Tiki TNT

Soooo, Tiki TNT is DEFINITELY open. Sitting at the main bar now.

Addendum: while the drinks in the bar weren’t my favorite, I did go downstairs to the rum distillery where I was greeted warmly and given a very informative tour of the small but efficient facility (with a tasting!). I got a lot of good information on distilling and flavoring rums. They have a combo pot and column still. Very cool. And Todd Thrasher (the owner of Thrasher Rum) made me a delicious mojito that beat the pants off of anything I had had upstairs. Thanks, Thrasher Rum, for a great time!

Everything has already been said about the drinks. Singapore Sling= hard limeade. We watched the bartenders “mix” the drinks, but they never even shook them. Just poured in the premix and the rum and sent it out. ‘Nuff said.

Very cool vibe, but not strictly tiki. Industrial Hawaiian on the Potomac.

The staff was friendly. The views were great. And the pork sliders were an excellent happy hour choice for an app. But don’t go for the “tiki.”

Everything has already been said about the drinks. Singapore Sling= hard limeade. We watched the bartenders “mix” the drinks, but they never even shook them. Just poured in the premix and the rum and sent it out. ‘Nuff said.

Very cool vibe, but not strictly tiki. Industrial Hawaiian on the Potomac.

The staff was friendly. The views were great. And the pork sliders were an excellent happy hour choice for an app. But don’t go for the “tiki.”

Opened in November 2018. While I was there Reggae music was playing. Hard to get a tiki vibe since its mostly open air on the water. Their rum is harsh for me so it ruined my cocktail. The Wet Money drink was good though.

Been here three times. The key is do not order drinks that are made from their own rum. The drinks with commercial rum are good, and they have started serving them in tiki glasses. I will go back because the view is great and the drinks are strong.

I detect a trend.

I really wanted to like this place; it's at a great location and the vibe is kinda cool... not real tiki, but still cool. But the reality is the place is pretty bad.

Food is pretty good, but the drinks are awful. I've been 3 times now hoping the first two were flukes from a rough opening. Sadly that isn't the case. The bar's emphasis is on high volume production for their drinks. From their bar set-up to the requirements for servers/bartenders in their job postings, they want experience with high volume production.

The high volume priority has ruined their drink quality as they prep pre-made misers for each of their "tiki" drinks. So, for a jet pilot, they add ice to a glass, pour in the mix and pour in the rum... Voila, drink presented. 4 attempts at a Jet Pilot, 4 failures, three of them so sour it makes your eyes close. When asked about the pre-made mix, the bartender presented it as a bonus feature! You won;t find a well crafted cocktail at this place.

My overall impression of Tiki TNT is that it's the type of place that killed Tiki in the 70's & 80's. It seems to be aiming to be the McDonalds of the tiki world. I wish they would change the name because anyone unfamiliar with tiki culture and tiki drinks will go here and say "Meh... this isn't so great, those tikiphiles are idiots."

T**i TNT bears no resemblance to any decent tiki bar on earth.

Ok so real talk, I'm genuinely excited for Potomac Distillery, which isn't open yet. However, Tiki TNT is open, and that's been...disappointing.

Don't let the name fool you, this isn't a tiki bar. It's the bar attached to a rum distillery. If you've ever been to a distillery, you've experienced this place. Just imagine rum instead of whiskey, and bamboo trim here and there.

So fine. How's the menu? The food is great. Loved everything we ordered, and they have Spam musubi, which is a treat around here.

The drinks tho? So at Todd Thrasher's other joints like PX, Eve, Vermillion, etc. the cocktails are generally not great. I've never been angry about any of them, but I've also never ordered more than one of his concoctions.

The signature drinks at Tiki TNT continues that tradition of "It's fine."

I'll add one exception. The "What I Want You to Be Drinking Today" is excellent. It's basically a grapefruit Old Fashioned made with El Dorado.

However the classics like the Missionary's Downfall and the Three Dots and a Dash? They're *bad*. Aggressively terrible. Don't order them.

(DC protip: You can get a genuine Donn Beach Missionary's Downfall packed with blended mint at Farmers Fishers Bakers in Georgetown.)

I think much has been said about the drinks so I won't repeat those remarks, but I would like to reemphasize the issue of atmosphere. There are two bars inside the building, the first of which is a more intimately lit setup, though it is right by the door so your tropical escape can easily be interrupted by newcomers or just a reminder of the world outside. It's hard to get a stool at this lower bar as well.

