At Home With: Darren and Leslie, and Brad, the Yin and Yang of KC Tiki Bars
Kansas City May Be the Home Tiki Bar Capital of America.
On a recent trip to Kansas City, we learned too late of a local tour of home tiki bars. It was part of an annual tiki event called Lei Away. We would have signed on if we had known beforehand. But in the end it didn’t matter. We ended up going to one of the bars on the tour anyway, as well as another one that ought to have been on the itinerary.
I wouldn’t have guessed Kansas City to be a hive of underground tiki activity. But so it is. On one wonderful day, we visited two home tiki bars so diametrically opposed in character they might have been opened by the Gods of Darkness and Light on opposite sides of the River Styx.
The first, located in the Lykins neighborhood of Kansas City, is the work of Brad Finch, an architectural photographer who would give Edward Gorey a run for his money in his passion for the macabre. The second, located in the graceful, affluent community of Fairway, Kansas—just across the Missouri-Kansas border—is the vision of couple Darren and Leslie Mark. Called Ruby’s Lagoon, it bubbles with colored light.
At Ruby’s Lagoon, Darren serves all array of cocktails in ornate glassware with fanciful garnishes. Finch—whose bar is named Tumbuna Hut—who says he has no talent for cocktails, pours rum straight. Ruby’s is populated by a lifesized pirate and deep sea diver. Finch’s is guarded by moody tiki totems—that is, once you get by the assorted skeletons upstairs.
But both are snug with limited seating and both favor Foursquare rum from the Barbados rum legend Richard Seale. I was served Foursquare in both bars.
“I’m terrible at that,” said Finch about his mixology skills. “For the tour, we had Tiki Mimosas, which my friend came up with. Basically, I’m a rum bar.”
His rum bar has three stools, one of which I occupied as Finch poured me some of Seale’s liquid. Even when seated in the stool, my head nearly hit the ceiling.
“It’s a very low ceiling,” said Finch, “so to make it look higher, I dropped the walls, made the ceiling blue, and gave the ceiling stars.”
The blue night sky notwithstanding, the bar space was appealingly dark. As my eyes adjusted, I could discern various artifacts on the walls. There was a taxidermy ahi tuna on the wall above the couch. Behind the bar was a print of a popular 1960s portrait called “Miss Wong.” There was bamboo around the false fireplace and thatch on the walls. Along the base of the narrow staircase was a water feature that threw throbbing blue light along the wall.
“Someone told me you have to have three features in a tiki bar: fire, water and probably rum.” he said.
“I’ve been collecting this stuff for a long time anyway,” Finch continued. “And when I bought this house I knew this room was going to be a tiki bar anyway.”
He said the paneled room and its fireplace had been in place when he bought the property. “Northeast Kansas City, a lot of Italians lived here, a lot of Mob lived here,” he explained. “To have a basement rec room/rumpus room kind of thing was a thing. That’s what this was.”
The lynchpin to the design are two large Papua New Guinea ancestral carvings. He had been eying the artworks, on sale at a local antique store for three to four years. Finally, the price came down to a place where he could afford them. After that, he knew he had to pull the trigger on the bar, and “Everything kinda came together.”
The small bar of bamboo, plywood and formica, he said, was easy to come by. “People buy a house and they’re like, ‘It’s got this creepy old bar in the basement,’” he said. “They want new stuff. They want IKEA. It’s so antiseptic. That’s a trend I hope is ending.”
The bar blends well with the rest of Finch’s home decor which is, to put it mildly, unique. The first floor is something out of Tim Burton. Skeletons and coffins and other Halloween-ready items abound. Finch chalks it up to a childhood fascination with horror movies.
“I’ve always loved a good coffin,” he said. “A good, well-made coffin is a thing of beauty. I still have some holy grail caskets I want, but they’re so expensive, because a lot of people collect those things.”
Ironically, Finch has a green burial planned for himself. He already has the plot picked out in nearby Elmwood Cemetery, an 1872 burial ground where he is on the board of directors.
“I might even dig it myself if I get a chance,” he joked.
Around the same time Finch was putting the final touches on his bar, Darren and Leslie Mark were buying the house that, seven years later, would become the home of Ruby’s Lagoon.
The mid-century modernist house was built in 1965 by prominent Kansas City-area architect Bruce Patty for his own use. The Marks are only the building’s second owner. Like Finch, they have a respect of old things; they wisely chose to preserve the structure, which sits on a ridge and has a gorgeous backyard view of wooded valley behind, rather than tear it down in favor of a new dwelling. Ruby’s Lagoon took the place of a former storage room with no electricity. It is now a fully operating wet bar with plumbing, refrigeration and the works.
The idea to build a home tiki bar was hatched after a 2010 trip to Smuggler’s Cove, the famous tiki bar in San Francisco.
