The Kahiki Supper Club - home of indoor thunderstorms, a cursing bird and food that occasionally required a fire extinguisher - has been gone from Columbus for 14 years. The demolition of the East Side restaurant is one of the most grievous landmark losses in city history. Every town has historically significant buildings.

The Kahiki Supper Club � home of indoor thunderstorms, a cursing bird and food that occasionally required a fire extinguisher � has been gone from Columbus for 14 years.

The demolition of the East Side restaurant is one of the most grievous landmark losses in city history. Every town has historically significant buildings. Only Columbus had an enormous Polynesian restaurant with conch-shell sinks and imported palm trees (from which stowaway snakes occasionally emerged). It was known nationwide.

The story of the restaurant�s rise and fall is told in minute detail in Kahiki Supper Club: A Polynesian Paradise in Columbus (History, 173 pages, $19.99) by David Meyers, Elise Meyers Walker, Jeff Chenault and Doug Motz.

The Kahiki, which opened in 1961 at 3583 E. Broad St., was the creation of Bill Sapp and Lee Henry, who also founded the venerable Top Steak House in Bexley. Eager to get in on the Polynesian-themed restaurant craze, they opened the Grass Shack in 1958, but it burned down a year later. The Kahiki was its more elaborate successor.

Five stories tall, it rose above the strip malls of E. Broad Street like a South Seas boat blown off course. Patrons walked between two Easter Island icons (with flaming heads), over a bamboo bridge and past waterfalls into a dining room dominated by a massive stone god with glowing eyes. Simulated thunder and lightning enhanced the rain-forest motif.

The book (disclosure: It quotes some of my articles on the restaurant) includes some details that only a Kahiki obsessive could love � such as where its souvenir pottery was made. But it also has interesting behind-the-scenes tales:

� A substitute worker hired to clean the aquariums unwittingly mixed piranhas with about 1,000 other tropical fish. The piranhas ate all of them.

� A disgruntled employee kidnapped Sam, a foulmouthed macaw who lived at the restaurant. He was recovered and implanted with an anti-theft chip.

� The flaming food occasionally touched off fires that required an extinguisher to control.

The restaurant was sold twice in its 39-year life, eventually ending up in the hands of Michael Tsao, who made the decision to close it in 2000. The authors conclude that he had sound business reasons: Revenue had flattened, the building needed extensive repairs, and the neighborhood had deteriorated. A Walgreens pharmacy now stands on the site.

For those who would like to toast the Kahiki�s memory, the book includes restaurant drink (and food) recipes � including the Smoking Eruption (dry ice required).

But no one will ever drink one in a building like that again.

Joe Blundo is a Dispatch columnist.

jblundo@dispatch.com

@joeblundo