In the Land of Cocktails

Liquid history Of New Orleans: Chapter Tiki !

Posted by Ti Adelaide Martin on December 11th, 2010

Just say Pontchar­train Beach and most peo­ple my age who grew up in New Orleans will grin like a over­grown kid.

And there was no “beach” to speak of but an amuse­ment park that rivaled the best we’d ever seen. The Zephyr was a roller coaster that would give any grown up whip lash and scare the dick­ens out of any kid.

Fer­ris wheel, bumper cars and the scari­est of all, the Wild Maus.  Don’t even ask.  Let’s just say the Wild Maus ride had a har­row­ing 90° right turn sev­eral sto­ries in the air over the park­ing lot.  Some­times the right turn was scarier than planned.

The Batt fam­ily ran the amuse­ment park that even hosted Elvis on its stage…

…and their own Poly­ne­sian themed restau­rant (the adult’s play­ground) Bali Hai.

Bali Hai had the whole schtick: thatched roofs, coconut drinks served in coconuts, umbrel­las in all the drinks and on and on.  Trader Vic would have been proud.  You would go out to din­ner with your par­ents and they’d order a few Poly­ne­sian treats and send you on your way to throw bas­ket­balls at rigged milk jugs, or stand in a room that spun so fast when the floor dropped out beneath you you stuck to the wall.  Fun!  You’d run back into the restau­rant for more tick­ets and your par­ents would gladly oblige hav­ing run into loads of peo­ple they needed to share a hairy coconut drink with.  What a racket!  We all loved it!

The Batts were the per­fect hosts and since we were fam­ily friends with the Batt boys, Jay and Bryan.  We even got invited to pri­vate parties!

Lit­tle did I know that my mom Ella and Aunt Dot­tie had befriended Trader Vic him­self, Vic Bergeron.

Revered in the cock­tail world for the entire genre of Tiki drinks, restau­ra­teurs call him the orig­i­na­tor of the “theme restau­rant.”  He devel­oped the Poly­ne­sian theme in a Quon­set hut bedecked with palm fronds and thatched roofs, drinks served in exotic glasses with flow­ers float­ing in them and fire and on and on.

His the­ory on food was to never serve any­thing your guests could com­pare with what any­body else was serv­ing.  If the guy down the street put out grilled shrimp, he’d serve Poly­ne­sian shrimp on a stick that he flared at the table.

Mom’s sto­ries of being flown around Cal­i­for­nia on Trader Vic’s own air­plane (we didn’t know any­one who had their own air­plane in the ‘50’s.  He called it TWA – for “Teeny Weeny Air­line”) thrilled us all.

But back at our very own Poly­ne­sian won­der­land we came of age drink­ing Mai Tais and Fog Cut­ters.
Just another chap­ter in the “liq­uid his­tory of New Orleans.”

- Ti

Many of these fan­tas­tic pho­tos come cour­tesy of the site Pontchar­train Beach Remem­bered.  Thanks so much!

Another great site we found for pho­tos is PontartrainBeach.com.