Pilikia

Pilikia has lost its lease through a combination of city code violations and non-payment of rent. I doubt many tikiphiles will miss it, but DFW residents should be on the lookout for the inevitable auction--despite the terrible atmosphere, they'd invested in some nice decor.

Contrary to information on Critiki, and in general on line,
Pilikia is only open perhaps a maximum of 10 hours per week.
Wednesday 10 pm until 2 AM, Saturday (.. sometimes it might be open 8 PM ?! or...)10pm as it's been the last 2 weeks....until 2AM.
We got to the door last night (saturday) at 8PM.
We are budget conscious, and parked a block away, not wanting to deal with the expense and annoyance of valet parking.
As I pulled on the door handle, my partner called my attention to the paper sign on the door saying there was a private party and the place would be open at 10.
When I'd dialed the phone number for the place hours earlier to re-verify the hours of operation, there was no indication of anything except the Wed and Sat hours.

There we were at the doorway, in our Aloha shirts....not feeling any Aloha eminating from the forbidden space.

I just looked up the definition of Pilikia and now realize the perfection in the establishments name.

I'm glad there are new places opening in far flung corners of the world.....
And I acknowledge that starting a new business is full of challenges....
But I also acknowledge my own experience as a would be patron.
We travel all over the world and go to Tiki Bars wherever we are....but I think we won't bother trying to go to this place again.... we've wasted too much time and energy on it already.

Pilikia: trouble of any kind, great or small;
Problem, nuisance, bother, distress;
Adversity, accident, affliction, difficulty;
Inconvenience, perturbation, tragedy, lack......etc.
Did the proprietors want this place to fail?!

We are anxiously looking forward to visiting 4 Kahunas in nearby Arlington.

This was my Yelp review from 2/4/2017

The decor was kitschy enough for a Tiki bar and they did have tasty rum based drinks served in whimsical ceramic mugs, but at $12-$14 a piece, it is on the expensive side. Our bill was $70 for 4 drinks (tip was included so be careful about adding extra gratuity).

The worst part about Pilikia is the music. Tiki culture is the celebration of all things Polynesia...Bob Marley is Jamaican and last I recall, the members of UB-40 were British! Would have preferred some Les Baxter or other music of the 50's Exotica genre that was popular during the tiki heydays of the 60's.

But it get's even worse, after 10, Pilikia adopts a club atmosphere complete with a DJ and bottle service that can be found at dozens of other establishments within Dallas that draws in the SMU dude-bro crowd!

I was really hoping Pilikia would be a true Tiki bar experience since Trader Vic's shut it's doors nearly ten years ago. Sadly it's just another typical uptown bar with a tiki theme...guess I'll have to wait even longer for e true tiki bar to open in Dallas.

Went and checked out Pilikia while out in Dallas for training. Despite the mixed reviews I remained optimistic. Got there a little after 5:30pm(opens at 5pm). The decor inside was dark but gave it a nice vibe. A moai and tiki on the walls plus the skull wall that changed color was cool. I had a seat at the bar and was greeted by the very nice and friendly bartender Alex. As it was my first time I asked him what was good and what he would recommend. He made me a speciality off menu drink that was quite good. However I forget what he called it.
Initially the music was something to be desired. No tiki/tropical music was playing at all. I get that some of these new tiki bars struggle trying to find a balance of what music to play. But my opinion is that if you bill yourself as a tiki bar, you should play music that reflects that. Not techno, or rap or top 40, etc. But again that is just my opinion.
If you are in the Dallas area it’s worth checking out if for nothing other than to check it off your Critiki list.

Arrived before 9 on a Wed night and the place was close to empty. Didn't dig the TV's showing sports but liked the space and thought the decor was good, lots of room for improvement. Highlight were the bartenders and interacted with a few of them including the owner. All very cool and could tell they were digging it. Place has the opportunity to be something solid. Music was a good reggae/beat mix but as it got later it turned into full nightclub beats as the crowd came in. They are catering to their audience for sure - the Dallas club set under 30 - but if the audience is liking the tiki vibe hopefully the tiki side of this grows. I look forward to seeing this grow as time moves on and wish them well.

A very welcomed addition to the tiki wasteland that is Dallas, TX. The decor and drink menu are awesome. The back porch is to die for. The only issue I had is that around 10 pm they turn on dance lights, play club style music and kinda kill the quiet tiki vibe. I would go before and sit on the porch. Loved it. I hear that the Swizzle Stick Lounge will be open in Dallas soon and I will be back to visit that location.

