What is HULA’S Modern Tiki?
Tiki died of embarrassment sometime in the 1980s — too much plastic, too many syrupy drinks — and its revival came in two schools. One school rebuilt the dark, maximalist grotto. HULA’S Modern Tiki founded the other: throw open the windows, keep the rum serious, cook the food from scratch, and let the island bar breathe.
Born in Phoenix in 2009 and arrived in Old Town Scottsdale in 2016, HULA’S runs the genre through a mid-century filter — clean lines, warm wood, atomic-age cheer — that its own team describes as Waikiki via Palm Springs. The Scottsdale room’s defining feature makes the philosophy literal: giant sliding glass walls that roll up to merge the entire restaurant with a street-side patio on 1st Avenue. On a good evening, which in Scottsdale is most evenings from October through May, there is no meaningful indoors.
The substance matches the styling. The kitchen makes its Hawaiian-inflected menu from scratch — the coconut prawns are the signature, the plates land closer to island comfort food than bar snacks — and the tropical cocktail list has collected local awards, led by a mai tai built the pre-slush-machine way. At a mid-casual price point, in a neighborhood that trends expensive, the whole package works out to one of Old Town’s most reliable good times.
It’s tiki with the irony removed and the craft restored — vacation as a walk-in service, no flight required.
The HULA’S evening, done right
Time it to the walls. The roll-up glass is the whole architecture of the experience, so aim for the hours when it’s up: golden hour into evening in the cooler months, when 1st Avenue’s foot traffic becomes the floor show and the patio-dining room boundary dissolves. Summer flips the logic — midday means air conditioning and the walls down, and the room becomes a bright refuge instead of a breezeway.
Drink the benchmarks first. The mai tai is the calibration test — rum-forward, balanced, garnished with intent — and it tells you everything about the bar’s philosophy. From there the tropical list runs wide, from the canonical (scorpions, painkillers, the rum family tree) to house inventions, all made with the craft-era seriousness that separates modern tiki from its slushy ancestors. The zero-proof tropical options are better than they have any right to be, a courtesy to designated drivers in a neighborhood that needs them.
Eat like it’s dinner, because it is. The scratch kitchen is HULA’S quiet advantage over every bar it competes with. Coconut prawns to start, always. Then the Hawaiian-inflected mains — island-style plates, fresh fish preparations, food with actual cooking behind it. Plenty of Old Town bars serve food; very few serve food you’d return for without the drinks.
Use it flexibly. This is the rare Old Town room that works across the whole schedule: lunch, happy hour, full dinner, late drinks. Locals slot it accordingly — it’s a rotation restaurant, not an occasion one. During big weekends (spring training, the Phoenix Open migration, festival season) the patio seats become contested territory; reservations exist and are worth using.
Budget note: price level two in a price level three-and-climbing neighborhood. The math is part of the loyalty.
Scottsdale’s tiki lineage, chapter three
Scottsdale’s relationship with tiki runs longer and deeper than most cities its size. Chapter one was the golden age: Trader Vic’s reigning at Fifth Avenue and Craftsman Court from 1962 to 1990, pouring mai tais for Paul Newman while the town played at Polynesian glamour. Chapter two was the revival’s dark-room school — The Drunk Munk giving Stetson Drive a bamboo-lined hideout of flaming drinks and monkey mugs for most of a decade until its mid-2020s close. HULA’S is chapter three: the version built to last.
What makes the HULA’S model durable is that it solved tiki’s structural problem. The genre’s palaces historically died of their own theming — expensive to build, exhausting to maintain, hostage to fashion. HULA’S stripped the costume down to good bones: mid-century design that ages instead of dating, a menu that works as everyday dining, and drinks that ride the craft-cocktail wave rather than opposing it. When the concept crossed from Phoenix to Old Town in 2016, it landed in a neighborhood then stampeding toward bottle-service maximalism — and offered the opposite. A decade on, plenty of that era’s louder concepts are gone; the island bar with the roll-up walls is still there.
Its street matters too. East 1st Avenue sits in Old Town’s more grown-up quadrant, near stalwarts like AZ88 and Citizen Public House — rooms locals actually frequent, a few blocks and a world away from the entertainment district’s churn. HULA’S fits the block’s ethos: high standards, low pretension, longevity as the strategy.
Honest assessment: purists of the grotto school may find HULA’S too bright, too breezy, insufficiently mysterious — this is tiki with the lights on. That’s the design. It traded the fantasy’s shadows for scratch cooking, fair prices, and a patio that makes an Arizona evening feel like a layover in the islands. Sixty-plus years after Trader Vic’s lit its first flaming drink here, Scottsdale still gets its rum ceremony — it just comes with better food and a breeze now.