Kahiki Supper Club Read online

  Although he did not come away with the recipe for Navy Grog, Von Stroheim wrote:

  Legend has it that making the mix requires a large pot and hours of patience. After pouring in the right amounts of sherry, three kinds of bitters (“Last time I had to purchase them at the pharmacy because the liquor stores don’t carry them anymore” explained Jim), curaçao, rock candy syrup, orgeat syrup, cinnamon, etc., a stirrer is made from a stick and about a pound of cloves wrapped in cheesecloth. This is used to stir the mixture as it is slowly brought to a boil. The recipe fills 50–100 bottles!

  From the Kahiki’s start, Señor Sandro Conti was the bar manager and devised many of the drinks served at the restaurant. Bill Sapp’s first meeting with Sandro at the Top Steakhouse had been a memorable one.

  It was on a Sunday evening. I had been tending bar, and at that time, according to law, you could only sell whiskey until midnight on Sunday. Another bar owner from Pataskala and I were the only ones sitting at the bar and this long-haired, blue-eyed guy came in the door. I was tired from playing golf all day, so I said in Spanish under my breath, “If you want a drink, go make your own.” And he walked right back to the bar and said, “Sí, cómo no?” [“Sure, why not?”] and mixed himself a drink. It turns out he’s Italian and lived until he was eleven years old in Italy. His family moved through a political appointment-type thing to Nicaragua. He grew up in Nicaragua and was fluent in both Italian and Spanish and then came to the U.S. in either 1958 or 1959. When he came into the Top that night, he could say “Hello,” and that was the extent of his English. We talked [in] Spanish all the time, and that’s how we became very good friends.

  The two men quickly became friends, which led to Sandro’s becoming the chief mixologist at the Kahiki.

  Conti came to know rums while living in South America. His drinks included Sandro’s Sin, Malayan Mist, Blue Hurricane, Instant Urge, Headhunter, Jungle Fever, Potent Passion and Smokey Eruption. The Kahiki’s bars would consume one thousand pineapples and about two thousand bottles of rum a month. They once sold over eighteen thousand Polynesian drinks during the months of May alone. And each drink came in its own distinct mug or glass.

  Promoter Bruce Nutt said he consulted with a couple bartenders at the Kahiki when he opened Crazy Mama’s, just south of the Ohio State campus in 1979. They helped him devise the drinks and the menu at “America’s First Rock ’n’ Roll Disco.”

  A book of drink recipes from the Kahiki would probably be in even higher demand than a book of food recipes. Sadly, if there is one, it is probably under lock and key in somebody’s basement tiki bar. However, here are a few that have surfaced.

  PORT LIGHT

  This drink recipe is one of Sandro Conti’s best known. It is unusual in that it is a whiskey- (not rum-) based drink. The name might refer to the fact that it has a red tint like the port light on a boat.

  1 (or 1½, according to some sources) ounce bourbon

  1 ounce lemon juice

  ½ ounce passion fruit syrup

  ½ (or ¼) ounce grenadine

  cherry and lemon wedge

  Shake bourbon, lemon juice, passion fruit syrup and grenadine with 1 cup of crushed ice for five seconds and pour into a Collins glass or small tiki mug. Garnish with a cherry and a lemon wedge.

  For a slushier texture, pulse in a blender (but be wary of “blender explosions,” as bartender Ty Wenzel calls them). Passion fruit syrup is available from at least one vendor, B.G. Reynolds, or can be easily made. Raspberry syrup can be substituted for the grenadine.

  POLYNESIAN SPELL

  Another original drink attributed to Sandro Conti, this is a non-rum-based beverage, as well. It is essentially a gin cocktail.

  1 ounce grape juice

  ounce fresh lemon juice

  ¼ ounce triple sec

  ¼ ounce peach brandy

  ½ teaspoon sugar syrup

  1½ ounce dry gin

  Shake well with ice cubes. Strain into a champagne glass.

  KAHIKI BAHÍA

  From an unsourced, undated newspaper clipping.

  2½ ounces (¼ cup plus 1 tablespoon) unsweetened pineapple juice

  1 ounce (2 tablespoons) fresh lemon juice

  1 ounce (2 tablespoons) canned coconut cream

  2 ounces (¼ cup) light rum

  1 scoop shaved or crushed ice

  pineapple-cherry fruit stick

  Place all but fruit stick in shaker glass; shake well. Or mix in blender. Decorate with fruit stick. Makes 1 serving.