The second bar falls even farther from tiki atmospherics. This bar has very high ceilings and a crew of black t-shirt wearing "mixologists" running the bar in a frenzy. The crowd seems to be a young, raucous combination of happy hour enthusiasts and awkward first dates. My bartender was really friendly and chatted with me a bit about the drinks, but most others (there were like 7 people behind the bar) ignored me entirely while they shuffled from corner to corner slinging frozen rum and cokes served in hollowed out coke cans. The bar faces the kitchen so I constantly felt uncomfortable, like my stool might have been in the way of servers. There was also a flatscreen TV high up on the wall to the left of the bar. This is a MAJOR problem. That detail absolutely tanked any appeal for me. It's not a tiki bar, but simply a cocktail king's folly, co-opting tiki trends in a haphazard stab at mass market consumption. This bar alienates true tiki fans while assuming uninitiated patrons care about nothing more than having a drink with an umbrella in it.

Make that a 3rd review that isn't great. I went over the holiday break and while it wasn't as insanely busy at it appears it can be, the atmosphere is almost industrial - it reminds me of what it is, an open-window, high-ceiling distillery.

The drinks were not great. The Mai Tai was almost spicy and very...dark? It's hard to describe. My wife is a bit of a Missionary's Downfall connoisseur, and she did not like it. I tasted it - not sure where the mint flavor was.

I had a 3 Dots and a Dash and it was fine. In a nicer Tiki bar, it would be quite a mediocre drink.

I know that the purpose and point was to have a modern Tiki feel, but the drinks aren't great and that highlights the poor decor and overcrowding. Hoping things get better. It would be nice to have additional options in DC (as much as I like Archipelago).

I second GrognardGourmand's review. Had literally the same experience. We were seated at the smaller bar on the 1st floor, and my wife ordered the Missionary's Downfall, and I had the Mai Tai...considering I saw all the homemade syrups and Rum selection I thought we were in for a treat. But it was more like a trick when we tasted our drinks. Between bad drinks and no decor or atmosphere to speak of, I'll be rating this one below a 5 once Humu opens it up for ratings. This is a hard pass for me. Like Grognard said...thank god for Archipeligo...and House of Foong Lin!

TikiTNT opened last week, and my wife and I visited this Saturday night. On the plus side, the food was good, and the wait staff was attentive and very friendly. On the down side... the drinks were TERRIBLE. From the menu, it looks very promising - homemade syrups and falernum, El Dorado rums alongside the ones distilled onsite, and many of the classic Tiki drinks listed. My wife had a view of the main bar, and watched as the owner made our drinks (she ordered a Bora Bora, I ordered a Jet Pilot). I mention this because the results should not be chalked up to a newly trained assistant. Our drinks were *watery* - I had to keep stirring mine to bring any of the taste of the rum and other ingredients out. My wife's drink was less bad, but still watered down. As an experiment, we ordered a second round of drinks off of the "Boozy as Balls" portion of the menu. These were not watered down... But they were served up like regular cocktails in standard glasses. My wife ordered the "This Will Make Your Belly Feel Better I Promise", which she said tasted like an Altoid dissolved in cough syrup. I ordered the "Feel Better and Get Well", which was an acceptable cocktail in a general sense, but was in no way a Tiki drink.

Atmosphere wise, the noise and light levels are very high, and Tiki purists will likely deduct points for the sparseness of the Tiki decor. But when it comes down to it, if you have great Tiki drinks we can forgive that. TikiTNT does NOT. Thank goodness for Archepelago...

Hey everyone, Tiki TNT is indeed coming this fall, you can follow our construction progress on our facebook page

www.facebook.com/tikitnt

So update on Tiki TNT. I stopped by the construction site at the Wharf yesterday and it looks like they are right on track for a fall 2018 opening. No signage for this section of the distillery yet, but they've been making some big strides fairly quickly on the entire development. I'll be checking back periodically and share any more concrete info I come across.

Any new news about Tiki TNT? Don't see anything new on any of their pages. Starving for Tiki in DC/MD/VA

Now says Summer 2018 :-| at https://www.wharfdc.com/restaurants/potomac-distilling-company/

Their website now says Spring 2018.
https://www.wharfdc.com/restaurants/potomac-distilling-company/