No trip would be complete without a drink at a local watering hole, and the curious traveler seeks out a spot with personality. Enter Frankie’s Tiki Room.

A kitschy tiki aesthetic has a long history on the Las Vegas scene but with the closing of Tiki classics like Don the Beachcomber and Aku Aku at the Stardust in the 1980’s, Tiki establishments were becoming an endangered species. A short-lived bar called Taboo Cove opened in The Venetian in 2001 but closed in 2005. Las Vegas was temporarily Tiki-less.

That changed when in 2008 owner P. Moss bought the 50s-era Frankie’s Bar & Cocktail Lounge and brought tiki back to Las Vegas in a big way. Working with Bamboo Ben, the grandson of tiki pioneer Eli Hedley, Moss created custom Frankie’s Tiki mugs and lined the interior with thatch and bamboo decorations and lit it with appropriately dim lights inside pufferfish lighting fixtures. 

The drinks are terrific blends of classic tiki and creative tiki riffs. The number of skulls on the drink indicates how much booze is in them (after a few “five skullers” you may wake up wondering how many skulls you have). That a day among bombs and boneyards could end on a tacky tropical island is just one more example of Las Vegas’ unending capacity to provide the unexpected—off The Strip, it’s remarkably easy to hit the jackpot.