Step into Trader Vic’s, a delightful Polynesian escape where friendly service meets mouthwatering dishes and stunning bay views, making every visit feel like a mini-vacation.
"Trader Vic’s Emeryville is the last local port of call for a tiki empire that once spanned California, starting with an Oakland location that’s long since closed. Founder Vic Bergeron invented classic tiki drinks like the Mai Tai, and even dreamt up faux exotic dishes to match like the crab rangoon. You can still get all that and more in Emeryville, where the large location has been the chain’s flagship since 1972. It’s still seriously popular with families for its banquet hall dinners, and with drinkers for its big bar and lounge with waterfront views." - Caleb Pershan
"There are only two Trader Vic’s locations left in the U.S. (the history is worth a Google search), and one is downtown in the lower level of the Hilton hotel. They’re still committing hard to the culturally appropriated Polynesian theme with carved tiki pillars on every surface and thatched bamboo roofs on the ceiling. Most meats from the Asian fusion menu are smoked in giant Chinese ovens on display behind a glass casing. The food is decent enough if you happen to be in the area, but we’d mostly recommend this place for after-convention drinks. The cocktail list is a mile long, and most are served in elaborate mugs. They make a mean mai tai and after a few strong fruity cocktails, we're not as distracted by the dolphin statue dressed in a coconut bra and hula skirt." - Juli Horsford
"For the better part of a century, people have flocked to the East Bay’s location of Trader Vic’s, the international restaurant chain known for being the potential birthplace of the mai tai. The 87-year-old tiki bar remains vigilantly open on a little spit of land facing San Francisco from the East Bay — but fans can barely seem to keep one important fact straight: is the restaurant open or closed? Berkeleyside has covered this closure rumor mill, starting in 2019, and recently confirms the bar is indeed still open. One reason for the confusion is related to who owns the property on which the bar sits. The original Trader Vic’s moved to its current location in 1972, when management signed a 50-year lease — meaning that lease is set to expire in 2023. Faith Nebergall, the bar and restaurant’s general manager, tells Berkeleyside the building has yet to be sold, but since the future is TBD, the bar stopped booking events, which made people speculate about the location’s closure; adjusted hours due to COVID in the last few years only fanned the flames. In any case, for a little while longer, at least, Trader Vic’s will keep dealing out its problematically themed food and drink." - Paolo Bicchieri
Bourdain had: mai tais, ribs. Dinner date: Sean Wilsey, author of More Curious.
"Two rival tiki bar pioneers each claim to have invented the Mai Tai, but the popular legend is that this daiquiri variation was created by Victor Bergeron at the original Trader Vic’s in Oakland, circa 1944. Here, that’s substituted for the Emeryville location, as Oakland’s Trader Vic’s is no longer. The Mai Tai is a combination of two different rums, lime juice, orange curacao, and orgeat — and the man with the competing claim of inventing the drink, Los Angeles’s Don the Beachcomber, made his version with grapefruit juice and lime juice, falernum, and a few drops of Herbsaint. As tiki drinks grew in popularity, the Mai Tai morphed into a syrupy concoction sold in Chinese restaurants. But to taste something like Bergeron’s original, you’ll want to do so at a reputable, craft-focused tiki bar where they make their own orgeat. Smuggler’s Cove will do nicely." - Jay C. Barmann
