Jayme vs. Kanaloa

The other week found The Wife and myself in Houston for an overnight visit. Having some time to spare in the evening, we decided to check out H-Town's newest tiki bar, Kanaloa. Despite quite a few tikiphiles in Texas, I haven't really heard much about it since its opening late last year. A month ago I tried to visit whilst passing through Houston, but after spending half an hour trying in vain to find parking, I gave up. Kanaloa's in the downtown area not far from the theatre district, which means street parking. And that fills up quickly. That's already a mark against it--who wants to escape to a tiki bar if one has to stress out over parking?

Fortunately, this night was not as super-busy as my previous, ill-fated visit. Traffic was light. We parked in a garage a block away and walked to Kanaloa without incident. The place is impossible to miss despite not having a big sign. There's a prominent thatch awning over the entrance, and lighting that shifts from garish purple to garish green. When word first came out that this space was being tikified, some of the early discussion was over the owners' decision to paint all the brick on the building's facade black. I wasn't a huge fan of this (I'm generally opposed to painting brick, period). I can kinda see what they were going for at night with the thatch and the lighting, but I remain unconvinced. Painting brick remains a bad idea in my book.

We stopped short at the threshold. The music blasting out of the bar was decidedly not tiki. It was club music. Beat pounding techno-pop alt whatever. I didn't recognize it, couldn't identify the singers or performers. Regardless, it was the most inappropriate tiki bar music we'd encountered since our visit to No Bones Beach Club back in 2017. Nothing can ruin the immersive experience of a tiki bar faster than inappropriate music. The Wife and I exchanged dubious looks. "We could go to Lei Low, but they don't have food. This place does." We were both pretty hungry. We agreed on giving Kanaloa one drink and a meal to win us over.

The first thing one sees upon entering are four enormous tiki heads lining the right-hand wall. They're huge. With their big-toothed grins, they look borderline clown tiki, but thankfully there are none of the garish colors that mark that degenerate tiki subset. The backlit eyes are illuminated, and the color changes with time. The effect is pretty cool. We sat at a table, not the bar, and looked over the menu. There were about 16 tiki cocktails listed, all classics (with the exception of "Caribbean Boilermaker" which was a shot of rum and a beer). There were no original cocktails listed. The next page had six group drinks, and here there were several original drinks, or at least riffs on existing shareables. Where the menu really stood out was with its rum list--four-and-a-half pages of rums listed. This tells me they're looking to compete more with the downtown rum bar High & Dry, which just so happens to be a block away. The Wife was not feeling particularly adventurous, so she ordered a Painkiller. It arrived in a grinning green tiki mug with a torched, smoldering cinnamon stick garnish. It may seem odd, but this is the first time I've seen a burning cinnamon stick garnish. It worked well. The presentation was nice and effective. This has got to be a fairly common garnish, but somehow I've avoided it until now. I'll steal it for future use, of course. The Wife reported the Painkiller to be a perfectly acceptable representation of its type.

I was tempted by their Three Dots and a Dash, but the music was really annoying me, and I was ready to cut our time there as short as possible. Since I was driving, I wanted to avoid their stronger drinks, which eliminated the Three Dots. Instead, I ordered a Sumatra Kula, a Don the Beachcomber original which I don't see on menus all that often. It arrived in a classic tiki mug with one of those thick, bubble tea straws. What was up with that? I dunno. The drink itself wasn't bad. The grapefruit bitterness was not overpowering but obviously there. I couldn't taste any honey, but again, the drink wasn't overpoweringly bitter, so there was sweetness in there somewhere, doing its job. This is a pretty simple drink for Don, one of those where there's no place to hide. Screwing up the recipe will be instantly noticeable. Despite my skepticism, they served me a solid cocktail.

As I mentioned earlier, we were hungry, and ordered dinner. I'd heard good things about their kitchen, which is apparently a permanent base for the Korean/Mexican food truck OhMyGogi! The Wife ordered OMG Fries (below right) and I ordered Jerk Chicken Tots (for the life of me, I've never been able to understand why tiki bars haven't embraced the deliciousness of Caribbean cuisine). The orders arrived and I have to say, they were both delicious. It amazes me how simple bar food has been upgraded to a culinary event. The portions didn't seem that large, but they filled us both up. They were flavorful and satisfying.

