“I don’t think tiki has to be purely Hawaiian or Polynesian,” says Roxie Danner, co-owner of Strawberry Hill’s new cocktail lounge The Blue Palm.
The Blue Palm (204 Orchard St., KCK) has all the elements of a quintessential tiki lounge: nautical decor, cocktails swimming with rum and lighting so dim you’re sure to lose track of time. Still, it manages to take on an identity of its own. Amazingly, it’s the only brick-and-mortar tiki bar in the metro, and its subtle spooky twist makes sure it will continue to stand out regardless if more tiki bars pop up. After all, “tiki is whatever you make it,” Danner says.
Tiki’s cult following has bred an array of subgenres like “geek tiki,” featuring tiki mugs fashioned as characters from pop culture, and “creepy tiki,” which takes on an occult-ish charm and is Danner’s specialty. Among The Blue Palm’s three owners (Dan Doty and Houston Defoe are fellow co-owners), Danner spearheads the cocktail program, adding her creepy tiki twist to it. The menu features several drinks from her pop-up days as Hellfire Tiki, including the bestseller Taro Deck.
Taro refers to taro root, a popular flavor of bubble tea that inspired the drink. Danner makes a taro coconut cream base and mixes it with a housemade passion fruit syrup, lemon juice, dark rum and a tropical velvet falernum, a spiced Caribbean liquor commonly found in tiki drinks. The result is something a little sweet, a little nutty and insanely delicious. Danner says customers have compared the taste to cereal milk.
Aside from its incredible flavor, the Taro Deck should be ordered if only to match the ambiance of The Blue Palm’s interior. Its hue matches the bar’s highlighter-purple walls, which are accented with a pitch-black ceiling. I visited in the early evening on a hot July day. The sun was shining, but one step inside The Blue Palm and I was engulfed in a dark tropical time warp—an intoxicating environment, literally and figuratively.
“That’s part of the tiki experience,” says Danner. “There’s a level of escapism. Whatever the state of the world, come in, relax, ease your mind a bit.”
The result is something a little sweet, a little nutty and insanely delicious. Danner says customers have compared the taste to cereal milk.
