 Okay. Welcome to Life After Statement on ThinkTech. I'm your host, Jay Fidel. Our show today is called Food in Hawaii, and we're going to talk about how Hawaii has—weather Hawaii has become an eater's paradise. We're going to address the issue of whether, you know, we have done what we should have done about food. We have lots of food, but our food and dining facilities may actually be not as good as we would like. If you want to ask a question, participate in discussion on this show. You can tweet us at thinktech.hi or call us at 415-871-2474. Our guest today is, of course, our informed citizen, Ray Tsuchiyama. So, with our diversity and our tourism, we have had the opportunity to become a global paradise in food. Are we that now, Ray? And if not, what should we do about it? Great question, because we think that we live in a food paradise, and we think that we have the world's greatest cuisine, but rarely do we hear about friends or tourists come here because of the food when you think about it. Yeah, they come here because of the beaches, the clean air, the exotic culture, but rarely you hear that, well, I'm here because of the world-class gourmet cooking or the foods of Asia reinterpreted in a way that exceeds Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, London, Paris, even Miami or Vegas. I mean, when you think about Las Vegas, that has transformed into a gourmet paradise. Indeed, I was there recently and I agree with you. Not only is it gourmet, it's relatively inexpensive gourmet. How about that? Well, they subsidize it so that, you know, for a cheap buffet under $20, probably, they draw you into the casino. And so it is one of the draws that they have and the shows itself. So there's not only dining culture and then gambling to really draw people in. You're absolutely right. And is it that costs, you know, effective to eat in Hawaii? Not really. Not really for the cost performance, like, you know, or return an investment on food. It's, you know, the quality of a Big Mac is more like the same as the U.S. or hamburgers and so forth. And it's quite expensive when you think about it. Yeah. Well, I went to lunch today at a downtown restaurant and this hasn't happened to me regularly, but they, I'm not going to mention the name because my comments are unkind, but they charged me $5 for a little glass of orange juice that big. And I walked out of the place and I said, you guys are really over the top. I don't know what it is. I feel that sense of victimization here about the $5, you know, and of course, and I'll go back and I'll have to pay $5 again. But you know, the problem is that it goes back to the rude problem that land is too expensive relative to all of the things and restaurants have to have space. It's a facility which requires space and they have to make a profit or at least stay above water. And so they got to push the price up and they got to, you know, push the expenses down in order to stay alive. And that has affected the ability of, you know, of the, what do you want to call it, the young entry into food. I don't like the Brooklyn not too long ago. You know, and Brooklyn, there's a renaissance in downtown Brooklyn, you know, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, all that overlooking the. You're talking about justification also, right? Yes, right. Well, you know, these old restaurants have become new restaurants. Young people have gotten involved, they spend some money, they make them beautiful, and they make the food the best in the world they can make. It is worth walking over the Brooklyn bridge to get there, you know, walking a mile, I'd walk a mile for a different meal, a good meal. And that's what they have in Brooklyn. So we could have done that. We could, young people could have done that, but they haven't done it. They can't afford the rent for one thing, but there must be other reasons. What do you think? That's a very good question. But again, you have to look at the market of customers, right? And of course, you go to big supermarkets, you go to Costco's. What do you see there? You see families buying huge amounts of food. What are they going to do with it? They cook it on the beach, they have parties at home. Is Hawaii really a go out to eat at a nice restaurant or, you know, gourmet cooking or really exploratory culture? Or are we really conservative eaters and really eat the things that we grew up with in more quantity sometimes? Or what we see as comfort foods. I mean, the word is comforting to yourself, and that is comforting to one's family and so forth. And in New York, you have restaurants and cuisines from every place in the world, from Italy to Ethiopia to Japan. In fact, there's better Japanese restaurants in New York than in Tokyo because the palates of New Yorkers are so refined that they know and it's not the more expensive places. It's hot dogs and pretzels and even the halal guys on, you know, by 52nd Street and 67th Street. Oh, they're fabulous. They wait around the block for that. Landlords actually build benches outside their properties so people can sit and eat from the halal guys. And they're kind of like franchises. They have halal trucks, halal boy trucks all over New York City and there's Ethiopian restaurants and so and Nepalese. And so there's explosion why there's also immigrants. Immigrants coming to New York and they're at the, you know, ground level. It used to be taxicaps, right? They really get going in some extent. It is. And it's, like I said before, it's easy to find somebody who speaks English, you know, in Amsterdam than in New York City. But again, restaurants are a key to really becoming, you know, chasing the American dream. And I think in New York, people go all the way to find, you know, oh, did you hear the one about the, you know, Upper West Side or the new place in Berlin or, you know, I have only pizza in, you know, in Williams or whatever, Winston or South Bronx or something. They, everybody has a secret place that nobody else knows where they go to. A black book of restaurants. That's right. And they have, of course, Michelin of Three Star, Four Star. They're very high up there. And they're very explorative people. And