 Okay, we're back for a while. How do you like my hat, Ray? It looks wonderful. Yeah, that's Ray Tsuchiyama. He's an informed citizen. And we're here in life after Statehood, examining the sea changes around us here in Hawaii. And we're trying to make connection with them, not only inside but outside. And Ray and I get into these fabulous, really fabulous conversations about it. So today we're showing it on the wall about food. And what we're calling is the assimilation of ethnic foods in Hawaii. And just in the run-up here over the past five minutes, I have learned so much from Ray about this. So let me tell you my opening story. So I get here on October 1st, 1965. And I'm fascinated with this Japanese girl who runs the speed teller office in the bank of Hawaii on Kapiolani Boulevard. She's very friendly. And I said, oh, wow, maybe she'll go out with me. So with my deposit slip, I put a little note on it. And I said, would you have dinner with me? And she passed the note back. She said, I'm sorry. I don't have dinner with Holly boys. But then she smiled. And she said, but I'll have lunch with you. And I'm ready. She's very ethnically Japanese. I figure I'm going to have a Japanese lunch. No, not a chance. It was Korean lunch. And from that date of this, I've always noticed that my wife really likes Korean food, even though she was raised in a house that was all Japanese food. So they had a lot of contact with plantation and they came from Kauai, the plantation's there. And I never could figure that out. But it's a phenomenon to observe that she likes Korean food a lot. Even though her house or home was all around Japanese food. Would you explain that to me, Ray? It's probably because she found it very exotic. And you say that she grew up on Kauai. I bet there were no Korean restaurants on Kauai when she was on the plantation camp there. And in the mid-60s, there were probably only a few. And when we mentioned Kapilani, that was the ground zero for Korean restaurants. That's right. There weren't restaurants. There weren't popcorn in Waianae or in Kahuku or whatever, or in Kauai. They started out where Korean immigrants kind of clustered about. And it's like clustering where you can buy your materials. So there would be stores selling Korean items that you could source them into restaurants. And so there was this synergy. And they could also attract Korean customers. But also outsiders. And unless you attract outsiders, outside of your small category, you do not succeed in Hawaii. Right. You have to do that. You have to do the assimilation. You have to be magnetic in some way. And yet, you know, back then, Okaziya was very popular. The plurality of people that I knew anyway were Japanese. If you go to the military base, I was a military at the time, you wouldn't find Okaziya at all. You'd find steak and potatoes, and that was like separate. And it didn't come together. They had the Smogolian Barbecue Affair, though. I don't know if you've ever been involved in this, where they'd throw you all the food and then they'd cook it up for you. And I thought that was, God, I don't know where they got that from, but that was pretty interesting. So we had a coming together. And then all of a sudden, one day, in Aina Hine, it was, McDonald's pops up. I guess that was in the late 60s, early 70s. And now we had our first McDonald's. It was spectacular, you know, successful. Everybody came from miles around. Because Hawaii is all about early adopters, right? Everybody wanted to adopt McDonald's. That, to me, was a bad day. Sorry, Ray. I didn't like that at all. I wanted to retain the Okaziya here. So that was sort of the beginning of the end, if you will. But you may say that we became part of the real America. People want that. But you have to remember that McDonald's is in Paris. It's in Tokyo. It's in Iceland, probably. So it's not like it's quintessentially American. It's not a global brand. It's like Coca-Cola. Like many other Kentucky fried chickens and so forth. I ate Kentucky fried chicken in Beijing, for example. And they loved it. You know, Chinese loved it also, in Taiwan and so forth. But when it came, I think it accelerated the decline of local kinds of restaurants. I don't see any more. There's one or two on Nuwano Street. And the rest are gone. They used to be part of every neighborhood in urban Honolulu. You're absolutely right. And the old-time equivalents, local equivalents, like the Kennes, that just closed this door after decades there in Kalihi. And others are, like you said, Jolly Rogers and so forth. But they were like kings. And there's on Dillingham and there were others near the airport. And it was like, you know, when it came back to Hawaii, that was the only place they could go home to because they weren't in the mainland. As opposed to El-Nail, that's not only here in Hawaii, but you can get a piece of home in Seattle or Vegas or Oakland. Well, let's focus on El-Nail for a minute. You know, they have been remarkably successful, at least as successful there as here on the mainland. But what is, is that an assimilated menu? Or is that a Filipino menu? Or is it