tiny!

The original address for Lahala House was 4922 1/2 Ave. B, but at some point in the 1960s the streets were renamed, which made it hard to pinpoint where the restaurant was actually located. Enter the matchbook cover, which must've been printed shortly before the place was destroyed by Hurricane Beulah. Gulfbreeze is the street name today, and the address places Lahala House at the northernmost point of the North Beach area, opposite what is now the U.S.S. Lexington and the Texas State Aquarium. The property is empty now, reclaimed by sand and tides. I read online that Lahala House owner Harry Porter opened a new restaurant, the Torch, following the hurricane, but a newspaper clipping I've found from the Austin American-Statesman indicates the Torch, along with a second Lahala House in Austin (which became Steak Island in the late 60s, then the Magic Time Machine in the 70s, followed by Landry's in the 90s and Joe's Crab Shack in the 00s) were both in operation by 1965. So that's a little bit of Texas tiki history. I'll be sure to share more when I have it.

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