Hi! This is long lost Suelo

Tiki me fancy: Trader Vic's to relight the torches

10:04 PM CST on Wednesday, March 8, 2006

ALAN PEPPARD

Grab your coconuts, folks: Polynesian Pop is making a comeback. Luckily for restaurant and nightclub veteran Jim Sibert (State Bar, Double Wide), Dallas' venerable Trader Vic's restaurant has remained virtually sealed in amber since it closed in the spring of 1989. With the South Pacific resurgence, new Trader Vic's locations are opening this year in Scottsdale, Ariz.; Bellevue, Wash.; Chicago; Las Vegas; and Dallas.

Jim owns the local franchise for Trader Vic's. He and general partner Angus Wynne plan to reopen in the original Trader Vic's location (in what was the Dallas Hilton Inn) in late summer concurrent with the opening of the new Hotel Palomar.

Expect a traditional-Tiki- meets-neo-Tiki décor. The original furniture and fixtures are still in place.

"But we've got a treasure-trove of new decorations, furniture and wall coverings that we're adding," says Angus. "Plus there will be a whole new kitchen. Most of the original stuff isn't up to code now." (The Dallas Trader Vic's opened in 1966.)

Angus reports that they are in negotiations with a top-name chef to run the kitchen. "It will be great food," he says, "and, of course, lots of eight-straw drinks."

And don't forget the sexy Polynesian dark ambience conducive to illicit rendezvousing.

"But we've got a treasure-trove of new decorations, furniture and wall coverings that we're adding," says Angus.

Uh oh. I hope he doesn't mean beer posters and strings of little white lights.