Japanese? What is it? Is it everything? I think it's quite a fusion menu. It kind of is the next level from the Jolly Rogers menu, if you can say, you know, if it's generation one. And then the second one is El-Nail. I mean, I don't know what's going to come in the third generation, but it kind of bases a lot of the hamburgers with a twist, like teriyaki, you know, beef or teriyaki chicken, for example. Or it provides, you know, kind of a French fries, a certain sauce and so forth. So you can see that it's an exotic experience for people on the mainland also, not only, you know, just local people who happen to be living there. Another food we have developed over the years, let's dwell on that for a minute, has been for the benefit of the tourist market. It has not been, you know, necessarily an assimilation of local foods. It has been the conversion of local foods, for example, Roy's. Roy's, you know, popular, and it's got great taste and all this. And Wong, Alan Wong, those are, you know, defined for the benefit of the, and of course local people go to that because they think it's way high, but the reality is it's not really localist fusion. Right, right, right. So there's like high level influences of Japanese, Korean and Chinese cooking, along with basic, you know, the roasts and chickens and so forth of American or Western cooking. You're correct. But that really took off in the late 90s into the 2000s. That was a revolutionary kind of genre, as we can say. It went into, you know, like the Vegas's and, you know, high dining kind of urban setting. So they exported a kind of culinary cooking style. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it really suggests that we need to look at Hawaii in a global context when it comes to food because, as you said before the show, people do not come to Hawaii necessarily for food. And if they do, they're coming for some national or rather international brand. For example, recently on Oahi Street in that New Howard Hughes project, they opened Nobu's. Nobu's was invented in New York City, right here. That's right. And it's very good. You know, it's really excellent. It's a global taste. It's one of my favorite restaurants in the world ever. But the reality is it doesn't come from here and if people come here to find great food, they're looking for great food that came from somewhere else. I mean, that's a copy of fusion food from somewhere else. And also, the class or type or category of tourism has changed. Remember, up to the 60s or early 70s, there were still people who dressed up for dinner in Waikiki. It went to Kamlas, right? Yes. Kamlas was the highest expression of fine dining. And then, when people who lived in New Water and Malno wanted to go to find that in place, they went to Kamlas. And remember, it's exotic experiences. The waitresses wore kimono. It was, you know, grilling lobster and steak and ribs and so forth. But still, the pretension was that you were an exotic Asian locale or Kamlas. But speeding up to today, those types of visitors are gone. You have mass tourism. They want to get in and then have enjoy themselves and eat cheaply. They want to go to Denny's factory. They make more money per square foot than Louis Vuitton. So they go to the fast foods. They change the chilies, you know, the chain Mexican or whatever. And of course, for people who live in Malno or Nuanu or Hawaii, getting into Waikiki is a pain. It's no longer an exotic experience. It is experience not worth taking, you know, because of the parking and so forth. So look at the change within dining just in 20, 30 years. Yeah, and it's too bad because, you know, I mean, I harken back to the good old days when we had all these food influences from all these places, coming off the plantations, coming out of Asia, coming out of the mainland. And we could have had real fusion food. We could have had food that was a conglomeration and we just didn't do that. For example, if you went out for Korean food, it would be Korean food. It would be not Korean Japanese food. Korean food. If you went out for Japanese food, you get Japanese food. And that's still the case today in local restaurants. It's one or the other, but it's not necessarily a combination. And some of them succeeded really well. I don't think Filipino food has extended beyond the Filipino community. There's others. Thai came here. It has been fantastically successful, even though the ties are not part of the same plantation history of Hawaii. Well, you go back to, say, New York City. What took over New York City was the day. And then they came from, you know, Russian, Eastern, European, you know, culinary tradition there. And remember, they had these series of commercials. You don't have to be Jewish to eat and live. I remember. I remember. Then he goes and whatever. And so they enlarged their, you know, their category, their customer base exponentially when they did that. So Chinese, Irish, Japanese, African-American all ate at the deli. And that became a national phenomenon. You know, delis are everywhere in the world now. But not here. There's one deli that I can tell you about. That's true. And