  KAHIKI’S JUNGLE FEVER

  From an unsourced, undated newspaper clipping.

  ½ banana

  1 ounce (2 tablespoons) light rum

  1 ounce (2 tablespoons) fresh lime juice

  1 dash maraschino cherry liqueur

  1 dash sugar syrup

  1 scoop shaved or crushed ice

  banana slice and cherry

  Combine all but banana slice and cherry in blender; mix until smooth. Serve as is or freeze until slushy. Garnish with banana slice and cherry. Makes 1 serving.

  KAHIKI SMOKING ERUPTION

  This drink dates from about 1980.

  In a blender, mix:

  1 ounce guava juice

  1 ounce pineapple juice

  1 ounce passion fruit juice

  1 ounce light rum

  1 ounce vodka

  1 ounce Appleton Punch Rum

  ½ ounce rock candy syrup

  ½ ounce lemon juice

  dash red food coloring

  Add crushed ice and blend slightly. In a smaller glass (to fit inside the one you will serve in), place a small amount of dry ice. Put this smaller glass into the larger one, and just when prepared to serve, put hot water into the glass containing dry ice. This will create bubbling water and “smoke” (fog).

  THE KAHIKI OUTRIGGER

  ½ ounce grapefruit juice

  ½ ounce falernum

  ounce cinnamon syrup

  2 ounces golden rum

  Shake all ingredients with a ½ cup of ice and pour into an old-fashion glass.

  POLYNESIAN MARTINI

  This isn’t a recipe per se but rather the story of a drink. Bartender Tommy Joseph had one particularly difficult customer who would come in every day, pound the bar and say, “Give me a Polynesian martini.” After he had downed it, he would complain about how bad it was and then walk away without leaving a tip. One day, a condiment salesman came in with jars of pepperoncino peppers that were especially hot, and Tommy talked him into giving him two of them. The next time his problem customer came in, Tommy skewered the peppers on a spear, dropped them in the martini and told him they were Polynesian olives. The man replied, “Well, you’ve finally got it” and popped the pepper in his mouth. “You could see his face turn red,” Bill Harrison said. “I’m not sure, but there must have been wax coming out of his ears, and I know his nose was running. And he took the entire four ounces of gin and, in one fell swoop, sucked it down.” Tommy remarked, “You really go for those Polynesian martinis.” The customer never came back.

  APPENDIX C

  CUBAN ADVENTURE

  Given Bill Sapp’s fondness for Old Havana (La Habana Vieja), the Kahiki Supper Club might just as easily have had a Cuban theme. When they were initially staffing the restaurant,

  Sandro [Conti] and I flew down to Miami and stayed at the Columbus Hotel for about three weeks and hired mostly Cuban refugees. I would say that 75 percent of the people that opened the Kahiki were Cuban refugees. There were doctors, lawyers, musicians and everything. They came up here and worked very diligently. They were great workers…The Cubans are great people. They are very industrious people and full of rhythm. They love to dance.

  According to Bill Harrison, one very distinguished-looking gentleman who worked at the Kahiki had been the president of the Bank of Cuba before Castro took over. He remained at the restaurant until he had learned English and saved enough money, and then he went down to Miami and opened a bank there.

 
; However, Bill Sapp nearly became a refugee himself. While it doesn’t exactly fit in the story of the Kahiki, it does show that Don The Beachcomber wasn’t the only adventurer in the tiki bar business.

