Kahiki Celebrities and the Disney Letter

At a glance

Overview

The Kahiki Supper Club on East Broad Street, whose full history is told on the Kahiki Supper Club page, attracted two kinds of stories that keep circulating long after its demolition in 2000 for a Walgreen drug store. One is about the famous people who ate and drank there. The other is a story that Walt Disney wrote the Kahiki a letter crediting it as an inspiration for his Enchanted Tiki Room. The first is partly documented and partly lore. The second has no published support that has come to light, though the dates do not rule it out: the Kahiki opened in February 1961, and the Tiki Room opened on June 23, 1963.

The guests on the record

The best evidence of the Kahiki's famous guests comes from the restaurant's last week. Associated Press reporter Joe Milicia wrote on August 24, 2000, that in an upstairs office "faded photographs of Art Linkletter, George Hamilton, and a dark-haired Merv Griffin sitting with three pretty waitresses show the famous patrons the restaurant once attracted". The same story described the Kahiki as "frequented by visiting celebrities". The story did not say when the photographs were taken, and their fate after the closing is not recorded; the AP reported only that the decorations and furniture would go into a warehouse.

Other names come from later retellings. Doug Motz, a past president of the Columbus Historical Society, wrote in Columbus Underground in 2012 that the Kahiki drew Milton Berle, Andy Williams, Robert Goulet "and famously Zsa Zsa Gabor who allegedly ordered milk". Columbus Navigator lists Bob Hope, Gypsy Rose Lee and Van Johnson among its "most famous guests," along with Gabor, "who reportedly ordered milk". Bob Hope, Gypsy Rose Lee and Van Johnson are not named by the AP, the Dispatch or Columbus Underground, and Columbus Navigator illustrates its account with photographs credited to Facebook.

The milk story is the most repeated of all. The Columbus Dispatch, in its 2010 story marking ten years since the closing, listed "Zsa Zsa Gabor famously ordered milk" among readers' memories. Across the three tellings the verb shifts from "allegedly" to "famously" to "reportedly," and none of them gives a year, a photograph or a news item from the night itself. Every one of these visits may have happened, but none of them is tied to a published date.

Motz offered one explanation for the stream of stars: "It would seem likely that most of these folks were in town for Summer Stock performances of the Kenley Players at Vets Memorial". He framed it as a likely guess and promised the story "for another day," so it should be read that way.

How the Kahiki sold itself

The Kahiki courted a national audience. The 1997 National Register nomination records that throughout the 1960s it was featured in national food-service publications such as American Restaurant Magazine and Institutions, and quotes a Life magazine advertisement that called it "The World's Most Elaborate Polynesian Supper Club". The nomination's bibliography dates that advertisement to December 1, 1967, page unknown. It also quotes a company newsletter recalling that when the doors opened in February 1961, people waited "for hours in the cold".

Its last owner, Michael Tsao, called it "the granddaddy of theme restaurants" in 2000, recalled placing countless diamond rings and marriage proposals into fortune cookies, and estimated it had served more than 10 million customers. The nomination makes a similar claim on a national scale, quoting a writer who called Polynesian palaces "America's first theme restaurants". It also records that Tsao and architect Ned Eller named the Mai-Kai in Fort Lauderdale as the only other Polynesian restaurant in the country similar in form to the Kahiki.

The Disney letter

The story, as a former patron has told it, is that Walt Disney wrote to the Kahiki crediting it as an inspiration for the Enchanted Tiki Room, and that the letter hung on a wall in the restaurant. No published account gives the letter's date, its wording, who received it or where it is now.

The Kahiki's own record is silent on it. The 1997 National Register nomination, which draws on a 1995 company newsletter and quotes the restaurant's president, does not mention Disney or the Tiki Room. Neither do the AP's closing story, the Dispatch's 2010 retrospective, WOSU's 2019 history, Motz's 2012 history or Columbus Navigator's. Kahiki Foods, the frozen-food company that grew out of the restaurant, tells its history online without mentioning Disney. The one tiki-related Disney mention in the Columbus coverage is incidental: a 2019 Columbus Underground story notes that one of the organizers of the local 614Tiki week grew up in Los Angeles and counts Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room among her favorite places.