a friend of mine went to Nathan's. Oh, yeah. And he said, I want to open a Nathan's Deli with the Frankfurters and all that on Waikiki Beach across from Cahuillo Beach. I want to make the biggest deli you ever saw in Hawaii right here. And they said, we're not going to talk to you about a million dollars, but a million dollars on the table. That was the end of that. You know, there was a bunch of delis in Alamo on a center for a time, and there's one on Cook Street now, so arguably that's a classical deli. But it's not much. It hasn't really... There was a guy, there was a stockbroker, Ted Jung was his name, and he owned, it was a Chinese stockbroker. He owned Nathan's at the corner of a hotel and a fish shop, which I remember. It failed. It was... Nobody was interested in deli. So although deli is great food, it doesn't fit the local palate, and nobody's going to come here for it. And so we have certain foods that have been excluded, you know, from the channel of food in Hawaii. I find that interesting. There are rules, you know. We can have this, but not that. And Thai, plus the Vietnamese restaurants have flourished, because, you know, when you put together, it's very healthy, plus it's very cheap when you look at it. And it's like a lot of red vegetables. So it fit the times. It fit the times. It's no longer meat and potatoes, fried chicken kind of population anymore. The young people go for pho, you know, for pho. Yeah. I think that would be popular going forward. But then take a look at the steakhouses. We've had an enormous number of steakhouses, and I think they feed the tourist economy. People want to have a fancy meal, they want to spend a lot of money, they're on vacation and all that. So you get mortons. Oh, there they are. Highs, you know, like a key. And you get, what's the other one in Kaka Ako there? Ruth Chris. Ruth Chris. They're still going strong. They're going strong. In a culture that we think will eat less meat, but yet they're going strong. You're exactly right. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, there's no real rhyme or reason about it, right? That makes it so interesting. I was telling you the story of sadhas on Makalore Street. So Wali Fugiyama, you know, great lawyer for a long time in this city. U.H. region for many years. U.H. region, yeah. And he was the king of torts, and a great law firm for a long time. And he had Japanese clients who came from Japan, and he took them to sadhas, and sadhas featured modern Japanese sushi that was still alive. It was still alive. You went in there and you watched the thing vibrate, you know, and everybody really loved that because it was so interesting and exciting to watch you eat your food alive. I don't think that's popular anymore. Oh, no, it's still in Japan. I like it. So where do you think it's going to go? I'm going to make that a cliffhanger. We'll take a short break. When we come back, we're going to examine where all these sadhas are going and what we can expect in the future. Okay. Wali Fugiyama, informed citizen about food too. You'll see. Hi. I'm Cheryl Crozier-Garcia, the host of Working Together on Think Tecawaii. Join us every other Tuesday from 4 p.m. to 4 30 when we discuss the impact of change on employees, employers, and the economy. Hello. I'm Dean Nelson, host of Planet of the Courageous. From a Tibetan point of view, we chose to be on this planet because we enrolled in a sort of graduate school for courage. Just that we may have chosen this adventure is a leap of logic. The question is, how do we spend and make sense of this precious human life? We are, as a species, extraordinarily successful, dominating the planet and now with planetary size problems that our existence itself has created. It takes courage to face not only the uncertainty of life, but also the challenge of sustaining this gift of life for future generations. Join us every Monday at 3 p.m. on Think Tecawaii. Aloha. Okay, thank you for that picture of food. So the question is, is live sushi really okay? Because if it's live, it's got to be fresh, and if it's fresh, it's going to be healthy, it's not going to make you sick, except for that special puffer fish. And people still pass away, one or two per year, so you have to be careful. Well, why do you do that? Can you get that here? Can you get Fugu here? I don't think so. You have to be specially trained in Japan to be certified, because if you have one drop of the toxin that gets in the flesh, and then you intake it, you do pass away. Let's talk about exotic food. That is really exotic. Oh, what a way to go. There was a big Kabuki player, I think, who really passed away, but he loved Fugu, so that was the way to go. So is it locked for the future, or are we going to be in a cheesecake factory instead? What's going to happen here? I mean, we've got to satisfy the tourist taste, we have to satisfy the local taste, but the local taste is changing, I think, into the tourist taste, and the old Okazuya, the old exotic is, I guess, less popular, less interesting, and as the generations pass, we're not going to see such exotic food anymore, yeah? Let's take