Attention, class: Say “fuchsia.” You know, that deep purplish-pink color. If, like most Americans, you pronounced it “FYOO-sha,” you got it wrong. Being named after a botanist named Fuchs, it’s properly “FYOOK-sha.”
Why should you care, if you’re not a gardener or an interior or clothing designer? Beginning next month, it will be important for Paltzonians to be able to get this right. That’s because you’ll be wanting to corral a group of friends to go out for an evening of enjoying exotic cocktails at a new watering hole in the previously underutilized downstairs bar at Asian Fusion. The Fuchsia Tiki Bar will hold its Grand Opening on March 27. “A little bit hole-in-the-wall, a little bit tropical escape, Fuchsia is the colorful community bar that will make you feel like you’re on vacation in Mexico while still in the Hudson Valley,” promises the PR for this new venture.
“I’m not sure that we can be friends,” mutters Anton Kinloch dryly when this correspondent admits to associating tiki bars with tackily decorated finished basements on Long Island in the early 1960s. Kinloch, who was brought on board as a consultant by Asian Fusion owner Ada Xiao to renovate the ground-floor bar, give it a fresh theme and create a new cocktail menu, is a “self-proclaimed professional cocktail nerd” who cut his hospitality chops at the CIA and Turning Stone Casino. And he’s a serious student of “traditional” tiki culture, whose roots go back to the early 1930s at least.
The guru of tiki, long before Trader Vic’s made it a fad, was a Texan named Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt, better-known as Donn Beach. As a young man he traveled the world, including the South Pacific, working as a bootlegger and rumrunner during Prohibition. He opened his first Don the Beachcomber-branded bar in Hollywood in 1933, and quickly expanded it into a chain. The popularity of tiki style blossomed when US servicemen stationed in Hawaii were redeployed to California after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Kinloch said, with Don the Beachcomber supplying delicious reminders of the fruit-forward drinks that they had enjoyed in the islands.
As restaurants, they served mainly Cantonese cuisine with flourishes of pineapple and coconut. The pu-pu platter is said to have originated with Don the Beachcomber. But their main claim to fame was the rum cocktails, served in Polynesian-themed mugs and topped with tiny paper parasols. Donn Beach is the acknowledged creator of the Zombie, and claimed to have invented the Mai Tai in 1933, eleven years ahead of Trader Vic’s.
A proper tiki bar is distinguished by its tropical décor, and Kinloch is shooting for a “modern, more minimal” approach in his design for the downstairs lounge. The space, which seats 35, will retain much of its existing look, including the original faux-marble bar, barstools, chairs and tables, stonework and tile trim and dark slate tile flooring. A formerly purple wall that he characterizes as “hideous” has been covered with rough wooden shiplap panels, trimmed with a strip of lights that can be programmed to change colors. Other walls will be accented with wallpaper in understated green-and-white tropical foliage patterns.
A shadowbox divider trimmed with palm fronds screens the entrance to the bathroom, whose interior has been completely remodeled. By the opening date, there will be some tiki masks on the walls, a few live plants and other thematic touches, such as light fixtures made from pufferfish. Think tiki, but tasteful. “I’m going for a striking visual element,” Kinloch explains.
The food served in the bar space will be a more limited selection of the same Chinese and Japanese menu offered at Asian Fusion. The emphasis will be on handcrafted cocktails that incorporate fresh fruit and tropical fruit juice blends, following recipes authentic to Don the Beachcomber’s 1940s heyday. “Every single cocktail has its own unique vessel,” Kinloch says: ceramic mugs in the shapes of parrots, rum barrels, volcanoes, scorpions and so on. The drinks will be primarily “rumcentric,” with a wide variety of rum brands ready to sample. But he promises that variants using bourbon, gin and tequila will also be available, and even a non-alcoholic selection of fruit cocktails, demonstrating “the versatility of what tiki is… We want to break the stigma that rum is what tiki revolves around.”
The atmosphere is promised to be calm and relaxing, a “tropical escape from reality” with low lights and soft music (“cross-genre,” in case you were worried that it would be wall-to-wall Jimmy Buffett). “We want it to be a place where people can comfortably enjoy libations, by themselves or in groups.”
Hours of operation at the Fuchsia Tiki Bar, located at 215 Main Street in New Paltz (use rear entrance), will be from 5 to 10 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays and 5 to 11 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, beginning March 27. For more information, including opening-week drink specials, visit the website at www.fuchsiatikibar.com or www.facebook.com/asian-fusion-new-paltz-ny.
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