I blame it on tiki newbies. About a week ago, one of the Trader Vic’s menus from the Havana location came up on Ebay. These were printed with a note inside, supposedly “hand written” by Vic himself, saying something about that stinker Fidel. I am guessing the buyer thought it was really written in Vic’s hand. The auction went for over $75.
So, then this one just sold. And, suddenly everyone is trying to unload this rather common menu for huge profits and so you have this one, and this one, and this one.
This menu is similar to the Don the Beachcomber menu that is so common because it was printed as a souvenir, and not actually used. They made them in large quantities.
My suspicion is there is a lot more to the Trader Vic menu. Was he trying to make a case for ousting Fidel? Did he want that rum back in his restaurants? There must have been an agenda in that message on that menu. I’d love to know what he had in mind.
And I’d love to unload one of these menus for $75!
UPDATE: The trend is continuing to go up! $121! Clearly people are not reading my blather… This one I can understand. It is not the reprinted menu with the Vic anti-Castro slogan. It’s a real, 1958 menu from the Habana Trader Vic’s. Given that the official date of the end of the Castro overthrow was January 1st, 1959, that makes this an interesting piece of history.