our Hawaiian residents, people really that exploratory, innovative. And I would say no. I think they're into routine. You go to the same restaurant over and over. You make friends with the owner and get a, you get a, you know, a big hello when you walk in or whatever. And you go there again and again. On Tuesdays, we go to this place. And on Thursday, we go to this place. But you know, I think it's an interesting question about volume versus quality. You know, Sam Choi was a good example of, you know, the, what do you call it? The big plate full of, oh, you know, it's a big plate full of food. It was an egg and a hamburger. Oh, Locomoco. Locomoco, right? And, you know, tons of food in Kona, he had a restaurant, tons of food in all these restaurants. Here, tons of food. But, you know, in terms of quality, it was not quality. It was quantity. And, you know, you got to, you got to bargain. Likewise, people go to Costco, you know, and buy huge volumes of, that doesn't mean when they get home, they're going to make something beautiful, they're probably not. But, you know, I'm conflicted on that because there's a lot of restaurants in town, little wee restaurants, a lot of Asian restaurants, particularly, where people go all the time, they don't have to go to Costco. There must be a tension on that. You know, sort of a competition about people who want to go buy lots of food at Costco and tank up, you know, and then people who know they don't want to do that, they want to go to their favorite Asian restaurant and eat just, you know, just Asian food quietly in the restaurant. I think it's going back to 2080 rule. 20% of those people will go to 80% of the time to these restaurants. And any person, people really don't go out that much. And, you know, you, of course, can mingle and be part of a culture of people who really try restaurants and go to Italian or Chinese or Vietnamese or whatever, or Japanese restaurants. But a lot of people, like my parents, I'll give you an example, were very reticent to try new places, very, very reticent. But you're correct about the airport. They liked the airport restaurant for some reason. They loved the coffee there. Oh, I remember back when, yeah. They loved the coffee there. And... Oh, something exciting about the place, too, was in the airport, right? But there weren't that many growing up in the 60s. There weren't that many Japanese restaurants. You would expect that sushi was all around Hawaii. But no, it came in later in the 80s and 90s. It really exploded. And it came in because the Japanese tourists didn't come in. It wasn't... People here in Hawaii who were Japanese who knew about Japanese food were not out there making fancy restaurants. They weren't doing that. They were... Actually, I think they were trying to get away. They were trying to assimilate. They were trying to, you know, get the Hollywood or something. Then the Japanese came in and spent big bucks and, you know, put these restaurants together. I remember one restaurant on the Maka Loa Street that had fish that was still alive. Do you remember that one? Salas. Salas, thank you. Fish that was still alive. But, you know, that was foreign investment. That was not locally developed at all. And so we didn't participate in a great franchise that we could have participated in. We let other people do it for us. Well, you're correct that, you know, there aren't any Portuguese restaurants. There should be. There are more Hawaiian restaurants. There are very few. Of course, there's some Chinese and, of course, a growing number of Vietnamese and Japanese restaurants. But, you know, you go back to Plantation and we go back to, and there was a great sharing of food and the khao khao tin that people brought to lunch and people brought their own food and they would exchange food. Oh, this is really great. It's interesting. So the evolution of meals and I'll take Thanksgiving as an example. At Thanksgiving, I have a friend who not only loves Turkey, but unless there's noodles there and it's not Thanksgiving. Everything is on the table, yeah? Everything. You know, sashimi has to be there. Plus the turkey and the pumpkin pie. And so that involved the kind of smorgasbord, if I can use that word, at the table for both, you know, for big events like Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's. And, you know, and there's many families that get together and even though the non-Japanese all have sashimi on New Year's, right? So it's a kind of a malgrom of tradition and they see something happening on the other, you know, house. They kind of copy it and so forth. So that kind of involved and it's like religion also. People who are Christian go to Shinto Shrine on New Year's and I'm not Christian, but I go to, you know, Christmas, you know, big thing at the St. Andrews Cathedral. So I think it's a melting pot, but you're right. Even if that's been developed, we haven't refined it. There's no refining what that experience is. We haven't made an attraction out of it, you know. That's the thing. I think food is really an important part of the Hawaii experience. You know, it used to be you got out in the woods, you went to the beach, you hiked on the mountains. Those things are not possible anymore now. It's more like media entertainment, one kind or another, and food. And food is everywhere, but it's not necessarily good food in the restaurants. They're not necessarily vying for your attention. They're not like in Brooklyn, you know, where you put your whole heart and soul into it. And so many of them are with foreign money offshore. You know, recently a Naha was developed on the Hawaii Street there in the Victoria Ward country. And it's right near Kamaké, you remember. And there's a Nobu's in there. It's my favorite taste treat of all restaurants. And my wife and I went and we had some sushi. We had to get through... Obama had just been there, right? So it was crowded. Everybody was attracted to it. And we had to sit at the sushi bar. And we had a moderate amount of sushi, 200 bucks. And I'm saying to myself, you know, okay, we got homeless a block away. We got an apartment in that building for $100 million, so maybe $95. And we got sushi