The back bar was an elaborate bamboo build, and looked quite impressive. Doubly so with color-changing LED lights illuminating the shelves and bottles upon them. On the other hand, the shelves were sparsely populated. The Wife and I both subscribe to the "more is more" aesthetic where tiki is concerned. A tiki bar shouldn't be neat and spare. There was a tremendous amount of wasted space behind the bar that could've been filled with more bottles, tiki mugs and other clutter. It was functional as it was, but also kinda sterile. Tiki bars should be all eye candy all the time. Every time you look, there should be something else to catch your eye that you hadn't noticed earlier. Kanaloa's bar, while nice, failed that test.

The rest of the bar was more in line with traditional tiki expectations. The ceiling decor, in particular, is a standout. Taking a page from San Diego's False Idol, Kanaloa's upper reaches are covered by dozens upon dozens of glass fishing floats. Speaking as someone who's priced these coveted items, this amounts to a significant investment on the part of the owners. That's not entirely surprising--last spring, before Kanaloa opened, Houston Eater ran a piece describing how the owners had visited tiki bars across the country for inspiration:

Doyle along with partners Roland Keller and Tyler Barrera have traveled around the country checking out tiki bars, and they’re currently hard at work sourcing tiki gear for the restaurant (think custom-made treasure chests). The hope is to open at the beginning of May within a completely transformed space featuring an outdoor patio and an event area upstairs.

The upstairs was closed. The rest of the downstairs had some nice booth seating and the required lauhala matting. There was the ubiquitous peacock chair in the back, along with a teddy bear and blow-up sex doll from the non-Valentine's Day party they'd held a few days prior. As we finished our meal, the lights flickered and a crash of thunder rolled through the place, so I give Kanaloa bonus points for incorporating theatrical flourishes that Don the Beachcomber would approve.

I went to the restroom, and when I returned I found The Wife had moved to the bar and was chatting with the bartender. They were discussing tiki, and he was waxing poetic about how good their Mai Tai was. Now, I have to confess, I'm not a huge Mai Tai fan. I can take it or leave it. But The Wife loves 'em, and judges tiki bars on the quality of their Mai Tai. We'd been planning to leave (yes, that music was still grating) but I threw caution to the wind and ordered one for her (just for her, as I was driving). The bartender pauses a moment, suddenly unsure of himself. "This isn't a fruity Mai Tai," he warned. "Mai Tais aren't supposed to be fruity," she responds, and the bartender looks visibly relieved. She takes a sip, and her eyebrows go up in a curious manner. "You have to try this," she said, offering me a sip. I tasted it, and it's not at all what I was expecting. It's recognizably a Mai Tai, sure, but there's a serious funkiness going on.

"He said he uses a flaming rum," The Wife said.

I thought a moment. "Rum Fire?"

"That's it."

I tasted it again. Wow. If Rum Fire made that much of a difference when used in a Mai Tai, I might start having to use it myself at home. I might even become a Mai Tai drinker. The stuff was good.

Before we left, we went to check out the back patio, which the bartender recommended as outstanding. I have to admit it's a nice space. It's enclosed by tall brick walls with vines growing up them, and string lights contribute a suitably dim, atmospheric illumination... but man, they haven't done anything with that space. There should be potted palms and living bamboo, maybe a water feature, and at least three or four 6' tiki carvings back there. As it is, there are a couple of vintage-style metal signs by Kerne Erickson (a personal favorite), a cobbled-together license plate that spells out "Tiki Bar" and a handful of mass-produced masks from Indonesia. That's it. That back patio space could be amazing! Instead, it's simply there.

Kanaloa is incredibly frustrating. It's got a lot going for it, but it's a case of "one step forward, two steps back." The music is just downright awful, and drove us away when we would've spent the evening there. I emailed the manager about the music once we got back home, but never received an acknowledgement. The food is great and the cocktails are solid. The cocktail menu is sadly limited, though, and lacks originality. The decor they have is great, there just isn't enough of it. The back courtyard/patio could be amazing, but they've done nothing with it. All in all, Kanaloa feels eerily similar to Pilikia, which was actually run as a nightclub-with-a-tiki-theme because the owners had heard tiki was a growing trend. That's kind of the vibe I got from Kanaloa. I don't think the owners or management actually understand tiki. It feels like Kanaloa is an attempt to cash in on tiki, because tiki is a hot trend right now. Which is dumb if true, because tiki is probably the most outrageously expensive concept bar to pull off. I think the club music is there because they want to fit in with all the other bars in the area. I suspect the more time passes, the less tiki Kanaloa will get, until it's pretty much indistinguishable from any other bar in the neighborhood, is sold and revamped as an Irish pub or German beer hall. Which is a shame, because they have the foundation for a potentially outstanding tiki bar. They just seem afraid to fully embrace it, which makes me wonder why they ventured down this path in the first place.

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