Trader Vic's

There are tiki bars and there are tiki bars, and then there is Trader Vic's Munich. Opened in April 1971, in time to receive the international press corps arriving for the following year's Olympic Games, it is now the second-oldest Trader Vic's still in operation anywhere in the world — and by most accounts, the best-preserved. The room itself is considered an artefact: Polynesian carvings sourced from Tahiti and Hawaii, shells from the lagoons of Luzon, hand-painted tikis commissioned in Fiji. Nothing is reproduction. Nothing is ironic.

The bar occupies the basement floor of the Hotel Bayerischer Hof — Munich's grande dame of five-star hotels, in operation since 1841. Descending the stairs is a theatrical transition: from the marble lobbies of one of Germany's grandest city-centre hotels to a room designed to make you forget you are in Bavaria. It succeeds. The lighting is amber and low. The booths are upholstered in deep brown. The bar, carved and tiki-adorned, is a masterwork of mid-century American kitsch elevated to something approaching serious design.

The menu is Polynesian-global: spare ribs cooked in the signature Chinese oven, Bongo Bongo soup (a creamed oyster and spinach bisque that has been on the menu since the 1950s), wok-fried dishes, and beef prepared in a variety of classic preparations. The food is not the point — the drinks are. The Munich Sour, made with German brandy, is exclusive to this location. The Zombie, the Scorpion Bowl, the Doctor Funk — the house serves them all, in their correct historical proportions.

The Mai Tai deserves special mention. Victor Bergeron, the original Trader Vic, invented it in Oakland in 1944 using aged Jamaican rum, orange curaçao, orgeat, and fresh lime. The Munich version adheres to this formula. It is served in a ceramic mug shaped like a tiki head. It is, by considerable distance, the best Mai Tai available in Germany.

Groups fill the booths on weekday evenings; solo diners settle at the bar and are looked after well. The atmosphere is consistently festive without tipping into rowdy — the Bayerischer Hof's surrounding formality exerts a civilising influence even on a room specifically designed for tropical escapism.

Trader Vic's is the definitive Munich answer to the birthday dinner problem: where to take a group that will generate genuine memory rather than merely competent food. The booths seat up to twelve; the drinks programme generates conversation and laughter without effort; the exotic setting — a genuine piece of 1970s Polynesia under a Munich hotel — provides the photographic backdrop that no modern Instagram-bait restaurant can replicate with authenticity.

The cocktails arrive in signature mugs, which can be purchased. Birthdays here are invariably photographed. The food is generous and shareable. The whole experience runs comfortably over three hours without anyone feeling rushed. As a venue for a group celebration, it hits harder than anywhere twice its price.

"The Mai Tai is everything the cocktail bar revival of the past decade has been trying to recreate. Here it was never lost." — H.B., Solo diner at the bar

"We booked the large booth for twelve. The spare ribs arrived on a board. The Zombie arrived in a bowl. Nobody wanted to leave." — K.L., Birthday group

"The carvings on the walls are real. I kept looking at them thinking they had to be reproductions. They're not. This place is a genuine time capsule." — M.T., First visit