Show Biz: Few venues offer the experience of supper clubs of yore

There was a time — three or four decades ago — when leading Waikiki hotels provided a prime-space supper club, where meals were served prior to or during a show.

Apart from luau shows, which target visitor audiences with a Polynesian revue complete with buffet dinner, I could count only one spot now with dinner-and-show options: Blue Note Hawaii, at the Outrigger Waikiki Beach Resort.

Now the Blue Note is far from being a true supper club. The dinners are mostly for a select clientele seeking a meal at a show. It’s a convenience; if you dine across the street, you need to scurry into your seat by showtime.

At best, the Blue Note menu is adequate, limited to a tasty burger, a few entrees and appetizers. There’s not much atmosphere — it’s elbow-to-elbow seating, in tight quarters — but when you dine there, you’re generally seated in prime front-and-center real estate. The vibe is nightclub-ish, and some folks opt for drinks with pupu.

A true supper club of the past was the Royal Hawaiian Hotel’s Monarch Room, a model of a sophisticated night out. Sadly, they don’t make ’em like that anymore.

I asked Keith Vieira, a hospitality industry expert for four decades, if he had clues about the scarcity of dine-and-watch options.

“There’s no one reason,” said Vieira, the principal official at KV &Associates, Hospitality Consulting LLC, and a former senior vice president at Starwood Hotel and Resorts, overseeing worldwide, Hawaii and French Polynesian operations.

“For one thing, space is premium in a hotel,” said Vieira. “Labor costs to operate showrooms have increased. And over the years, there are only a few acts that can command a show.

“Further, visitor interests also have changed. They go hiking, biking and kayaking now, with less desire to go to a nightclub/showroom. In the past, marketing used to help drive (the business). Now, there’s no demand,” said Vieira.

The overhead to operate a space like the revered Monarch Room — still operating as a banquet facility — would be astronomical now. The hotel could now book the space for a posh event like a wedding reception dinner and would gross more in one or two nights that would have taken a week for an entertainment act to match.

Vieira recalls the glory years, between the ’60s to the ’80s, when supper clubs featured prime talent to entertain visitors and locals alike, including The Brothers Cazimero at the Monarch Room, Jim Nabors at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Dome, Don Ho at Duke Kahanamoku’s and Dick Jensen aboard the Oceania Floating Restaurant.

“Those things don’t happen anymore,” he said.

Indeed, the spectrum of supper club operations included the Kahala Hilton Hala Terrace, the home turf on Danny Kaleikini for years; the Cinerama/Outrigger Reef Towers’ Polynesian Palace, which featured the likes of Don Ho, Al Harrington, Charo, the Surfers, Frank De Lima and Andy Bumatai; the Halekulani hotel’s Coral Lanai, with a range of luminaries including Hilo Hattie, Emma Veary, Ed Kenney, Marlene Sai and Beverly Noa; the Pagoda’s C’est Si Bon, which early on showcased a budding magician, David Copperfield, and became the address for Zulu because of his “Hawaii Five-O” reign; the Ala Moana Hotel’s Garden Lanai, boasting such acts as Nephi Hannemann; the Sheraton Waikiki’s Hanohano Room, a dinner-and- dancing locale for Trummy Young for years; Karen Keawehawaii, at the Pacific Beach Hotel; and the Waikiki Holiday Inn Catamaran Room, where Rodney Arias and the Paradise Serenaders held court; and the Cinerama/Outrigger Reef Hotel’s Ocean Showroom, command center for Keola and Kapono Beamer.

There were other venues, too, at the Hyatt Regency Waikiki, the Waikiki Resort Hotel, the Surfrider Hotel’s Niumalu Room and the House of Janus. While the Outrigger Waikiki’s Main Showroom was the home base of the Society of Seven, shared over the decades with the Aliis, the Krush, Tommy Sands, the Kim Sisters and the Reycards, dinner options were available but served in an adjoining room.

The old formula mandated entertainers to participate in morning briefings to peddle their shows to wholesale tour vendors, who presold shows to visitors, with commissions — often up to 40% — assessed to get groups of visitors to commit to a show. It was leverage not popular with performers, but necessary. …

And that’s “Show Biz.”

Wayne Harada is a veteran entertainment columnist. Reach him at 266-0926 or wayneharada@gmail.com.