it this way. What's the, how do people cook, or how do people look at dining, I guess? You got to look at that. People don't go out for fine dining French food anymore. It's very rare. They're rare times, right? Yeah, remember? There were so many restaurants. Michel, I remember, Michel. Yeah. There were so many French restaurants, in fact, one is still going to Storwin, Waikiki, and then you have things made at your table, all the salads, and all kinds of things. So it's a show. Much like Benihana is a show, in a Japanese sense, but you know, the French restaurant is there also, and the Flambé, and the fire, and so forth, cheese jubilee, and so forth, of course, or baked Alaska, those are shows, but that's not a big thing anymore. People are still interested in health, you know, really eating more and more, young people. It's not so heavy anymore. I think it's going to smaller portions, more portions, more, you know, kind of like sharing kind of dishes that continues. I think one trend that I've seen the last decade, the Izakaya, and Izakaya is a Japanese restaurant with small dishes, you know, yakitori, the chicken, stir-fries, little tofu, lala salsimi. Like the Indonesian restaurants. Yeah. That's really good dishes, yeah. And that's very much a Japanese tradition, very recently to Hawaii, but there's a lot of young people who like that, with a lot of people together. Korean food used to be a very basic, you know, yakini-ku style, but they're introduced to a lot more vegetable and seafood, so that's a change, even within Korean cooking. And then you have, well, you know, restaurants, I think, will be, like Pigeon Lady, for example, in Chinatown, was a very revolutionary kind of thing, because they introduced some traditional Vietnamese cuisine with French, and the Andamerican, they kind of mashed it together, and made it kind of a new cooking experience, so a dining experience. So you have, you know, French puff pastry, and so forth, with pho, there's noodles, and you have all kinds of pork dishes, and pâtés, and so forth, that's very French. But when I was in Vietnam, I used to eat pho with a baguette and French wine, bourgeoisie. So that is, you know, something that I think Hawaii people would enjoy, also. So, and I think there's going to be more upscale Chinese restaurants. Remember, it was a Chinatown kind of, you know, experience. And now, with one in the international market place, Yau Cha, and others were coming, really upscale dim sum kind of places. So that will be a change, because I think there's more Chinese from the mainland who miss that. There's one place in 808 near Keomoku that features Sichuan cooking, Chengdu restaurant. We need more of that. Yeah, and that's very unusual. It's almost all mainland Chinese who were eating that all the night, and it's quite spicy and, you know, a lot of peppers and so forth. But that is unusual, because the Chinese cooking in Hawaii was all Southern Chinese, you know, Guandung province style. So that's the change. So there's several trends happening. Perhaps in the future, maybe there'll be Zabar's West, you know why, you know, Upper West Side comes to, you know, Manoa. But you're right, there's no community. It's very hard to get that going and so forth. But on the fast food, yeah, that will still be popular and even more popular. There's, you know, the inner core of Honlulu just is full of fast food restaurants. I mean, and it's sad because that's all that's going to be. It's true. So many people eat so many meals at fast food restaurants, and it's just corn syrup, is what it is, the whole thing. And it's really too bad. And I would go back to the time, you know, and the plantations, the time, say, before statehood, and say, you know, we didn't have great food then. We had ethnic food, but we didn't have great food. Nobody was into building a great restaurant. Candleston, you know, would be an exception, but most restaurants were not really fabulous. And we didn't have that aspiration of building great restaurants. And now we find that in the world today, people are interested in building great restaurants. You can make a lot of money building a great restaurant, but it's happening elsewhere, not necessarily here. We're importing. So what I'm thinking, when I'm thinking, right, I'm interested in what you thought about it, is that if we get great food, I mean, really great world-class food that will attract people, they'll come here for the food. It'll be food from somewhere else. It'll be restaurant concept from somewhere else. But you know, who could do it? We have all these millennials, young entrepreneurs here, who are creative and innovative and, you know, they like to discover things. And restaurants are the most wonderful platform for discovering things. They could do that. They could adopt, you know, like the pig and the lady. They could adopt new concepts. And they could build restaurants that would attract people far away. It would not be the fusion that we've been waiting for. It would not be the Ocasio that has come current. It would be from somewhere else, but it would attract people from everywhere. What do