Ace Eat Serve is a staple of the East 17th Avenue dining strip, with a recently added coffeeshop , huge ping pong room and a large, popular menu. But the culinary spirit of that menu is located much farther away than Denver — in the many cultural traditions of Asia, with a menu that crosses boundaries from China and Japan to Korea, Thailand and Vietnam.

So it's not that much of a leap for the popular restaurant and bar to embrace Hawaiian and Polynesian dishes, at least temporarily, for a Tiki Takeover of its covered patio during August.

The tiki trend got its start in the 1930s with rum-based drinks that quickly became associated with bars that used that moniker. The word was popular until the 1980s, then faded away until recent years, when it came back like whaler bells, skinny ties

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