Rapa Nui Tiki Bar — Restaurant in Bend

I finally had the opportunity to visit Rapa Nui in Bend, and I was thoroughly impressed by the decor, cocktails, and overall sincerety of the place.

In spite of being on the second floor of a warehouse-style building, the bar does a great job of creating a lush, comfortable atmosphere. In contrast to some of the tiny, cramped tiki bars on my favorites list, Rapa Nui gambled on a larger space that feels expansive without seeming sparse, and it's varigated enough to provide cozy nooks and crannies for parties of any size. It's not easy dropping a tiki bar into a blank industrial space and giving it the sort of lived-in feel that we're used to in more mature establishments. While it does still feel clean and new, without decades of dust and detritus, Rapa Nui does a good job of staying true to the tiki aesthetic and providing a thoroughly tropical escape.

The cocktail menu includes a good variety of the standards, with some signature variations. I neglected to order a Mai Tai, which is my standard test of a tiki bar's cocktail program, an omission I'll correct on my next visit. Instead, I opted for the Island Old Fashioned, which was flavorful and superb for someone who tries to avoid a lot of citrus, and the Jungle Bird, which was delightfully Campari-forward. Not everyone's going to appreciate the added bitterness, but as a fan of dry/bitter drinks, I really liked it. When I mentioned it to Anna, the bar manager, she replied that it was an intentional choice to differentiate their version from the standard. It's a bold choice that I applaud. I can't comment on the food, since we had just come from dinner and didn't order any bites, but I'm looking forward to giving more of the menu a try on future visits.

For such a young bar, Rapa Nui hits all the right notes, and it's only going to get better with age. I don't expect to get to Bend very often, but when I do, another longer visit to this tropical paradise will definitely be on...

This is a brand new place, reported to have opened on March 5, 2021. We visited a little over 2 weeks later. Drinks were good, in the $13-$15 dollar range with the vast majority reporting in at $14. Food was Asian tapas and interesting if not outstanding.

This is not the quiet, romantic tiki bar that took the US by storm in the late 50s and early 60s. It is energetic, even boisterous, with loud music heavy in the bass lines. We sat close to a speaker and had difficulty hearing each other.

I would have rated this a 4 not because anything was outstanding but somehow the drinks and Asian tapas worked well together. It ended up with the lowest rating possible because of the service. We waited a little bit longer than we should have after being seated before the server showed up to take our drink order. The wait between placing our order and receiving our drinks was interminable. At one point, I sarcastically asked our server whether there was only one bartender for the entire place. With an absolute straight face, she assured me that that was, indeed, the case. The drinks finally arrived, delivered by someone other than our server, so no food order taken. When we were nearly finished our drinks, the server arrived to take our food order (which arrived within a reasonable period of time) and also asked whether we would like a second round of drinks. I inquired whether it would take as long to arrive as the first round and was told that the bartender was pretty backed up and no promises could be made. Though we wanted another drink, we weren't willing to endure the wait. So we passed, ate, and left--one hour and 30 minutes for one drink and a small plate of tapas. NR...

In an area otherwise devoid of Tiki bars, Rapa Nui is a solid offering that is noticeably rough around the edges.

The cocktails tasted good/decently strong. I was disappointed that each of our 4 drinks was missing a decorative element of some kind (my wife’s “sidewinder’s fang” came without the citrus peel snake, the other drinks were missing the pineapple leaf garnishes pictured on the menu). While not a huge deal, when drinks are $13-15ish each, and a focal point of the Tiki experience, it’s hard to ignore those details.

The snacks we ordered were tasty, but nothing to write home about - we ended up with mozzarella sticks and the Vietnamese sticky wings after trying to order two other dishes that they said they’d sold out of (the burger and panko chicken).

They offer indoor & outdoor seating (on the balcony - they’re on the 2nd floor), but I recommend sitting indoors so that you get to enjoy the decor. While Rapa Nui has fun decorations, the same care hasn’t been applied throughout the space - the entrance is impressive, but when I was actually seated at my table, the wall in front of me was mostly covered with what looked like a children’s bed sheet.

Despite my criticism/relatively low star rating, I still DO recommend Rapa Hui to those in the area, but tiki aficionados shouldn’t feel compelled to travel from...