Disney's side of the story has its own, well-documented origin. Disney historian Jim Korkis writes that on a 1946 trip to New Orleans, Walt Disney bought an antique mechanical bird in a gilded cage that could turn its head, flap its wings and whistle, that his engineers took it apart to learn how it worked, and that it survives in working order in the Walt Disney Archives. In 1959, Korkis writes, Disney considered a Chinese restaurant on Disneyland's Center Street with a full-size mechanical Confucius and singing nightingales, cancelled by June 1960. Imagineer Rolly Crump recalled Walt then asking for "a little Tiki tea room," and John Hench drew one with caged birds; when Walt objected that "birds will poop in the food," Hench explained they were mechanical birds, and "that's how the whole thing got started".

Korkis credits Hawaiian statehood in 1959, the tiki-bar craze and veterans home from the South Pacific for making a Polynesian restaurant "a natural choice for the 1960s", the same forces the Kahiki's own nomination cites. He adds that Walt had vacationed in Hawaii since 1934, and that in October 1962 he and Lillian Disney toured Bora Bora, Tahiti, Pago Pago, Fiji and Hawaii.

There is one Ohio thread in Disney's account. Korkis writes that because Stouffer's was interested in sponsoring another Disneyland restaurant, Walt met Vernon Stouffer in Cleveland in 1961, and that a summer 1962 Disney publication announced the Enchanted Tiki Room as one of three new "Stouffer's in Disneyland" restaurants, a reservations-only dinner show. Testing showed diners would not leave, and the small room limited capacity too much, so the tables came out and about 100 seats were added. D23, Disney's official fan club, likewise says the Tiki Room was first planned as a restaurant and calls it the first attraction to feature sophisticated Audio-Animatronics figures.

None of these Disney accounts names the Kahiki. That leaves the letter where it started: possible, since the Kahiki was open more than two years before the Tiki Room, but unproven. A dated copy, a photograph of it on the wall or a catalog entry in a collection would settle it.

Coburn Morgan, the designer behind the look

Readers who remember the Kahiki often ask about the man who shaped it. The National Register nomination says interior designer Coburn Morgan "had a strong voice in the creation of the restaurant": he completed the interior designs, much of the exterior, and the designs for the artifacts and fountains, and he recommended Design Associates to the owners as architects. From 1957 owners Bill Sapp and Lee Henry traveled with him through the South Pacific looking for ideas and artifacts. His other commissions included the Jai Lai, the Sands Supper Club and the Wine Cellar in Columbus, the Tangier supper club in Akron, and hotels and chains "such as the original Bob Evans and Casa Lupita". Published sources give no dates of birth or death for Morgan, and no full account of his career has been published.

His hand shows in two surviving pieces of Kahiki history. Doug Motz wrote in 2019 that "George the Monkey," the fountain that greeted patrons in the Kahiki's foyer, was designed by Morgan and fabricated by Columbus artist Philip Kientz, that the Fraternal Order of Moai owned him, and that he was the largest remaining Kahiki artifact still on public view. Motz also published a rendering by Morgan of a proposed Kahiki "Treehouse".

Blueprints, a museum and the Minihiki

In July 2019 Motz visited the Columbus architecture firm Williams Shepherd, which was moving and looking for a home for old plans, and came away with two sets of Kahiki blueprints. The first, dated 1960, labels the building "Polynesian Restaurant," suggesting the name Kahiki had not yet been settled, and runs to 24 pages of studies, drawings, electrical plans and instructions to the contractor. Motz was told that when the job went out for bids, no other contractor bid because the site was so unusual.

The second set, dated 1975 and titled "Kahiki Museum Addition," shows a Polynesian museum and a banyan-tree "Tree House" in the manner of the Swiss Family Robinson, seating up to 150 diners around a 24-seat bar. Motz wrote that he did not know why the owners wanted to expand or why the plan was never carried out.

The same firm confirmed that its "Minihiki" drawings were a prototype for a possible franchise, and Motz's co-author Jeff Chenault recalled visiting a Minihiki off Billingsley Road in the mid-1980s that did not last long.