Pilikia's recent opening makes them Dallas's only tiki bar at the moment (but not the only place serving tiki drinks), so there was a great deal of optimism that they would be able to do it, mostly, right by tiki aficionados eager to have a new spot since the closing of Trader Vic's here years ago. Understandably, given the fickle nature of bar- and restaurant-goers in the region, they sought to bring the renewed popularity of tiki to a model that has been repeated here with success, that of a upscale, club or club-like scene, complete with valet (typical for so many Dallas spots), bouncers, bottle service, house music, and wait staff in short black dresses. Although it's clearly more bar than restaurant, the approach reminds me more than a little of the ill-fated Hurricane Club in NYC and less-so, but perhaps more in the direction they are aiming, of Three Dots and a Dash in Chicago. So, it's a bit of a let-down for the dedicated tiki enthusiast or anyone wanting to enjoy a more casual experience that one typically associates with the informality of a tiki bar. No, it's not formal per se, but it is the kind of place where it's about being seen and for 20-somethings to gawk over and post endless selfies with their "awesome mugs." Not that selfies are a mood killer, but getting to the point and drawing up all the love for the attempt, their attempt to bridge the realms of classic tiki bar with hip club leans more toward the latter. The decor, especially upon first impression, is quite good, aside from a cribbed-together entry portico that looks less island casual than backyard tiki party after a run to a big-box store for decor. The dark interior, peacock chairs, pufferfish lights, and a wall of backlit skulls reminiscent of Three Dots and a Dash, but larger (hey, Texas) sets out a nice vibe. A covered patio with paper lanterns and bamboo trim also works well, even if more sparsely decorated and open than one might like (unless you are there to be noticed). But upon closer inspection some of the details don't hold up particularly well. Especially those "I ran out to the party store" tikis, stools, and brightly-painted masks and the lost opportunities of the bar itself with its glass-less lantern-style fixtures and its elaborate c.1900 barback that's more grand hotel than Polynesian paradise. If we waive off the latter as eclecticism, then we turn to the drinks and service. To get it out of the way, yes, they have bottle service where the egotists can spend $400 on a $30 bottle of gin or plunk down $2,000 for "The Heart of the Ocean" (I'm not sure naming your most expensive drink after a necklace in the movie Titanic is really a great thing). The drink, which consists of a twin bottles of Dom champagne, vodka, and a treasure chest, is meant for a large group, but like all such excesses, is truely meant to prove how much money you can blow in a single pop and thereby impress (or disgust) your guests or neighbors. So, the tiki drinks themselves include a few standards like the Zombie, Fogcutter, and "Trader Vic's Mai Tai" even as those drinks taste like distant cousins of their namesakes. And, after trying some drinks twice, I found you will get two different tastes from the same (at least in name) drink. There is little consistency beyond a single flavor profile such as "the Zombie tastes of cinnamon" and that may mean the accompanying flavor is dilute strong rum with not much else going on. The Mai Tai, while professing to include the traditional ingredients, was entirely too sweet with sugar syrup or orgeat and the melting ice only contributed to what I'll term a sno-cone like reaction. We decided the drinks, including a couple of their own design, went from blandly passable, but not inspired, to bad imitations after the classics. The mugs and garnishes have no particular connection to the traditional here, and while it's not a matter to fixate over, I did miss fresh mint in the Mai Tai where a flower took its place. The wait service was fine, though as the hours pass and the club/bar fills, it became slower and less attentive. Returning during their 5-7 happy hour, we found the crowd decidedly smaller and the service more personal. Even the music, which after 8 seems to go into genres and volumes that will put off any exotica-loving conversationalist, is in the earlier hours mostly reggae. Their happy hour menu is different from the standard drink menu and, much to our surprise, included short drinks, including their version of a Bee's Knees, that were really quite good. After happy hour, I relented and asked the bartender to suggest any drink on the regular menu. He offered the Banana Old Fashioned, which seemed my last choice. Again, to my surprise, excellent. So, one may hope continued feedback may yet shift the rest of their bar offerings to a better place. Dallas, you have a tiki bar once again. Let's make the best of it and encourage the owners to do likewise.

I was bitterly disappointed. And even worse, so were my guests, who were led on by my expectations and the Observer article to expect a genuine TiKi experience.

The only Hawaiian shirts to be seen were the matching uniforms of bartenders. The very fetching servers are right out of that 1980s Robert Palmer video, all wearing skimpy black dresses, red lip stick, flowers in their blond hair, and vacant looks in their eyes, which you only notice if you can pull your gaze from the, uh, plunging neckline...

