Tiki's Grill & Bar

Just finished another site! Tiki's Grill & Bar down in Waikiki. Prior to working with them I had only one opportunity to eat there. Bad yeah?

But it wasn't because I didn't like it there...but strangely enough local people don't go into Waikiki as often as we should.

Anyway, I've since had the chance to eat there more then once now, no small thanks to the complementary lunches they've given me (THANKS TIKI!!) and I must recommend if you eat there, try the "Grilled Island Mahimahi with Seafood Salsa". That dish is definitely "Broke da mouth". Very delicious.

Anway, check out the site at: http://www.tikisgrill.com

There are still a few things that needs to be worked out on the site. They need to update the shopping cart system with their merchandise, but otherwise I didn't pull any punches with this site. It's got Flash, PHP, e-commerce, a full admin system, & CSS -- all thrown together in this concoction.

Style wise I had fun with this site. Originally I had difficulty figuring out what I'd do with this site. If I show you the original sketch of this design I originally gave Tiki, you'd find it almost looks exactly like this...I came up with this first idea within one hour just drawing out this Tiki character.

Originally I thought I'd go hunt down photography to render out the Tiki along with the torches. Hours of trial and error later it just was not working. I even asked the help of one of my best friends B.D. to help sketch something for me but it still didn't turn out the way I imagined it.

Eventually I stopped fighting...I thought, "Well, if they like my sketch, why change it?". Turns out it works out good. It's kitschy...what I would describe as "intentionally tacky". But that's the spirit of the whole restaurant anyway. So it works out well. Rarely do I get a client that would allow me to fly with some of my own crazy ideas.

So in this project I had 2 best friends help me, and even my sister in Taiwan helped out a little too. In the end, it's all good. I'm very happy with this site.