Pagan Idol
Brian Sheehy's Future Bars group opened this tiki bar on Bush Street in 2016, in the building that once held Tiki Bob's Mainland Rendezvous. The same group runs Bourbon & Branch and Rickhouse. You walk in through the belly of a wooden ship. The back room has cabanas and carved idols. A volcano steams and rumbles every so often.
Why go
Justin D'Olier, the general manager at opening, put the case plainly. Tiki is an American invention and never meant to pass as Polynesian.1 The bar is built for escape. Drinks come in ceramic tumblers and skull cups. The portholes look onto digital fish.
Daniel Parks kept the printed list to sixteen drinks in 2016. Thirteen singles and three bowls, all of them the house's own. Behind it sits a secret menu of about fifty classics, which you get by asking.
Martin Cate's Smuggler's Cove, in Hayes Valley, is the rum library end of the same argument, with more than 550 bottles in it.4
Order this / avoid
- Order: Mr. Hanalei, a Caribbean rum blend with allspice, orgeat and lemon, in a skull-shaped cup. It ran $15 in November 2025.3
- Order: the Quarantine Order. Camper English named it one of the fifty iconic drinks in the city in 2024.5
- Avoid: the first hour. One bartender is often on alone until the room fills.2
What locals & experts say
- Justin D'Olier, general manager, to Esther Mobley for the Chronicle in 2016:
There are so many places in San Francisco where you can get an incredible cocktail. There aren't many places, especially in FiDi, where you can have this much fun.
1 - Astrid Kane, The San Francisco Standard, on a Saturday night downtown in November 2025: she found
downtown's top tiki bar
quiet enough that the staff talked her through the list. By the time she finished the drink a bouncer was metering the door.3
Good to know
- Getting in: walk-in, no bookings.
- Where: 375 Bush Street, in the Financial District.
Verdict
could-visit — This works best as a birthday room. The back-room huts go to whoever gets there first.