The best tiki bar you’ve never been to might be in a Sacramento home. What to know
Matt Mitchell’s home is unassuming from the front. It could be any suburban house in any community anywhere. But in his backyard, a structure transports you to another world.
The Ghastly Grotto started its life as a simple CostCo shed, but Mitchell has since turned it into a full-scale tiki bar, with niches and grottos packed with art, figurines and other bric-a-brac, all with a ghoulish bent. It’s campy, kaleidoscopic and more than a little psychedelic.
Mitchell is a member of Sac Ohana, a social group of local tiki enthusiasts. Members gather for occasional get-togethers at local bars and restaurants to share their love of tiki culture. The culminating event of the year is the annual tiki home bar tour.
On June 28, dozens of aloha shirt-clad revelers gathered at midtown tiki bar Shipwrecked Paradise Island to get a preview of this year’s tour. It’s hotly anticipated, and books up quickly. The tour is free, but in order to keep participants’ homes from being mobbed, it adheres to a strict RSVP system.
Mitchell is this year’s chair of the home bar tour. Along with events coordinator Nav Singh, he announced the introduction of Sac Tiki Week, a series of events leading up to the bar tour. The intent is to open up opportunities for Sac Ohana members to engage in, even if they can’t participate in the tour.
Events include a screening of Cabali and the Tiki Mug Obsession, a documentary on tiki mug collectors, a home bartender battle and a tiki marketplace and luau.
“This will be the second year of doing the home bartender battle, making cocktails for everyone else in that bar setting. We do it at Jungle Bird, and they’re judged by some pretty spectacular, famous bartenders in the community. It’s a really good time,” Mitchell said.
This year’s tour is themed Lost Islands of Tiki, and will encompass eight home bars, two of which are new to the program. Mitchell estimates there may be as many as 30 home bars in the area, and so they rotate some in and out each year. The Ghastly Grotto has been on the tour in the past, but is not for 2026.
At the heart of the tour, and of Sac Ohana in general, is a pervasive sentiment of hospitality. Home bar owners typically have food and drink, both alcoholic and not, available to attendees.
“It’s an all-volunteer, all-donation event, so no one’s making any money. It’s all coming out of everyone’s pockets, so we keep the home bar tour a little smaller,” Mitchell said.
Tiki has many manifestations. At its core, it centers on a romanticized, some would say fantasized, vision of South Pacific culture. Many tiki fans cite a visit to the Tiki Room at Disneyland as the genesis of their obsession.
While its roots go back to Don the Beachcomber in Hollywood in the 1930s, tiki culture blossomed after World War II, when American soldiers came back from the Pacific theater with stories of tropical islands.
Tiki and mid-century chic are irrevocably intertwined for this reason. Yet every person interprets tiki in their own unique way. Many go deep on the Disney connection. For Mitchell and his wife Angela, it’s an intersection with their obsession with horror movies. Tiki is what you make it.
Sac Tiki Week will run from October 11 to the 18. All events are free to attend, but an “Explorer Package” will be available for sale as of Monday, July 19. This comes with early access to RSVP for the tour, as well as a custom mai tai glass and a passport-like book to collect stamps at each home bar.
Some RSVPs will be reserved for non-purchasers, which become available July 26, plus there’s a waitlist and other opportunities such as giveaways for a seat.
This story was originally published July 17, 2026 at 7:00 AM.
