Aku Aku, Stardust Hotel, Las Vegas 1960s
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The Aku Aku was a famous Polynesian-themed restaurant and tiki bar located inside the Stardust Hotel and Casino (1960-1980) on the Las Vegas Strip.
Its name refers to ancestral and ghostly spirits in Rapa Nui (Easter Island) mythology, popularized largely through Thor Heyerdahl's best-selling book Aku-Aku: The Secret of Easter Island, published in 1957 when the tiki craze was booming.
Adverts for Aku Aku described the venue as ‘An Adventure in Paradise! ‘
Customers crossed over a bridge at the entrance, signifying their literal arrival in this ‘paradise’ in the desert.
The entrance and grounds to the A- frame roof building layout were flanked by giant stone moai statues carved by famed artist Eli Hedley.
Inside was a dark South Seas interior with teak and rattan furniture, indoor and outdoor water elements and lush tropical landscaping with plants brought from Hawaii and Kauai.
Primitive art carvings were created by Edward Brownlee of the Honolulu Art Academy, an authority on Melanesian, Micronesian and Polynesian artefacts. All the carvings, it’s noted in the menu, were faithfully hand carved from originals from Easter Island, New Guinea and other far-flung places.
Burmese teak was used for tabletops, bamboo and rattan came from the Philippines, hand-made tapas were found in the Fiji Islands and Tonga, and other carvings, fish traps and tropical plants came from Tahiti and Moorea.
The Polynesian-themed food was a mixture of American and Cantonese, but it was the cocktails that attracted tiki fans from far and wide. ‘Rhums ‘from Jamaica, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Trinidad, Dominican Republic, Barbados, Martinique and the islands of Reunion were all put to good use behind the bar.
As the tiki craze waned (temporarily), the Aku Aku was replaced by a steakhouse. In its final years, the Stardust included an 85,000 sq ft casino and 1552 hotel rooms. The Stardust closed in 2006.
One of the massive 30-foot-tall stone moai statues that guarded the entrance was relocated in 1988 to an island in the lake at Sunset Park in the Las Vegas Valley, Nevada, where it still stands today.
Each order includes a print of the interior menu.
All printed in USA.