  Well, we just went on one of our regular junkets to Cuba, which we did often because we had so much fun down there. So we moved into the “old” section of Havana because that’s where we liked it the most. Sandro and I were going out. My wife was tired, so she said, “I’m going to stay in the room.” So Sandro and I go out, and in the meantime—this is when the revolution was going on—so the revolutionaries start storming “old” Havana, shooting and everything. Sandro and I were in some bar, and we wanted to go to another bar—and we didn’t care about any damn revolutionaries. So we went out and hailed a cab, and this cab stopped. But [the cabby] said, “I ain’t taking you anyplace; I’m afraid that they’ll kill me.” So Sandro says, “If you don’t take us where we want to go, we’re gonna kill you right now!” So he took us to this other bar, where we stayed for a while, and anyways it starts to get daylight so I’m thinking the wife’s gonna be furious. So we get back to the hotel, and there’s an iron gate there and we can’t get in. So we rattled this gate for an hour. Finally, the caretaker comes because he thinks the revolutionaries are trying to break in. We assured him that we were tourists and guests of the hotel, so finally he lets us in. Well, we get into the hotel, and the elevator doesn’t work. We were up on the eleventh floor, so we go up the stairs. And by the time we got to the room, we were both just beat. So anyway, I go in and go to bed. The next morning my wife screams, “Bill, Bill get up.” I said, “What’s the matter?” She says, “Look at this!” I looked out the window. And they had [hanged] somebody down there, and he was swinging in the breeze. My wife said, “Let’s get out of here.” We decided it best to get out of there, so we changed our reservations and got on the last plane out of there. Just as we were taking off, we get up and immediately dropped back down from Havana to Varadaro Beach, the airport there. Some guys had gone down the canal and were shooting machine guns, or something, and the pilots were afraid they were going to shoot the plane out of the air. There [were] some people, I guess, on the plane that shouldn’t have been there, so they lined us all up and they poked us with guns and searched everything. Everybody was scared. Finally, we were able to get back on the plane, and we took off for Miami.

  NOTES

  1. Howard Johnson started the ball rolling five years earlier with the first restaurant franchise.

  2. The first theme restaurants made their appearances in the Montmartre section of Paris during the 1880s.

  3. This long-popular tourist attraction closed at the end of 2013.

  4. Since a recipe is little more than a list of ingredients, it cannot be copyrighted unless it incorporates some measure of literary expression.

  5. It was revived in 1993.

  6. After dying out completely, the Don The Beachcomber name has been resurrected within the past decade.

  7. The Thorntons clearly believed in the adage “Go big or go home.” The Mai-Kai was the most expensive restaurant built in 1956.

  8. Although interracial marriages were prohibited, forty “racially ineligible” women did manage to marry their American boyfriends in defiance of U.S. military policy.

  9. Hawaii was as far from the U.S. mainland as Colonel Tom Parker, Presley’s manager, would allow him to venture. There were never any overseas tours because Parker, an illegal immigrant from Holland, did not have a passport and would not have been able to accompany him.

  10. In 1999, Sapp sold the Top to attorney Steve Yoder Kenny Yee, owner of Wings Restaurant, a Bexley institution that had originally opened in the 1920s as the Far East Restaurant.

  11. They later sold the house on the lot to Grover Schmidt for $100, and he moved it.

  12. “What type of decadent, perverted minds, what sort of people, can find pleasure in mocking the bones of those who have died before them?…Bad taste and sordid vulgarity have reached their nadir in Columbus, Ohio,” wrote S.R.B. Cole from St. Louis, Missouri.

  13. Founded by Ed Schmid in 1963, Funni-Frite Industries of Columbus, Ohio, was a manufacturer of carnival fun houses. In 1970, the company introduced Voo Doo Trail, a walk-through fun house that might have been at least partially inspired by the Kahiki. There were twin moai, and thrill-seekers would enter through the mouth of one and exit through the mouth of the other.

  14. The monkey pod tables were made by Benson Company of Long Beach, California.

  15. It was invented circa 1885–89 by Joseph Kekuku’upenakanai’aupunioka mehameha Apuakehau, or Joseph Kekuku for short.

  16. The Columbus Senior Musicians Hall of Fame was co-founded by Robert D. Thomas and David Meyers.

  17. Some of the men who married former Mystery Girls think they have the “ultimate collectable.”

  18. For some reason, Michael Tsao replaced the large gong with a smaller one and, later, a drum.

  19. This does not include the eruption of Coach Woody Hayes when the Ohio State Faculty Council voted not to send the Buckeye football team to the 1962 Rose Bowl game.

  20. Salinger was the White House press secretary during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

  21. Many of them stayed at the Olentangy Inn and received flowers from the Livingston Flower Shop, according to contemporaneous advertisements.

  22. As William Shatner, Rob Lowe and others have pointed out, Kenley’s personal life was more theatrical than his shows. He lived in the Midwest during the summers as John Kenley and in Florida during the winters as Joan Kenley.

  23. Wednesday nights they dined across the street at the Desert Inn. They also participated in “meet and greets” at the Lazarus Department Store Assembly Center. John Kenley kept his stars busy.

  24. Originally a tap dancer, Styles was a Borscht Belt comedian born in Columbus, Ohio. His wife was the actress and singer Mary Hatcher.

  25. The Water Works on North Front Street, another themed restaurant where customers sat in claw-footed bathtubs, also had a backgammon club.