“I discovered cocktails at Violet Hour in 2009,” said Darren, who has run a video content agency for 17 years, a job that takes him all over the world. “That’s where my dream began. The foundation of all that is Sasha Petraske-style cocktails. That led me to [Smuggler’s Cove owner] Martin Cate and tiki.”
It took another 15 years to achieve that dream. Construction of Ruby’s Lagoon began in July 2024 and finished in November.
Leslie Mark, an interior designer is largely responsible for the fanciful, fun-loving design of the place. She learned how to epoxy and did the floor. She made the chandelier, which is composed of colored Japanese glass fishing floats. The shimmering ceiling, made of pressed tin, was inspired by a piece of public art featuring a giant flamingo that she saw in the Tampa airport.
Leslie brought in 600 pounds of concrete to make the coral reef that occupies the far wall. Behind the reef is a window portholes backed by bubbled panels, half an inch thick. They gleam ocean blue. “You fill them with water, with a wand at bottom like fish taken bubble pump,” she explained.
On a pillar by the bar is a figurehead in the shape of a mermaid. Leslie bought is on eBay. It’s composed of styrofoam, but made to look like wood. She painted the face. Darren noted that the masthead bears a striking resemblance to the red-headed Leslie.
As for the bar’s name, that honor went to a different family member. Ruby was Rubin Kaplan, Darren’s grandfather.
“He was a runner for his brother, who was a bootlegger,” Darren explained. “They would go down to Boston harbor. Ruby would jet out of the vehicle, race down to the shore and bring back rye, gin, whatever they were doing. And they would sell it on the black market. When Repeal happened in 1933, Ruby went legal and he and his brother opened a liquor store in Beacon Hill called Hunter’s.”
There is a picture of Ruby, in white shirt and bow tie, in his bottle shop on the wall near the bar’s sign, which is back lit in pink. Josh Davis, a friend of Darren’s, designed the swooping Ruby’s Lagoon logo.
“The heart and soul of this bar is rum and Chartreuse,” Darren told me. Unusual for any tiki bar, he has a large collection of Chartreuse. Toward that end, he served me a Tuxedo No. 3, an original concoction which was a rum martini made with dry vermouth, Chartreuse elixir, maraschino liqueur and pineapple oleo-saccharum.
The Ruby’s Mai Tai is made with a housemade orgeat, partly inspired by the product put out by famed orgeat maker “Tiki Adam” Kolesar. In fact, Darren makes 12 different syrups for Ruby’s, as well as coconut demerara, banana oleo and many other potions.
And, if you’re lucky enough, you may get to try them. Just hang around Kansas City long enough.
“It is a small world, and Kansas City is freakishly small,” said Darren. “It’s also a huge city. We also have professional sports teams, a large metro, World Cup is coming. And yet it is the most one-degree-of-Kevin Bacon place I’ve ever lived in my life.”
That’s fine by Darren and Leslie.
“What’s most interesting about Ruby’s is the connections it’s allowed us to make,” said Darren. “After Covid, people stopped seeing each other. I’m a phone guy. I like to meet people in person.
“The bar has expanded our community in Kansas City in a way that has been on one hand organic and on the other hand unexpected.”
How long until Brad Finch pulls up a bar stool?
Odds and Ends…
Last year, The Mix posted a story about the history of the once dominant American restaurant chain Dutch Pantry, which today only has two locations, both on Highway 80 in northern Pennsylvania. In our research for that piece, we visited the location in Clearview, PA. Recently, we were able to eat at the franchise in nearby DuBois, meaning The Mix has been to every location of Dutch Pantry! I’m happy to report that the decor and food are consistent at both places. I was struck again by how every dish on the menu is obviously homemade. I indulged in the famous white bean and ham soup again, which is the best thing on the menu. The corn fritters, too, are recommended. And the prices remain remarkably low…
Seed Library, the new New York cocktail bar from the Mr. Lyan group, opened for business this past weekend… Ziggy’s Roman Cafe, a new restaurant in DUMBO Brooklyn, offered a sneak preview of their space last week. The restaurant is the work of Helen Zhang and her husband Igor Hadzismajlovic (Employee’s Only)… The new monthly regional special at Hamburger America is the Gargiulo’s Burger, which hails from roast beef palace Brennan & Carr in Sheephead Bay. It is a burger topped with thinly slice roast beef and dunked in beef broth. The burger is named after the Coney Island Italian restaurant and The Mix favorite Gargiulo’s, whose staff members would request the special sandwich when they dined at Brennan & Carr.
What a weekend in KC! Tiki bars and barbecue joints!! Each home we visited was amazing. Bungalows, Mid-Century Moderns and Kansas City Shirtwaists!! 👏👏👏👏
Wow, these places are incredible. Now I've gotta up the branding game in my own home bar.