Burbank Tiki Bar Broken Compass Is a Boozy Shipwreck Surprise in LA | Eater LA

I stepped into a five-month-old tiki bar on Burbank Boulevard that hides itself behind a backlit nylon sign and an antechamber airlock; inside it’s a wonderland of rum and falernum, ropes, thatched roofs, pupu platters, and kitschy pirate ephemera. Co‑owned and run by chef Erica Abell with partners Walker Roach and Frank Howell, the trio transformed the former Buchanan Arms (dating to 1977) into a lush, shipwrecked escape — construction began in June 2022 and they opened just before Halloween — after surviving pandemic takeout stints and ghost‑kitchen experiments. The vibe is deliberately faux‑island: Navy grog, painkillers, zombies and other rum‑forward cocktails are the focus, while Abell’s menu features poke nachos, jalapeño poppers, burgers, a club sandwich, seashells holding booze, and towering piles of onion rings, all delivered by staff in floral shirts to purposefully kitschy music beneath wicker lanterns, pirate hats, parrot imagery and a hand‑painted ceiling map. They’re conscious of tiki’s problematic history and favor a “capital‑P pirate, lowercase‑T tiki” backstory about a shipwrecked group of soldiers, emphasizing island architecture and nautical decor rather than idols or faux‑native trappings, and, as Roach puts it, believe a good tiki bar should always be about 90 percent done. - Farley Elliott