Hugman’s Oasis Brings Tiki Tranquility to San Antonio’s River Walk

Robert H. H. Hugman is the father of San Antonio’s River Walk. The architect first designed a plan to beautify and fortify the flood-prone city in the late ‘20s, and oversaw its eventual construction in 1938. All those arch bridges and scenic staircases you’ll find on the River Walk today? Hugman had the idea. He wasn’t able to complete the job—petty local politics made sure of that—but today Hugman is remembered as the man who gave San Antonio one of its two most beloved attractions. (I mean, c’mon, that’s the one fight the Alamo will always win.) So when enterprising locals decided to open a new tiki bar on the River Walk decades later, they decided to pay tribute to the man whose ingenuity made it popular: they named the place Hugman’s Oasis.

Hugman’s Oasis has held down a corner of the River Walk since April 2021, and it’s impossible to miss. Torches decorated with skulls overlook the river from the bar’s patio, with thatched roofs covering wicker furniture. If you stumble upon it at night, it feels almost otherworldly—a dangerous outpost of a vicious past in modern day Texas. Around the corner two palm trees bend inwards to form the first A on the Hugman’s Oasis sign, with more skulls and colored lights right next to the entrance. This is a great introduction for a tiki bar, setting the tone before you even get inside.

The fantastic decor continues once through the door. This oasis is decked out with Polynesian-themed masks, a seating area that feels like you’re in a thatched gazebo even though you’re indoors, colored lighting on every shelf behind the bar, and a display on the back wall that evokes the flow and feel of a waterfall using rockwork and colored lights. Hugman’s hits that right pitch of exotic design within a subdued atmosphere that makes tiki bars so calming, and it does it with a minimum of kitsch. Disney’s influence on the modern tiki scene is controversial among many tiki fans, and Hugman’s navigates those waters delicately; it has an eye for immersive design that resembles Disney’s best work, but without the divisive gimmicks and overwhelming details of Trader Sam’s. I wouldn’t call it “restrained”—restraint isn’t something you typically associate with tiki bars—but it’s not as cartoonish or overladen as these places often get. 

It’s good that Hugman’s is such an inviting space, because you’re gonna want to drink its drinks. Hugman’s doesn’t have the deepest drink menu—when I was there it had five “originals” and seven classics on the menu—but it certainly makes them up right. The originals include liquors you’d expect from Texas—tequila, mezcal—but also the kind of rum-heavy cocktails tiki is known for. The Texas Tornado, with its blend of three rums, passionfruit, lemon and bitters, is a delicious and richly intoxicating tiki-style concoction (pour one out for Kerry Von Erich, Freddy Fender, and/or Doug Sahm), whereas the Sneaky Pete is akin to a rum old fashioned, with two rums, sugar, and lime instead of an orange peel. (It’s not related to the more common Sneaky Pete cocktail.) Hugman’s also serves up a mean and fairly accurate Mai Tai (no pineapple here), along with a stiff Zombie. And yes, it has some fantastic branded mugs you can buy.

Hugman’s also has a spare but enticing menu of small plates. True tiki heads will probably go for the spam musubi or crab roll with Thai chili, but it also has an interesting dish that combines tiki’s Asian influences with Hugman’s Texan pedigree. The brisket egg roll is what it sounds like: an egg roll with Texas brisket inside, along with pickled collards and queso asadero. The kitchen closes before the bar, though, and sadly I wasn’t able to get a food order in before that happened. All the more reason to go back at some point.

My only complaint with Hugman’s, from a tiki perspective, might have something to do with the night I was there. I dropped in on the Friday night before Halloween, after San Antonio’s Day of the Dead River Parade. San Antonio goes all out this weekend, both with early Halloween celebrations and Dia de los Muertos festivities throughout the city. The River Walk was crowded, and so was Hugman’s. And maybe that’s why they were playing a soundtrack of pop and dance songs instead of the kind of music you hope to hear at a tiki bar. It actually sounded like two employees were fighting over the playlist that night; after a solid stream of dance music it would start playing a punk song that would suddenly cut after a minute, only to be replaced with more pop. Hugman’s gets so much right about the tiki experience, but music is one of the most crucial elements for me, and it was disappointing to see (or hear) Hugman’s default to a more general audience playlist. Again, this might just have been the case on a busy, hard partying holiday weekend, but either way a more Polynesian playlist would’ve really tied a bow on the whole evening.

The music situation is a big deal for me, but it’s the only wrong note Hugman’s hit during my evening there. Everything else about it is what you hope to find in a tiki bar, and the inherently exotic location—it feels like some kind of mysterious hideout in a forgotten cave right off the river bend—gives it a step up over most tiki bars when it comes to immersion. If you’re ever in San Antonio, make sure to spend a night at Hugman’s Oasis.

Senior editor Garrett Martin writes about videogames, comedy, travel, theme parks, wrestling, and anything else that gets in his way. He’s also on Twitter @grmartin.