  26. A critical success, “Son of Heaven” ended up costing local taxpayers $1.67 million, which was less than the $2 million loss it sustained in Seattle.

  27. Trouble in Tahiti, a one-act opera by Leonard Bernstein, concerns the breakdown of a marriage.

  28. In March 1977, Duncan would find the Columbus Board of Education guilty of operating a segregated school system, paving the way for forced busing to balance the racial composition of the schools.

  29. A turnkey is the person in charge of the keys.

  30. Mark Pi is a Columbus restaurateur who has operated several successful chains of Asian restaurants.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Anaconda (Montana) Standard. “The Hawaiian Speech.” September 25, 1898.

  Bartell, David. “I Owe Ohio.” http://www.kevdo.com/maitai/reviews/kahiki.html (accessed on October 20, 2013).

  Berry, Jeff. Beachbum Berry’s Grog Log. San Jose, CA: SLG Publishing, 1998.

  Blundo, Joe. “Adventures in Paradise—Readers Revel in the Kahiki’s Ersatz Polynesian Pleasures.” Columbus Dispatch, May 6, 2000.

  Burlingame, Burl. “He’s ‘Uke Kook.’” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 1997.

  Business First. “House of Frozen Food.” January 12, 1998.

  ———. “Kahiki Restaurant Is Nominated as One of the Top 50 ‘Best of the Best’ Restaurants and Receives a Five-Star Diamond Award from the American Academy of Restaurant Sciences.” March 16, 1992.

  Cadwallader, Bruce. “Prank Leaves Two Men Wounded by Shotgun.” Columbus Dispatch, January 31, 2003.

  Chenault, Jeff. “Tiki Pioneer Bill Sapp—Original Owner of the Kahiki Supper Club.” Tiki Magazine 4, no. 1 (Spring 2008).

  Chenoweth, Doral. “Kahiki Has Advocate in Downtown Diner Owner.” Columbus Dispatch, May 2, 2000.

  ———. “The Kahiki, 3583 E Broad St., Is Accepted for Listing onto the National Register of Historical Places.” Columbus Dispatch, Decemb
er 29, 1997.

  ———. “Owner on Top of Business Year-Round.” Columbus Dispatch, February 19, 1996.

  ———. “Trio Takes Columbus Cuisine to the Top.” Columbus Dispatch, February 18, 1998.

  Chilcoat, Beth, and Cindy Kusmer. A Taste of Columbus. Columbus, OH: Corban Productions, 1978.

  City of Columbus, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Samuel E. Bryant, Defendant-Appellant; City of Columbus, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Joan Johnson, Defendant-Appellant. Court of Appeals, Tenth Appellate District, Franklin County, June 30, 1977.

  Cohen, I. David. Sorry, Downtown Columbus Is Closed. Columbus, OH: self-published, 2009.

  Columbus Dispatch. “Allen Taylor Jr., 25, of 1079 Bryden Rd, Is Arrested in Connection with a Shooting Involving His Estranged Wife Alice, 22, in the Parking Lot of Kahiki, 3583 E Broad St.” September 14, 1961.

  ———. “Armed Robber Gets an Estimated $10,000 from Offices of the Kahiki Restaurant, 3583 E Broad St.” November 10, 1969.

  ———. “Burglars Use a Cutting Torch to Open a Large Safe at the Kahiki Supper Club, 3583 East Broad St and Escape with an Undetermined Amount of Cash.” February 17, 1969.

  ———. “The Municipal Airport Commission Rejects a Request of the Kahiki Restaurant to Set Up a Polynesian Hut with a Hostess in the Terminal and Asks for More Information on a Toy Shop.” November 22, 1961.

  ———. “Police Arrest Todd A. Pahel, 19, a Former Employee of the Kahiki, Inside the Restaurant at 3583 E Broad St. and Charge Him with Breaking and Entering.” November 7, 1978.

  ———. “75 Union Members Picket at the Kahiki Supper Club, 3583 E Broad St.; They Are Miffed at the Non-Union Construction of the Wine Cellar, on E Dublin-Granville Rd., by Owners of Kahiki.” August 14, 1971.

  ———. “Thieves Enter the Kahiki Supper Club, 3583 E Broad St., by Breaking a Side Window, Ransack the Second-Floor Office and Leave a Large Amount of Cash on the Accounting Room Floor.” April 2, 1963.