Pu Pu Platter .

[JerseyJanice]

Our local Chinese restaurant still has all of those. Love Potion ("no love insurance written on this one!"), Zombie ("delightful and inspirational").

LOL! I love these. There is only one place left where I live that has still a funny drink menu, and its days are clearly numbered.

Too many authentic Asian restaurants now. I will miss the fake “Polynesian” places and have hope they’ll be resurrected in some places.

 

[ChanduTail]

My friends back in the US have informed me that a brand new tiki restaurant has opened in Midtown NYC & basically everyone who lives in the city is talking about it It looks pretty much the way I expected it to look.

https://thepolynesiantiki.com/

They even have a pu pu platter, which my friends assure me is great. Thanks a lot. I moved three months before it opened & never got to go Will try it on my next visit to my parents' place!

 

[NYCgrrl]

I don't think I've ever been to a Chinese restaurant without a pu pu platter. We always order one to share when we go as a family group.



Our local Chinese restaurant still has all of those. Love Potion ("no love insurance written on this one!"), Zombie ("delightful and inspirational").

My mother always sought out little restaurants in the original Chinatown in NY (we now have at least 4 different ones) where we mostly pointed at food or pictures to figure out what to eat; most of the patrons and workers didn't speak English. Thus no pu pu trays which is an Asian American invention.

I wonder why all of these places closed en masse. You'd think there would still be a market for them. I have never heard of or been to any of them but I Googled a bunch of names mentioned here and they look awesomely kitschy. I have never even had a pu pu platter! I missed out

It was a slow death over 10-15 years but death to be sure. What caused it was a confluence of history: the end of the Chinese exclusionary acts in the '60s; the lowering in cost of air travel and the desire of Americans to eat food more like what they had on their travels; Julia Child, Alice Water, et al and a host of other reasons both local, nationwide and global. Other cuisines were effected as well but I think the biggest changes were to Asian cusines.

A tiki bar fad started a few decades back and is still active in parts of NYC. Think down on the Lower East Side and Williamsburg.

 

[NYCgrrl]

My friends back in the US have informed me that a brand new tiki restaurant has opened in Midtown NYC & basically everyone who lives in the city is talking about it It looks pretty much the way I expected it to look.

https://thepolynesiantiki.com/

They even have a pu pu platter, which my friends assure me is great. Thanks a lot. I moved three months before it opened & never got to go Will try it on my next visit to my parents' place!

Sounds like this one which certainly means the tres hip crowd will be there in droves, LOL:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/10/dining/drinks/tiki-bar-polynesian.html?smid=tw-nytfood&smtyp=cur

 

[Moliphino]

My mother always sought out little restaurants in the original Chinatown in NY (we now have at least 4 different ones) where we mostly pointed at food or pictures to figure out what to eat; most of the patrons and workers didn't speak English. Thus no pu pu trays which is an Asian American invention.

There's nothing that authentic around me, but the local Chinese restaurants I've been to are not tiki/Polynesian themed and are run by Chinese families. They're just catering to the largely non-Chinese population in the area.

 

[JerseyJanice]

I’m not running into the city to go to that Polynesian Tiki Bar place. It’s not a real Pu Pu Platter. For one thing, it’s $64. For another, it has no flames.

Chinese take-out places serve Pu Pu Platters that mean it’s an assortment of appetizers, but the real thing at an old time Polynesian restaurant has a little cauldron filled with some sort of pink fuel that is lighted on fire after they bring it to your table.

Half the fun of a Pu Pu is skewering the appetizers, dunking them in duck sauce and heating them over the open flame.

Our Dragon Inn had an entree that came with its own cha-cha broiler, which was the cauldron thing with a grate on top. Or you could get the Hawaiian Five-O with flaming rum sauce.

Come to think of it, I’m surprised the place didn’t get burned down. My brother and I have scars to this day from accidental burns we got while roasting our food over the flames.

 

[Lisa F]

Chinese take-out places serve Pu Pu Platters that mean it’s an assortment of appetizers, but the real thing at an old time Polynesian restaurant has a little cauldron filled with some sort of pink fuel that is lighted on fire after they bring it to your table.

I think it's just sterno.

our local chinese restaurants served the pu pu with the cauldron of sterno and the grate.

 

[TiggerTrigger]

I wish I could even find local places that do them. We've seen a few places do something similar called a bo bo plate, that has a lot of the same items, but it's just sad when you see it come out and there are no tiers and no fire.

 

[Auroraborealis18]

The man and I have a running joke about pu pu trays that revolve on his mother's parenting ideas of the 1960's.
She would make a pu pu tray of frozen La Choy or Chun King products (neither companies operated by Asians, LOL) and serve it in the rumpus room as her boys smoked marijuana so their recreational drug use was done at home and not in the streets.
I always tell him life in Long Island was sooo special .

@gayles - did you take a look at any of the menus of the Asian eateries?

Ha! I was just reminiscing about La Choy meal kits. I miss those. Hated them as a kid but would appreciate the convenience as a mom.

 

[JerseyJanice]

Ha! I was just reminiscing about La Choy meal kits. I miss those. Hated them as a kid but would appreciate the convenience as a mom.

Are you talking about the one with two cans taped together? With the bigger can having vegetables and needing to be drained? And the smaller can having the meat and sauce?

I would probably hate it now, but I loved the chicken chow mein version when I was a kid. The teriyaki beef was good too.

 

[Auroraborealis18]

Are you talking about the one with two cans taped together? With the bigger can having vegetables and needing to be drained? And the smaller can having the meat and sauce?

I would probably hate it now, but I loved the chicken chow mein version when I was a kid. The teriyaki beef was good too.

That's the one! I liked the bamboo shoots and the miniature corn in the vegetable cans. My mom made the chicken and beef teriyaki kits.