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Taha’a Twisted Tiki may sound like it’s limited to frou-frou cocktails, but it’s also an option for a quick bite, especially later, when most restaurants are closed.
The Gamlin brothers of Sub-Zero Vodka Bar and more recently Gamlin Whiskey House opened the corner storefront in The Grove just before the first of the year. (In the event you've forgotten your fourth grade geography, Taha'a is an island in French Polynesia, southeast of Bora Bora.)
The food menu is limited and the island-themed small plates not served on plates at all, but in beach-shack-style paper containers. But it comes out of the kitchen in short order, and it’s interesting enough to build a meal out of.
French fries ($4) are dolled up as sesame fries with wasabi dipping sauce (below left), the latter providing sort of a Belgian-Japanese fusion to the Asian-accented all-American dish. Fish tacos come two to a $7 order and again go pan-cultural with pico de gallo, Asian slaw and a chili-spiced cream.
Perhaps most interesting is the selection of skewers: chicken, fish, pork, beef and tempeh with various island and Asian overtones. At two for $6, it’s easy to run up a tab quickly, but if you’re paying $9 for rum-laced drinks in tiki-tacky ceramic cups (above right), the food is almost a bargain.
No one in the crowd the night we visited was old enough for this, but Taha’a’s faux-hut design – and, most notably, its cocktail list of Zombies and Volcanoes and Mai Tais – will bring back faded, fond and perhaps blurred memories of St. Louis’ best known old-school restaurant of this genre, Trader Vic’s. Yes, kids, St. Louis had its own branch of Trader Vic’s, roughly where Tigin is now at the eastern edge of Washington Avenue downtown.
As the kids say, THFN (TaHa’a for now).
Taha’a Twisted Tiki
4199 Manchester (at South Boyle)
314-202-8300
Monday-Saturday, 4 p.m.-1:30 a.m.