Other than the pretty (useless) servers, the only factor meeting my TiKi expectations was that drink presentation was complete with mugs, coconuts, flowers, and garnishes- on some drinks, some of the time, anyway. I thought the drink menu was well-designed, and there is some interesting TiKi-ish decor. They are planning to host luau pig roasts on Sundays, which could offer redemption. The place was properly dim, and there were no TVs.

There was only valet parking available, and the first thing I did was trip on my way in, the entrance has an uneven walkway and steps, impossible to see in the dimness, and no caution markings. For just a moment, I thought the pseudo-bouncer was not going to let us pass his rope barrier. My son, who is 21 and arrived later, said he was carded, then let in, which explains why I noticed he wasn't carded at the bar, only 21 and up allowed inside.

Two of the Surf's Up drinks did not taste the same - no consistency, first was really nice, second was missing ingredients. Zombie? Forget about it - what there was of it, it seemed to be mostly ice. Maybe they ran out of or forgot their Velvet Falernum. And the cinnamon. They had skinny straws that kept clogging with slushy ice. My son enjoyed a banana old fashioned suggested by the bartender. The menu includes the jet pilot and a "Trader Vic's Mai Tai." There was a whole page of scorpion-bowl-type group drinks; we did not order from those.

Thumping club music - expected but still disappointing. Through the night, I remained the oldest person there - also disappointing, but also expected for the location. The manager-looking fellas were dressed in suits. The rest of the clientele was very casually dressed.

We had found the rare, non-reserved seating on the patio, but the smokers nearby finally ruined it and, since we never received service, we went and stood at the bar. After getting our round of drinks and chit-chat with my barside neighbor, and trading sips to sample each other's drinks, my party again looked for a place to sit that wasn't reserved. Again, no service.

We needed food - a must-have with that kind of drinking. Saw a couple of flaming pu-pu platters, and when I went to the bar and asked to order them, my bartender said he thought there were complimentary samples and to ask a server. The first I asked said she was bringing some to our area. Eventually, she brought something to another table and came and told us we could have some from their table because "that's all there is for your area." Well, the guests at that table did not even bother to remove their feet from resting on the low table as the server placed the ignored tray there, and as hungry as we were, that was never going to be an option. So I pleaded with another server to bring us something. She came back to us and said the kitchen was closed. Ten minutes later, another pu-pu platter arrived to other guests. The assumption we made was we were not the hipsters they were literally catering to. I settled our $100 bill - I was handed the bar tab credit card slip without an actual bill, so I have no idea what I was paying for or the prices - and we walked down the street to a sports bar feeling remarkably disrespected and disappointed.

This being the first night, I will give them a pass. I would try back after they get their drinks figured out-this is critical- especially if they do offer the pig roast, and it would be nice if they would ditch the club music at least on occasion. There's potentially still a good time to be had.

Forgot to add, 20% tip was forced onto our ticket, which between one of us being inebriated, and the dark lighting, we thought was optional. We were not planning on tipping that much, because 20% not deserved, due to the subpart service, so we inserted cash into the ticket for our tip. So our waitress actually ended up getting almost a $60 tip. Uncool and unearned.

Let's go good to bad. This is a soft opening review, places are bound to have issues.

Food was excellent, but there was no official menu yet. They brought us a sample platter on request, on the house, likely because of the soft-opening.

Drinks are beyond overpriced, and also they don't put the price on the menu. We got a bowl drink, the Jet Pilot (serves 2-4) on impulse; later a manager said it was $55, waitress said $75 as did the bill. I would've charged $48, I would've been okay with $55 I suppose, because presentation impressed the newbies we were with, but $75 is unreal. Especially considering it didn't go too far with 4 of us, drinking quite moderately. They didn't even have the FUN bendy straws for them! Just the "long" straight ones. The dry ice smoke trick died half-way through the life of the drink.

You know the individual drinks are overpriced as well when California has better prices! $15 each, nothing special about them. As mentioned by someone else, lackaluster garnish. The flowers and paper parasols don't go far enough. One of my drinks was garnished by a lime, which was approximately the width of a nickel, and fell right off my drink onto the table… Nobody got a cherry, pineapple, real lime wedge, orange wedge, etc on theirs. We talked to a nice guy who had started with a shark bite, and he expressed his disappointment that the bartender who had made it for him couldn't get the blood trick to work… Drink picks were generic and neon, would have been nice to see custom Pilikia picks, a la Lei Low. One drink had a paper pineapple wrapped around the straw. Typical Made in China barware, that you find at many other tiki bars. Some drinks were just in glassware.

They have two pages of the menu just for wines and champagne, and one massive list of bottle service. I don't do bottle service, so maybe I'm being naive, but the prices were OUTRAGEOUS!