Keepers of the memory

The Fraternal Order of Moai was formed on January 1, 2005, by Kahiki fans who wanted a tiki club modeled on the Shriners and old fraternal societies; by 2019 it had raised more than $120,000 for charity and counted 160 members nationwide. Its local chapter is named the "Kahiki" chapter. The Dispatch reported in 2010 that one fan had bought menus, matchboxes, blueprints and even the boss's office couch when the restaurant's contents were auctioned. Columbus Navigator draws on the book Kahiki Supper Club: A Polynesian Paradise in Columbus by David Meyers, Elise Meyers Walker, Jeff Chenault and Doug Motz.

Myths and the record

• "Walt Disney wrote the Kahiki a letter about the Tiki Room." No published source, Kahiki or Disney, shows such a letter. Disney's account of the Tiki Room's origin runs through a mechanical bird, a cancelled Chinese restaurant and a tiki tea room, and the Kahiki's nomination does not mention Disney.
• "Bob Hope ate at the Kahiki." He is named by Columbus Navigator, but not in the AP, Dispatch or Columbus Underground accounts, and no dated photograph has been published.
• "Zsa Zsa Gabor's milk is a documented event." It is repeated by the Dispatch and Columbus Underground without a date.
• "The Kahiki was the work of its architects alone." The nomination gives interior designer Coburn Morgan a leading role in the interiors, much of the exterior and the artifacts.
• "The Kahiki closed in 2001." Kahiki Foods' timeline gives 2001, but the AP reported the last night as Friday, August 25, 2000.

Timeline

• 1946: Walt Disney buys an antique mechanical bird in New Orleans, later credited as a starting point for Audio-Animatronics. (source)
• 1957: Bill Sapp and Lee Henry begin traveling with Coburn Morgan in search of ideas for a Polynesian restaurant. (source)
• 1959: Disney considers a Chinese restaurant with a mechanical Confucius at Disneyland; it is cancelled by June 1960. (source)
• 1960: Ground is broken for the Kahiki in July; its blueprints still call it "Polynesian Restaurant." (source) (source)
• 1961: The Kahiki opens in February; Walt Disney meets Vernon Stouffer in Cleveland about a Disneyland restaurant. (source) (source)
• 1962: Walt and Lillian Disney tour the South Pacific in October. (source)
• 1963: Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room opens at Disneyland on June 23. (source)
• 1967: A Life magazine advertisement on December 1 calls the Kahiki "The World's Most Elaborate Polynesian Supper Club." (source)
• 1975: Plans are drawn for a "Kahiki Museum Addition" with treehouse dining. (source)
• 2000: The AP sees celebrity photographs in the upstairs office days before the Kahiki closes on August 25. (source)
• 2005: The Fraternal Order of Moai is formed on January 1. (source)
• 2019: The 1960 and 1975 Kahiki blueprints resurface at a Columbus architecture firm. (source)

Sources

• National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, The Kahiki (PDF), 1997 — National Archives
• Associated Press, "Historic Polynesian Eatery To Close," August 24, 2000 (Internet Archive copy)
• The Columbus Dispatch, "10 years after torches go out, Kahiki memories live," August 25, 2010 (Internet Archive copy)
• WOSU, "Curious Cbus: What Ever Happened To Kahiki Supper Club?," May 27, 2019
• Columbus Underground, "History Lesson: The history of Columbus' most famed 'lost' restaurant - The Kahiki," 2012 (Internet Archive copy)
• Columbus Underground, "History Lesson: 614Tiki Week and a Newly Discovered Kahiki Story," page 2, August 2019 (Internet Archive copy)
• Columbus Underground, "History Lesson: 614Tiki Week and a Newly Discovered Kahiki Story," page 3, August 2019 (Internet Archive copy)
• Columbus Underground, "History Lesson: 614Tiki Week and a Newly Discovered Kahiki Story," page 4, August 2019 (Internet Archive copy)
• Columbus Navigator, "The Kahiki Supper Club Was The Most Iconic Restaurant In Columbus"
• Kahiki Foods, "Our Story"
• Jim Korkis, "The Enchanted Tiki Room 1963," MousePlanet, September 15, 2021
• D23, "Enchanted Tiki Room" (Disney A to Z)