Max's South Seas Hideaway

Max's South Seas Hideaway occupies two floors at 58 Ionia Avenue SW in downtown Grand Rapids and was described on opening as the most ambitious tiki bar to open in the Midwest in decades. It is a passion project for three owners with unusually specific credentials: Mark Sellers, the founder of the HopCat beer-bar chain; Martin Cate, the James Beard award-winning author and owner of Smuggler's Cove in San Francisco, generally regarded as the most serious tiki bar in the United States, who built the cocktail program here; and Gecko, a renowned Hawaii-based tiki and Polynesian artist. A team of tradespeople and artists working with local contractors spent months on the build. The result houses one of the largest collections of new and vintage tiki art and memorabilia in the country, spread across two levels designed to read as perpetual twilight, with island-inspired food alongside the drinks.

Tiki is a useful format for non-alcoholic drinking and this bar treats it that way. Rum-forward tropical cocktails are carried by fruit, spice, citrus and texture as much as by spirit, which means a zero-proof version is a genuine drink rather than a diminished one — and Max's keeps a standing Zero Proof section of eight island-themed mocktails rather than improvising on request. The named builds run to the Ginger Zing, the Coconut Mojito, Island Passion, Pomegranate Punch, Cinnamon Splash, Orange Creamsicle, the Pom Pina Colada and a Virgin Pina Colada; earlier menus carried drinks named 5 Spice Makes It Nice, Call Me in the Morning and Mahalo Mint, and the list rotates. Guests who want something simpler can order Brix Sodas, which are made locally with cane sugar and which Experience Grand Rapids singles out. The bar trades 4pm to 10pm Monday through Thursday, 4pm to 11pm Friday, 2pm to 11pm Saturday and 2pm to 10pm Sunday, and takes reservations.