Las Vegas’s love affair with tiki bars has seen a few ebbs and few flows over the years, the city’s iconic Aku Aku once one of the brightest spots on the strip within the Stardust closed by 1980. Owner P Moss (also owner of famed Las Vegas dive bar Double Down Saloon) purchased Frankie’s Bar & Cocktail Lounge in 2008, renovating it as a tiki bar and adding to Vegas’ tiki lineage with Frankie’s Tiki Room. The white, standalone building with a half-moon entrance looks a bit like a hut in the desert, the white exterior a stark contrast to the explosion of light, carvings and color inside.
Frankie’s Tiki Room carries the mantle of Las Vegas tiki bars to be sure and does so with a deep pedigree, much of the interior designed by Ben Bassham, one of the great tiki minds and grandson of Eli Hedley, the iconic tiki designer responsible for Aku Aku and other properties. Unsurprisingly, the array of tiki carvings is impressive, starting with a pair at the front entrance and extending throughout the space. The circular entrance is inscribed with “Kahi Malunia Loa I Ka Honua” or “The Greatest Peace in the World” in Hawaiian, which may be the best possible description of a Las Vegas dive bar.
Fortuitously, Frankie’s Tiki Room is open 24 hours a day, every day, enabling that great moment of walking outside expecting to see night and being greeted with the relentless Vegas sun. As a warning, smoking is allowed, as it is in some of Vegas’ dive bars. The drink selection is, of course, robust, with potency ratings provided with each concoction to allow a little planning on just how fuzzy the night becomes. Signature mugs are available for purchase along with each drink, the selection part of a long history of carved pieces that are produced in small quantities, discontinued and enshrined on the Las Vegas dive bar’s web site. The Frankie’s Tiki Room home game can be played with the help of a recipe book, also for sale.
