If the medical office building on the lot at 4469 Redondo Beach Boulevard in Lawndale looks like it used to be a Pizza Hut, that’s because it was one for several decades.

But what concerns us today is what came before Pizza Hut, specifically what existed on the site from 1961 to 1965.

Connoisseurs of tiki culture already may know the answer.

From its flamboyant exterior to its interior decor, the Tiki-Kai Polynesian Restaurant fits squarely into that category of buildings you just don’t see anymore.

Tiki culture, the borrowing of Polynesian themes (including tiki carvings) for use in restaurants and clubs in the United States, had its heyday in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

It still has its partisans, with websites devoted to keeping the memory of the style alive. Though not plentiful, vestiges of the tiki style can still be found around the South Bay, notably in 1960s-era apartment buildings such as the Tiki Aloha and Kona Kai Apartments in Torrance and the Tiki Apartments in Redondo Beach.

When William Chin opened the Tiki-Kai in February 1961, the Enchanted Tiki Room at Disneyland had yet to be built. (It opened in 1963.) The Polynesian restaurant had opened in Torrance two years earlier, in June 1959, and Chin may have seen an opportunity to capitalize on its popularity.

Chin was a veteran restaurateur, having operated Chin’s Chinese Garden in San Pedro. He would open another Chin’s Chinese Garden at Walnut and Pacific Coast Highway in Lomita in November 1962.

The Tiki-Kai site originally housed another type of restaurant. Alice Cupp Overpeck opened the medieval-themed Little Sir restaurant there in 1955, remodeling the original restaurant/cafe that she had operated at that location since 1945.

Chin’s restaurant was successful at first. Many community groups held their meetings there, and the establishment advertised in the Torrance Herald and Daily Breeze, and got frequent mentions in restaurant columns.

Los Angeles Times restaurant columnist Joan Winchell described the Tiki-Kai in August 1961 as an “establishment you won’t want to miss,” with its “unique bamboo exterior which is studded with you-name-it sized tikis.”

The restaurant featured entertainment as well as Cantonese and Polynesian cuisine, and “Polynesian Drinks,” according to its ads. Blind electric guitarist King Bennie Nawahi began appearing there regularly in February 1963.

Then, after four years, the Tiki-Kai was no more. On May 30, 1965, it was announced that local realtor Fred L. Fredericks had purchased the Tiki-Kai and was replacing it with the similarly themed Golden Lei Restaurant.

The Golden Lei’s tenure, too, was short, and it was replaced by the Brothers Two, which also used the same building, though probably not the same theme. Information on that phase of the building’s existence is scant; Brothers Two, also known as Brothers 2, is said to have operated in the late 1960s.

Pizza Hut then bought the property, razed the old building, and built one of its cookie-cutter restaurant buildings there in 1971.

In 2008, Pizza Hut closed, and the building was remodeled as a medical office building, which is how it is still being used today.

Sources:

Los Angeles Times files.

“Tiki-Kai, Lawndale, CA (restaurant),” Tiki Central website.

Torrance Herald files.