Polynesia at Dinnertime

The restaurant's liquor list reads like a South Sea adventure. After an encounter with a White Witch (pure white Jamaica rum) or a Rangoon Ruby (vodka and cranberry juice), the drinker may well feel such a Suffering Bastard (rums, lime and liqueurs) that he will want to see Dr. Funk of Tahiti ("redolent of French rums and absinthe"). Actually, the author of these "Polynesian" cocktails has never roamed the South Seas. Nevertheless, salty, peg-legged Victor Bergeron, 58, has parlayed a flair for serving good food amid a supply of grass skirts, Tiki gods and outrigger canoes into the most successful chain of seaweed restaurants west of Suez: Trader Vic's.

Since the first Trader Vic's opened in Oakland, Calif., in 1938, Bergeron has set up another restaurant in San Francisco and manages seven others--three for the Hilton hotel chain (in New York, Chicago and Beverly Hills), four for Western Hotels (in Portland, Ore., Seattle, Denver, and one that opened last week in Vancouver, B.C.). This summer the Trader will start two more restaurants for Hilton, in Washington, D.C., and San Juan, will open a third, owned by himself, in Phoenix. There will also be a Trader Vic's in the new London Hilton. Last year, the nine Vies grossed more than $10 million, not counting the proceeds from Bergeron's lucrative sideline, Trader Vic Food Products Co.

Off with the Neck. Secret of Trader Vic Bergeron's success is his preference for South Sea atmosphere rather than culinary authenticity. "How are you going to make a pig in the ground in your restaurant?" asks Bergeron. "Furthermore, you can't eat real Polynesian food. It's the most horrible junk I've ever tasted."

Though his menu lists such exotic items as Bongo Bongo Soup, Javanese Sate and Bah-Mee, they are really American versions (or inventions) for American palates. "Take a Tahitian pudding made with arrowroot," says the Trader. "It's so tough you can throw it and use it as a handball. Or take a squab. In the average Chinese restaurant, that little fella comes out with his dead eyes staring you in the face. When the customer sees that naked head and the beak and the eyes, he wants no part of it. We chop the neck off it, barbecue it, and it's changed. And that's just what we've done with all the specialty food." Bergeron also serves French cooking, but refuses to promote it. "Why should I?" he asks. "I can make so much more money off the grass."

Hinky Dink's. The Trader does little to discourage the legend that his leg was snipped off by an unfriendly shark in the islands. But the story is as unreal as his menu. Born in California, he grew up in Oakland, where his parents ran a small grocery. At the age of six, a tuberculosis attack cost him his left leg; despite the handicap, Bergeron was so agile on his crutches that he played for his grammar school soccer team. He quit school at 16, two years later was able to buy his first wooden leg. For the next 13 years he bummed around from job to job, finally winding up at the end of Prohibition as a partner in a neighborhood bar. A year later, the partnership was dissolved.

With a $500 stake from his share of the bar, the Trader opened his first restaurant in Oakland, named it Hinky Dink's, was soon doing a good business. Early discovering the secret of atmosphere, he began to hang snowshoes and deer heads around the restaurant, picked up his nickname by his habit of selling curios right off the wall to customers--at a whopping profit. In search of more exotica, Bergeron made his first trip outside California. He traveled to the Caribbean, where he picked up a complete line of tropical drinks that could be efficiently potent without tasting much like booze at all. Back home, he was so impressed with the success of a Los Angeles Polynesian restaurant called Don the Beachcomber that he copied the idea, tore down his Hinky Dink's sign, reopened as Trader Vic's.

Each month, in search of new decorations and souvenirs, he picks through an incredible assortment of Polynesiana sent him by some of his most valuable employees--a team of genuine traders in Tahiti and Samoa. He himself has still not gotten beyond Honolulu.

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