I once got kicked out of my own party at the LuWow, back when it was in Fitzroy, for locking myself in the DJ booth and playing Hawaiian Rollercoaster Ride from Lilo & Stitch on repeat to the point of mutiny. Later that night, I snuck back in and did it again with Under the Sea from The Little Mermaid.

I’m sorry your honour, I was under the influence of a tiki bar.

“Well, we have Under the Sea on the playlist here now,” says co-owner “Skipper” Josh Collins, consoling me.

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Skipper Josh (thus nicknamed because “my middle name is Sinbad and my dad was a nutty sailor”) co-owns the LuWow with his wife, Barbara Collins. He’s a tall, affable man who I’ve only ever seen wearing a leopard-print vest and a captain’s hat.

When it opened on Johnston Street in 2011, the LuWow was a little bit bar and a little bit nightclub. At the time Broadsheet described it as “a mecca to both tiki and fun”.

It was the kind of place that attracted everyone: uni students, ironic navel-gazers, hens’ nights and lovers of tiki. It turns out drinking from ludicrously large tiki mugs is a great social leveller. It had a reputation for loose evenings and earned a place in many hearts. But the original LuWow called it a day at the end of 2016 when its lease expired. It's now re-opened, this time in the CBD.

If you’re unacquainted with tiki bars, here’s a crash course:

Tiki bars began popping up at the end of Prohibition in the United States following the opening of Polynesian-themed Hollywood bar and restaurant Don's Beachcomber in 1933. The tiki-bar aesthetic typically combines visual and cultural motifs from coastal Africa, South America and islands throughout the Pacific (especially Polynesia) and the Caribbean. Tikis themselves are stone or wooden humanoid totems found throughout Polynesia; they often represent deified ancestors and mark the boundaries of sacred sites.

Tiki culture (and bars), on the other hand, is a heavily romanticised colonial interpretation that exploded in popularity when the US emerged from World War II with a renewed taste for rum – and all things Pacific. Tiki can rightfully be viewed as reductive in the way it lumps dozens of island cultures together under the one “exotic” banner, but its proponents see it as a good-natured, affectionate flight of imagination. And it’s nice to have a point of difference to Melbourne’s countless serious bars.

“There’s something about tiki bars that’s eternal. It’s the fantasy,” says Skipper Josh.

Any tiki bar worth its cocktail salt should know how to make a good Zombie, and LuWow 2.0’s is a doozy. It uses three kinds of rum shaken with grapefruit and pomegranate juice. A very boozy falernum (a sweet alcoholic cordial made from lime zest, spices and almonds) is added in for good measure. It’s a highly alcoholic, dangerously easy-to-drink cocktail. Proceed with caution.

Other cocktails include a classic Mai Tai; the Pain Killer, a pineapple and orange-juice punch combining dark rum and coconut; and the Bo-Na-Na – banana, pineapple and passionfruit mixed with rum and coulis. And instead of a Long Island Iced Tea there’s an Easter Island Iced Tea, which adds coconut tequila and blue curacao to the classic five-spirit cocktail.

There’s a greater focus on food at the new LuWow. It’s in the space formerly occupied by Hawaiian-themed restaurant Hana. Head chef Jun Lee also worked at Hana and, as with all things tiki, his menu has a lot of cultural influences. There’s Jamaican fried chicken and crisp tempura-like prawns to snack on while downing your Voodoo Volcano or Gruesome Grog.

Tikis are everywhere you look – Skipper Josh built most of them himself. Rattan and bamboo ceilings, booths made from repurposed car upholstery, fishing nets, fake plants and flashes of leopard print adorn the 50-person room, which is aglow in green and blue lights. It’s all set to a soundtrack that spans everything from Elvis Presley’s Do the Clam to modern surf rock such as Zombi Hut by the Tiki Tones.

As I get up to leave, Under the Sea begins to play on the speakers. Maybe that’s Skipper Josh’s sense of humour, or maybe it’s pure coincidence. Either way, the LuWow is still ridiculous. Thank goodness for that.

The LuWow
212 Little Collins Street, Melbourne
0491 717 668

Hours
Tue to Thu 4pm–11pm
Fri & Sat 4pm–1am

theluwow.com