Teak Tray, about 1965
notes: label: Description
content: Tropical hardwoods such as koa, monkeypod, and teak became popular in the 1950s and ’60s as a material for serving bowls, platters, and utensils, as well as for outdoor furniture. This teakwood tray has “Polynesian” decorations, similar to those found on glassware and other serving dishes in tiki and beach bars. This serving ware was designed to hold the Hawaiian, Asian, and Caribbean snacks of a pupu platter (snacks, canapés, appetizers, hors d’oeuvres) served with the mai tais, daiquiris, Singapore Slings, and hurricanes also popular with tiki followers.
label: Description
content: Wearing the aloha shirts and muumuus acquired on trips to Hawaii, men and women of the 195’s and later would serve these new foods added to their home repertoires from the tiki bar food (vaguely Asian and Caribbean) made popular by Don the Beachcomber and Trader Vic’s restaurants. The popularity of many of these dishes and drinks, still served in revival tiki bars and in hundreds of Chinese Cantonese restaurants, is indisputable. Baby barbecued pork ribs, shrimp toast, chicken “drumettes,” chicken livers and water chestnuts (rumaki), all sorts of things skewered such as terayaki meat grilled on bamboo sticks, all dunked in “duck” sauce or soy sauce, dumplings (dim sum), vegetable and seafood tempuras, fried shrimp, anything with pineapple, chicken wings, eggrolls, and others came to be in the basic repertoire of American bar food.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
topic: label: Subject
content: Food Culture
label: Subject
content: Eating
setName: label: See more items in
content: Home and Community Life: Domestic Life
label: See more items in
content: Food
label: See more items in
content: FOOD: Transforming the American Table 1950-2000
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Nanci Edwards
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 2011.0210.03
label: catalog number
content: 2011.0210.03
label: accession number
content: 2011.0210
objectType: label: Object Name
content: tray
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: teak wood (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 25 1/8 in x 11 1/8 in x 1 in; 63.8175 cm x 28.2575 cm x 2.54 cm