GRAND RAPIDS, MI — When visitors step inside Max’s South Seas Hideaway, a new two-story tiki-themed bar and restaurant opening Saturday in downtown Grand Rapids, they’ll enter an environment designed to evoke a “tropical paradise.”

Hand-carved tiki statues, roughly 200 in all, line the walls. Tropical fish swim in a 500-gallon saltwater aquarium. And palm thatching rests atop custom made tiki lamps that bathe the space in orange, green, teal and blue light.

It’s all part of what co-owners Mark Sellers and Martin Cate call an “immersive” dining experience designed to make customers “forget that the outside even exists.”

“We’ve given a lot of tours to friends of ours, and they usually have the same reaction, which is jaw drop,” said Sellers, the creator of HopCat and Stella’s Lounge. “They’re pretty blown away, and that’s what we hope everybody does.”

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Located at 58 Ionia Ave. SW, the former home of the Waldron Public House, Max’s is the culmination of about two years of work by Sellers and Cate, an award-winning rum and exotic cocktail expert who owns Smuggler’s Cove tiki bar in San Francisco.

The two met a few years back when Cate helped Sellers open Tiki Cat, a tiki bar in the basement of a HopCat restaurant in Kansas City. The two began talking about creating an even larger tiki-themed bar and restaurant and, after settling on Grand Rapids, Sellers began the process of collecting hundreds of pieces of vintage tiki art.

A major score came in fall 2017. Sellers attended the “Art of Tiki” exhibit at the La Luz de Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles with the goal of purchasing 16 vintage tiki railings but instead bought the entire exhibit for $500,000. Many but not all of those pieces are on display at Max’s.

“It’s a labor of love,” said Sellers, who estimates that he spent about $1 million overall on the restaurant’s décor. “It’s a passion. My wife would say it’s an obsession.”

Max’s features three custom bars, several “semi-private” tiki huts, an intimate dining room and two private dining areas. Each area has its own feel, and is marked by names such as Moonlight Harbor and Atomic Lounge. Custom interior design work was completed by tiki artists Bamboo Ben and Notch Gonzalez.

One room on the first floor is marked by a 14-foot tiki head, created with foam, that’s illuminated by purple light and features a small waterfall. Nearby, green ceramic tiles that were once part of a Chinese mansion line the wall.

“People will come here 10 times, and on their 10th visit they’ll say, ‘Was that tiki always here?’” Cate said. “We want to create a lot of endless visual interest to encourage a lot of repeat visits.”

Visitors won’t find any televisions or windows inside Max’s. Cate and Sellers wanted to create a space where it always feels like it’s “twilight,” and where customers are focused on the restaurant’s art and décor rather than a sporting event.

“I think it’s a real opportunity to put the phones down, turn the TVs off, and kind of reconnect and just be with people,” Cate said.

Overall, it cost about $2.5 million to create Max’s. It has seating for about 200 people.

The restaurant features traditional and specialty tiki drinks and cocktails featuring tropical fruits and juices, house-made ingredients and top-shelf rums.

Its food menu was created by chef Joseph Peebles, who most recently served as the executive chef of several restaurants in Palm Beach, Florida. Items include a Pu Pu Platter of shareable Polynesian-inspired appetizers, as well as seafood, dry-aged steaks, desserts, and vegan and vegetarian items.

There’s a story behind many of the items found in Max’s, ranging from 500 tiki mugs on display to the Tapa cloth wall coverings that originated from Tonga, Samoa and Fiji.

In an effort to share those stories, Martin and Cate plan to place bar codes next to many items. Customers can scan those codes with a smartphone, and a webpage will pop up detailing the item.

“This is real artistry,” Cate said. “It takes years of training and skill to produce these pieces.”

While Max’s is slated to open Saturday, other features planned for the restaurant will launch in the future.

The restaurant features its own ceramic studio, where Max’s workers made the appetizer plates and tiki bowls used at the restaurant. Starting next month, Max’s will begin selling custom-designed tiki mugs and other ceramic items to customers.

And in mid-2020, Sellers and Cate plan to open five boutique hotel rooms on the restaurant’s third-floor. The idea is to capitalize upon the tiki-tourists that Sellers says travel far and wide to experience tiki culture.

“There’s a whole culture of people that travel to go to tiki bars,” Sellers said. “Just like people travel to go to comic conventions or Star Wars conventions or any of the other million hobbies that people have.”

This story has been corrected to show that the artist Tiki Diablo did not participate in the restaurant’s design.