"Ah, the Waikiki room! Famed throughout the upper Midwest. Well, around town, anyway. Okay, Minneapolis. The Waikiki was the Twin Cities’ Tiki palace, and was noted for the sweet barbeque sauce." - Lileks.com
In the ’50s the Polynesian fad found a home in Hotel Nicollet's new Waikiki Room, complete with black velvet paintings of 'Polynesians', squat statues of grimacing gods, bamboo awnings and everything to remind Pacific war vets of places they’d rather forget.
"Here in the Waikiki Room you will find bamboo from Formosa, chairs from Hong Kong, the decorations from Tahiti, Samoa, the Gilbert Islands, the man eating clam shells from the Great Barrier Reef, the coral from the Philippines, the beautiful table tops, the bar top from Hawaii, the tapa from Samoa, the fern trunks from the forests of Hawaii, and other materials from agents in the far corners of the Pacific."
