Hidden Harbor shakes things up in Squirrel Hill

Hidden Harbor is hiding in plain sight, if it can be said to be hiding at all. Tiki bars aren't meant to be subtle, are they?

Hidden Harbor doesn't exactly announce itself in glowing neon and a grass skirt. It's around the corner from the main business district in Squirrel Hill, next door to its parent bar, the equally unobtrusive Independent Brewing Company.

It seems like an odd choice for Pittsburgh and Squirrel Hill, but Adam Henry, who manages both bars for owners Peter and Matt Kurzweg, makes a great case. He's just really enthusiastic about mixed drinks. Of all the reasons to start a bar, that seems like a pretty good one.

“Tiki bars have been seeing a resurgence, starting in the late 1990s,” Henry says. “Tiki bars first gained popularity in the 1930s, with a bar called Don the Beachcomber in Hollywood, California, and Trader Vic's in Oakland, California. They helped to define the Polynesian aesthetic, vaguely Chinese fare and rum-based cocktails that often feature fruit juices as one of many flavors. It was the biggest and longest drinking fad in American history — until it tapered off in the '80s.”

The front of the barroom is pretty subdued — unusual nautical wallpaper, some artifacts (such as a carved female figurehead from a ship) above the bar, a vintage copy of the Hardy Boys' “Hidden Harbor Mystery.” The lounge goes a bit further, with a special hand-carved wooden tiki mask on the wall, done by a guy name Crazy Al in Long Beach, Calif.

“You've got to commit the full way to doing it right. When done right, it's a beautiful thing,” Henry says.

Aside from the array of pre-Prohibition cocktails, the tiki tradition has the biggest and best trove of unusual cocktails out there. It's also all about fresh ingredients, particularly fruit juices.

“They were the original farm-to-table drinks, because of the reliance on fruit juices,” Henry says.

“I was a craft cocktail geek at home,” Henry says. “I think the trajectory of a lot of people is to get into the canon, the pre-Prohibition classics. Then Don the Beachcomber, who opened a post-Prohibition bar in Hollywood and invented it whole cloth, (came up) with this sort of faux-Caribbean history.”

The Independent Brewing Company next door has established its own niche, serving only beers brewed in Western Pennsylvania, and it has had wild success. Hidden Harbor began as a weekly night there, where Henry and his team could experiment with the vast, eccentric and endlessly inventive Tiki tradition.

The Tropic Thunder ($12), for instance, has a five-rum blend, lime, grapefruit, cinnamon, macadamia orgeat, grenadine, falernum, absinthe and bitters.

“That originated as a cross between the Mai Tai and the Zombie, the twin towers of Tiki,” Henry says.

Another is the Tokyo Drift ($13), made with sake, gin, lemon, ginger, passionfruit, burnt-orange chai, jasmine tea and bitters.

Weird Science Wednesdays allows them to go even farther, using scientific techniques and processes from molecular gastronomy to reinvent drinks.

“There's a drink with cotton candy in it,” Henry says. “Campari, the bittersweet Italian liqueur, dehydrated into a powder — the Jungle Bird. We have a 600-pound tank of liquid nitrogen. We can flash-freeze mint, which you can pulverize into a powder.”

The menu also is quite original. Lomi-Lomi ($8) is a Hawaiian dish, featuring salt-cured salmon, with tomato, red onion, cumin, jalapeno, citrus and wonton chips.

“Monique Ruvolo is the chef and has been at the Independent since it opened,” Henry says. “It's a limited kitchen, in the lower level. We do not have fryers. Tiki food is often faux-Cantonese — chicken wings, sliders, crab Rangoon. She's Egyptian-American, so she cooks with a lot of Middle Eastern spices. We decided to take a broader approach than faux-Chinese food.”

Pittsburgh may not strike one as terribly tropical, but that doesn't seem to matter for Tiki bars.

“It works best when the escape is most dramatic,” Henry says. “Stepping out of a snowy January day in Pittsburgh to a warm, golden-lit tiki bar serving drinks with fresh mint is a heightened form of escapism. It flourishes where the sense of the tropics is most remote.”

Hidden Harbor, 1708 Shady Ave., Squirrel Hill, is open from 6 p.m. to midnight Tuesdays through Thursdays, 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Details: 412-422-5040 or HiddenHarborPGH.com

Michael Machosky is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at machosky@tribweb.com or 412-320-7901.