Trader Vic's (Bar, Restaurant)

Top 10 things we learned about Trader Vic’s restaurant and bar:

1) Feeling drab and grey, as though the wettest winter since records began has wrapped its slippery fingers around your soul? Then a trip to the islands of Hawaii, Fiji, Tahiti and Cuba might be called for – in the form of Trader Vic’s.

2) Hidden cave-like beneath Mayfair’s Park Lane Hilton hotel, Trader Vic’s is a dimly-lit but colour-bursting, pattern-exploding, warm droplet of the tropics in the centre of London’s fancypants bar heartland.

3) It’s been here since 1963. You can easily imagine the swingers draped in flares and Mary Quant on the bamboo chairs, surrounded by fossilised pufferfish, conch shells, and tribal boats. All, I’m assured, authentic, and gathered on Trader Vic’s travels to Cuba and Hawaii in the 30s.

4) The American’s first bar in California specialised in island fusion foods and rum and Trader Vic’s on Park Lane does exactly the same.

5) You can enjoy ‘bar bites’ if your appetite and wallet don’t stretch to the full restaurant menu. We loved the Cosmo Tidbits – crispy prawns, the biggest and juiciest to grace my plate in a while, crab Rangoon, and char siu pork BBQ ribs for two. At just shy of £20, this is Park Lane prices, and quantity isn’t as plump as the prawns, but taste is excellent.

6) The Maui Waui shrimp was another favourite – coconut-crusted with a sweet and spicy glaze. The stir-fried chicken with ginger and water chestnuts in lettuce cups was moreish.

7) The star of the show here is the cocktail. Trader invented the Mai Tai in 1944. He pulled down a bottle of 17 year old Jamaican rum, added lime, rock candy syrup, orange curacao and French Orgeat and handed it to friend who exclaimed ‘Mao Tai Roa Ae!’ – Tahitian for ‘Out of this world – the best!’

8) In true BBC presenter style: other cocktails are also available. The London Sour, invented for the bar’s 63 opening, is Scotch with fresh oranges, lemons and a ‘whisper’ of almonds. And a hot toddy in a large skull will banish all rainy day blues – Jamaican rum, spices, crushed cherries and honey. These are £9 and £7 respectively, and overall the cocktails are reasonable, generous, and genuinely exciting.

9) You’ll also get a Kuala stirrer.

10) I feel all warm and fuzzy inside....read more