you think? I think so. I was giving a talk at Shadler the other day and met this student who was a business student, but he was thinking of launching a truck, you know, a little mini restaurant on wheels. Oh, sure. So that is... A food truck idea. Yeah, a food truck is a first step in going to a restaurant business. The restaurant business attracts a lot of people who are young and driven. And they... We have some great culinary programs. Scopulani has one. Of course, they're building the... You know, what was the Canon Club? The new... Oh, really? We're trying to build that for years. Maui College is a very good culinary program. Leeward has this restaurant, again, a culinary program. So there are a lot of teaching restaurants in the works here. And they have a lot of ideas. But as you know, opening a sustaining restaurant is hard. It's a challenge. It's a whole new ladder into which you pour money, and then you wind up going bankrupt anyway. It's a 24-7 job. And, you know, Honolulu Magazine does a great job of, you know, reviewing restaurants. But a lot of them just can't be sustainable. Yeah. Some that emerge out, they can, you know, they can kind of push their brand. So it's not just the food, it's the business and building a brand. What is L&L's, that term, is a brand. That's worth a lot of money. It's like a Coca-Cola, a micro Coca-Cola. So they have to understand how to create a community on Facebook, have, you know, people who visit their restaurant, they have glowing reviews, get it up to other states, and then you kind of launch. Right. And the problem, I think, for restaurants here, these startup restaurants, the ones that are innovative and, you know, fresh, is it's hard to get a location. You want to go to Alamo One, it's going to cost you a lot of money to be there. Or any shopping center. You really got to get out, but getting out is very hard because the real estate economy doesn't support a restaurant. And so, I mean, I would make a call to all landlords out there, why don't you support local restaurants? Give them parking. Right. Give them an opportunity to create a restaurant that would compete with what's in the shopping centers. Because the shopping centers do not, you know, provide quality food usually. And we have to do that as part of growing tourism, of keeping tourism global in Hawaii. And some very local places still attract, but you have to find them. Ethos in Kalihi, for example, it's going strong for decades, and it's hard to get parking, but people are still attracted to their, you know, value for money over there. But it's like you say, location is everything, you know. I'm not going to Kalihi for dinner at the night, it's going to be tough. But in Kakaako, Alamo One, the rents are sky high. It's really, really hard for a person starting out to really launch a restaurant. But I'm really, you know, happy that things are happening in Chinatown. It's a revival going on. You know, when I was a kid, it was the worst place to go to. Now, it's a hub of energy restaurants and bars. Restaurants included. Yeah. And some of the food is excellent there. And we go there all the time. But let me ask you this. If I gave you money, if I gave you money, investors say, who are willing to put a million dollars down for a restaurant, what would you, what would you build, Ray? And where would you build it? Do you give us some thoughts about that? Yes. If I had money to burn, I would build a restaurant in Waikiki Hawaiian food with local Hawaiian music and promote young artists and expose them because there is no place to hear really good Hawaiian music in Waikiki. That's the most bizarre thing that you heard of. It used to be the Kodakula show years and years ago until, you know, the mayor put it back. But when you think about it, there's no kind of small play, and then you hear really good music, and you have Hawaiian food, and you have an entree to Hawaiian culture and tradition. That's what's missing. You know, the brothers' cousin Mary did that, you know, at their dinner shows at the Rahuwan. And my mother-in-law really loved it from Japan. And I think that's a linkage, have a mini, micro, merry monarch every night with excellent food. Yeah. And what kind of food exactly? Well, it'll be, you know, a blend of Hawaiian food plus some Japanese Chinese food. Oh, a whole food. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A whole food. Yeah, yeah. And serve it all. Yeah. But it'll be really good sourced with local, you know, vegetables and meats and fish and so forth. So it promotes Hawaii. Yeah. So you eat it a familiar fish, something from Alaska or, you know, a line of grocery. Right. It's kind of local. That's right. That's right. We've got to show up for it. Well, yeah, but it's just local sourced, great, you know, materials, sourcing. And that you have a venue for local culinary, you know, graduates. Right. Right. Art, music. That's right. That's right. You're making me more hungry than I've been in a long time. That's why Tsuchiyama informed citizens here on Life After Statehood, the assimilation of ethnic foods in Hawaii. We're not done. We'll be back.