Aloha!

The Mai Kai Restaurant was built through the summer of 1956 and opened to the public on December 28th of that same year. When it opened it was unlike any place Florida had ever seen. It included a dining room that seated nearly 200 people, a bar shaped like an oversized surfboard, and both indoor and outdoor gardens that are so lush and dense that the feeling of being transported to a far-off exotic land is so complete you really don't ever want to leave.

The entire restaurant is decorated with both and old and new items. Most of the older items placed in and around the restaurant are genuine Oceanic artifacts collected by Bob and Jack Thorton from many trips throughout the Pacific Islands.

It was realized very quickly that the South Florida weather was going to exact a heavy toll on most of the artifacts placed in the outdoor gardens. Heavy rains, hot summer sun, a variety of insects including three kinds of termites, were all going to work together to make maintaining the tikis a full time job. Then someone had a great idea. Why not take the existing tikis and make rubber molds of them so new ones could be made as the existing ones 'died.' So, during the 1972 expansion and remodel that is exactly what was done. Most of the tikis in the outdoor gardens, and a few from the inside, took their baths in rubber molding compound.

Flash forward to late 2005. During the preparations for the 50th anniversary of the Mai-Kai and the 5th Annual Hukilau, a casual trip to the Mai-Kai warehouse turned up some odd-looking 'tikis' in the very back under a very healthy protective coating of dust. Will Anders was part of that fateful trip into the warehouse and realized what the strange looking items were: the 1972 vintage rubber molds.

A truck is procured and several trips to the Mai-Kai warehouse, several trips to some local home improvement stores, and what would wind up being close to a ton of concrete later a small army of tikis was taking shape. Will very quickly realized that he had made more tikis than he could paint and deliver as the level of work required to make a concrete tiki look like the original wood tiki takes a bit more than a "couple of coats of paint."

The solution came during a casual gathering of South Florida Ohana at the Mai-Kai. While ooh'ing and ahh'ing over Will's work the conversation turned to how to make the concrete look less like concrete and more like wood that has been in the gardens forever. Honui Moai Stumpgrinder, the local Queen of the Faux Finish, offered some ideas and Will Anders extended an invitation to her and the Gumbo Limbo Chapter of the Fraternal Order of Moai to gather at his place and work on the remaining tikis.

The first round of newly decorated tikis was so well received by the Mai-Kai that the Gumbo Limbo Chapter was asked to take on more work in the gardens and given for the most part carte-blanche to paint and finish all of the concrete tikis in the outside gardens. Soon after the members of the chapter gathered at the restaurant on a Sunday afternoon to work on a dozen existing tikis which had to be painted, distressed, colored, and generally given an appropriate patina of age in a half day. Members of the Mai-Kai family joined in to help with the work, even the littlest ones.

General Manager Kern Mattei kept a close eye on the work and ensured good progress by providing the crew with food from the lunch served to the restaurant staff (chili dogs!) and since working in the hot sun and eating is a sure way to work up a thirst a jug of Rum Barrels arrived also.

Honui Moai Loki summed up the day nicely, "It is a Sunday afternoon. We are wearing shorts in the winter. We have a bunch of friends with us and are in the Mai-Kai gardens. And we had chili dogs and Rum Barrels for lunch. It's Heaven!"

Be sure to to visit the Mai-Kai gardens the next time you are in sunny Florida and don't be surprised if you find the Moai of the Gumbo Limbo Chapter chatting in the Molokai bar.

Keep the torches burning,

— Tagata Maori Rogorogo