A Tale of Two Tikis (and My Dad)

In Phoenix AZ there's a place called Hula's Modern Tiki. It's a big contemporary building, with a full menu. The seafood (ceviche to fish tacos) is great, and the bar offers a wonderful set of tiki drinks. Their Mai Tai is somewhat non-traditional, but it's a wonderful swirl of citrus and orgeat, happily strong and delicious. The Dr. Funk could have been a sweet mess, but lets the sweetness shine lightly through a coconut-banana base that's terrific. And, if there's a sauce offered with your appetizer or entree, accept it without question.



In Las Vegas NV there's a place called Frankie's Tiki Room. It's a little hole in the wall, well off the Strip, built by a Vegas bar developer who wanted a "locals" place modeled after the tiki bars of the past. It has that slightly-sordid exotic edge you want in a bar, there's no food (check the food cart out front), and some of the best tiki drinks you will ever encounter. Their Mai Tai is the Mai Tai (lucky) people have been drinking for decades; their drink feature homemade mixers (get anything with falernum), original tiki mugs to take home, and a bartender (we've had the same one every year for the past four years) who makes everything perfectly and with a smile.

My father, who passed this week, was a schoolteacher for 26 years, mostly in middle school social studies. He used a grading scale I've never seen before or since:
70-79 = D
80-89 = C
90-99 = B
100+ = A

If you did everything, perfectly, that you were asked to do, you'd squeak by with a A. Miss one question anywhere, and you would need to do extra credit in order to get your A. And, my dad would accept almost anything as extra credit: reports, field trips with parents, anything remotely relevant to social studies. The meta-lesson: if you want to to get top marks, you have to do something extra–you have to find something special to earn your A.

I have no recipe this week; I'm not home to finalize one, and we're letting others do the heavy lifting this week. That said, I hold up these restaurants as two very different examples of the same concept, one that my father passed on to me as part of his legacy many years ago: if you want to be the best, you must go beyond what is expected and provide something extra–even if it is completely different from someone else's attempt to be the best. Hula's and Frankie's are both places that do very different things under the tiki umbrella, but end up being shining examples of exceeding the goals set out by their respective visions. It's a reminder that I do this not to simply drink great drinks (a happy coincidence, to be sure), but to seek out experiences that are beyond the ordinary, and strive for greatness in my own quiet little way.