Boston Chefs

Wusong Tiki Bar, located inside the 100-year-old Conductor’s Building at 112 Mt. Auburn St. in Harvard Square, is an intricately detailed ode to chef Jason Doo’s upbringing in his parents’ Malden-area American Chinese restaurant.

Named after the first train building located in Wusong, China (located just outside of Doo’s family's hometown of Shanghai), the slender, two-story tiki palace is all about relaxation, escapism and tasty bites with a Hong Kong-style deli and tiki bar on the first floor, and a second larger tiki bar and full-service restaurant on the second floor with an attached semi-private events space. The interior is a feast for the eyes, with basket lamps, tropical wallpaper, masks, monkeys, thatched details, statues and more, including a huge replica of a Bali temple at the doorway of the second floor. There are plentiful bar stools on both floors, or find either a hightop or a regular table with rich red seats and dramatic yellow banquettes.

The uber-affordable menu is filled with all the snacky Chinese-inspired bites you could want, including classics like Peking ravioli, crab rangoons and General Gao’s, plus a bounty of creative spins on bao buns. The building also houses the only hand-built brick duck oven in the United States. The cocktails are, of course, next level, and it’s not unusual to see a gathering of local tiki enthusiasts debating the merits of different varieties of orgeat. They boast a very impressive collection of tiki mugs to choose from (some require a credit card deposit), and there are standard Painkiller or Mai Tai all the way up to glorious glowing scorpion bowls to share.