In 1933, right after the repeal of Prohibition, Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt — also known as Donn Beach — opened Don the Beachcomber in Hollywood, California, often called the world’s first tiki bar. He decorated the space in knickknacks and art “inspired” by his travels in the South Pacific and Caribbean. Tiki has been critiqued for its exoticizing and otherizing treatment of Caribbean and Pacific Islanders; in response, a group of bartenders around the country has been trying to reckon with tiki’s history — “hang on to the fun and the orgeat, just without the appropriation,” in the words of food writer Alicia Kennedy.
In Portland, the newly open
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