When we got there, because there were four of us, we knew we wanted to get seats not at the bar, so we rushed past that to reach real seating. Over half the seating, including the entire inside, was marked as reserved (I think one of those was actually for us, but communication was spotty so I wasn't sure) so we had to go to the well-sized patio to get unreserved seats. Got lucky and snagged some by a nice fireplace, so that was fun, as was the decor, which while tropical, was touch and go tiki. They tried, they really did. They're not going kitchy whatsoever, and that was disappointing. Upscale tiki is an art form, and they don't have that yet.

Because we were seated outside, and the bar was packed, we were relying on the waitresses to take drink orders and bring them. The first 5 minutes we were in there (which was right when they opened) they were all over us, but of course we hadn't had time with the menu yet. After that it was hard to catch a waitress, I'm not sure where they all were. Each time we wanted to order it would be 10 minutes before we could find one, and then they would take our order (never writing anything down) and then it would be more than a 15m wait for drinks. There were four of us, so I guess that's part of it? Honestly the times were so slow I thought they only had three bartenders. They had five. (On our way out we stopped at the bar, more on that later, let's just say I'm not impressed w/the bartenders). It's for the best for us I suppose that they were slow, or we probably would have ordered too many overpriced drinks.

Our final round we ordered three drinks, two showed up 15-20m later, and the waitress asked what our third drink was because she couldn’t remember and so she hadn’t entered it. Um, maybe you should have come back and asked right away? We repeated it, and she said okay, but that drink never showed up (at least we weren’t charged for it).

Bathrooms were clean all night, they have two, single-room female bathrooms, never had a wait time issue. Apparently the men’s bathroom had multiple urinals. The guy in the party was like, I don’t know what those were, but he swore they were so high his, um, cohones were just about in them. That bathroom also was clean, according to him.

The place is dark, which is great for a tiki bar. But there is a bunch of uneven flooring going from inside to outside and towards the bathrooms, including odd ramps that you not only can’t see, but you can’t see the sides of them, or the difference in flooring height after the ramp. There was a lot of stumbling on my part, before all the drinks. I can only imagine what a liability issue that must be… My wife just about sprained her ankle going of the side of one ramp.

Oh god, the music. I’m more adult alternative, some of our friends that were there are into EDM. They recognized quite a few songs, but they were all mixes. It was LOUD. Too loud for casual conversation, and then add a packed place on top of that. TOO MUCH. The vibe was ALL wrong. First, you don’t even have a dance floor, why are you playing dance club music? You’re a tiki bar. Wayyyy too pretentious. Despite the few that liked the actual music selection, nobody appreciated it in that setting. One of our biggest, most constant annoyances while there.

Stopped by the bar while leaving, in an attempt to get the final drink we had requested that never showed up. It took about 5 minutes to get those. That final drink was a pina coloda. Surprisingly delicious, but there was so much ice packed into the coconut that there wasn’t much drink in it. Definitely not worth the $15. All the bartenders match, which makes me sad because that shows a lack of personality to me. I like seeing different tiki shirts on bartenders.

I got to talk to their PR guy while we were there. They’re aware they have bar issues and are working on them and the times. They’re bringing in some more decorations, that are unlikely to fix the lack of kitch. Also the awesome tiki behind the bar should start breathing smoke when they’re up and running.

It was a soft opening, but I have a feeling there’s no way this will ever come close to being an authentic/traditional tiki bar. I think they like the idea of a tiki bar, but have no idea what one is really supposed to be. Tiki starts at the bar, they need more informed bartenders who know what they’re doing with rum.

I attended the soft opening of Palikia, and was disappointed by the loud Club/dance music that made me feel like I was not in a tiki bar... the decor is nice... but the drinks were sub-par... however I want to wait until the grand opening before I rate them here... I hope that they can create a real tiki atmosphere instead of a "club" atmosphere.

Dallas' first tiki bar since Trader Vic's was unfortunately a huge let-down. I am not certain the owners truly understand tiki, aside from the decor. My boyfriend and I spent our hard-earned money for what I think are some of the weakest tiki drinks we've ever had. At $15 a pop, they were not worth it. My Mai Tai didn't come in the right glass, and was only garnished with an orchid. No lime or mint to be found.

The bar has the typical "Dallas" feel - they had "bouncers" there that night, which arbitrarily let people in, and made others wait, even though there was a lot of space in the bar. The music playing was dance club music - very obnoxious and inappropriate for a tiki bar, and it soured the vibe of the place for me even further. I don't believe the owners understand what tiki really is, and I don't believe the bartenders made the best use of the rums they stock, which is sad. I won't be returning.