Hula's Modern Tiki

Hula's Modern Tiki has been a Valley fixture long enough to have shed any irony about the format: mid-century tiki done straight, in a room of rattan, warm light and vintage mugs, with a kitchen turning out Hawaiian-leaning plates rather than tiki as pure theatre. The Old Town Scottsdale site is the most central of its several Valley locations, sitting a block off the main strip in a neighbourhood where most of the alternatives are loud and late.

Tiki happens to be the drink category that survives best without alcohol, and Hula's exploits that. A rum-forward tropical build gets its structure from acid, spice, syrup and dilution as much as from the spirit, so removing the rum leaves more behind than it does in, say, a martini. The Captain's Colada is coconut cream, allspice falernum syrup and pineapple juice; the Castaway Cooler is a fruity ginger beer build with a genuine bite to it; the Hula Juice layers passion fruit syrup with pineapple, orange and cranberry. All of it arrives in the same carved mugs and with the same umbrellas and fruit as the rum drinks, which sounds trivial and is not — a great deal of the tiki experience is presentation, and being handed a plain glass while everyone else gets a ceramic idol is precisely how non-drinkers get quietly excluded.

DiningOut Phoenix summed up the appeal in May 2026: these are drinks that transport you to an island paradise, without the need for rum or tequila. Worth knowing: this is a full bar and restaurant with a substantial rum list, not an alcohol-free venue, and the format is food-led, so it works better as dinner than as a place to nurse a single drink. Happy hour is the cheapest way to test the zero-proof list before committing to a table.