that cost 200 bucks. This is really not part of an experience that most people in Hawaii really have any contact or need for. And I'm thinking, gee, why don't we have a local Nobu's? Why don't we have some... even copy Nobu's, you know? It's okay. Come up with some really good Japanese food. But that really isn't happening. Even the tea houses, which used to be so really exquisite. There's only one left that I know of. That's the only one. We could have developed that. Maybe we still can. You know, all these kids talking about agriculture and diversified agriculture and trying to build farms. I'm not sure there's a lot of success in that. But what about restaurants, real restaurants, real competitive restaurants? Compete with Nobu's, okay, and charge them only 50 bucks. And a crowd will be to pass to your door, no? There has been one export to the mainland that we can really point out is an entrepreneurial success, L&L. That's true. That went the other way. But that was a franchise. It made a lot of people... It's not gourmet, actually. It's not gourmet. But interesting enough, even 30 years ago, somebody told me that, you know, you take your local mocha and a plate lunch to areas like Seattle, Oakland, L.A., and Connecticut. And when I was in Vegas, I would say, oh, it will fail. But it also aligned with, you know, 60,000, 70,000 former Hawaii residents who fled Hawaii for economic reasons, you know, living in those areas provided a market for Hawaii food that they dreamed about Hawaii. There it is, L&L drive-in. So that went the other way. And oddly enough, it found a market. Yeah. Ray, at this point, I'm getting a little hungry. I got to have a little nosh here. Can we take a one-minute break so I can, you know, replenish? Okay. We'll be right back. Hi, I'm Carol Cox. I'm the new host of Eyes on Hawaii. Make sure you stay in the know on Hawaii. Join us on Tuesdays at 12 noon. We will see you then. Aloha. Okay, we're back. We're live. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Life After Statement with Ray Suchama and me. He's an informed citizen. And we have these moments of nostalgia. And I'm glad to be part of that. We hope you enjoyed our video. Thank you for watching. And we'll see you next time. And, you know, retrospections about what has happened since statehood and where are we now? You know, he who forgets history is bound to relive it. And where we can go? The possibilities, yeah. We had to sort of put this together. We had to, you know, assimilate, synthesize all the elements and influences in Hawaii and the history at least since statehood and try to make something of it. So one of the things is, I remember Jolly Roger in Waikiki on Kawakawa Avenue. They had an outdoor restaurant there. It was so popular, so sweet. You know, part of an outdoor restaurant, Ray. And I'm thinking of Montpellier, France. It's a huge square of outdoor restaurants, right? Like in Europe. Europe where it's cold and windy sometimes. Europe where the weather isn't half as good as ours. They have restaurants outside everywhere. In fact, in New York, it's copying them. Restaurants everywhere. Can you think of a single restaurant in Waikiki that's actually outside? Used to be more than there are now. What happened to us? Yeah, that's a very good question because it really integrates the sidewalk, outside, inside, food and people watching. People watching. Very important. It's an extension of the restaurant to the street. And you're right. In most capitals of Europe, it's standard. It is something that really livens up a place. Now you can look at a restaurant no longer with us. Kyoya, for example, in Waikiki, was very, very much like a fortress. That's true. The architecture was clearly a fortress. But when you went in, you imagined yourself back in Japan or you had Japanese food and so forth. And it was very big for a while. And then nobody really went to Waikiki for high-end dining anymore. That's very true, Ray. It declined in recent years. And that's probably the same process as why movies declined there. It was too hard to get in there. It was too expensive when you got there. And you could find something that would satisfy you. And it was dedicated to the tourists, you know? If a local person feels that a restaurant is dedicated to tourists, he's not going to go maybe once a year for a special occasion. A cheeseburger factory has the highest volume revenues in all the franchises. Right there. It's huge. It doesn't make me want to go. And I think in a prior show, I talked about Catalysts, for example, where Kimono clad the waitresses serving steaks and lobsters. Wow, that's an Asian-Western fusion. It's a tragedy we lost. But it's a very early fusion kind of thing. And then you go in time. There are many interesting kind of architecture like tops, or cocos, you know, the kind of way out, like Flintstone kind of of a Polynesian architecture and so forth. That's, again, that's all gone from Waikiki. So you have a lot of, and I think that's where you went. Change. Yeah, exactly. Importation of brands like the Outbacks and Red Lobsters and so forth and so on in Waikiki. Does make a person from Peoria or, I don't know, feel at home because that's something that they ate on the mainland. Therefore, it must taste the same in Hawaii. And nothing else presents itself. If we had fabulous restaurants here, they might be at home in those two. Do you have to feel a level of confidence and trust before you go and spend a lot of money? You know, Michele's, for example. It's been around a long time, still there. Still around. And again, I can't name another. There's lemayers and so forth, but there's very few, like one hand, a traditional French style, you know, heavy sauce kind of, and you have to wear a jacket kind of place. And that used to be far more prevalent in the 70s into the 80s and it disappeared. That kind of culture is no longer with us. And it's slower dining. You know, things made at your table and, you know, Caesar salads and the cherries flambé and the steak tartare. Wow. That's all gone. That's a kind of a dining experience you have to go to Vegas for. Yeah. Or New York. But you get processed here, like a cheesecake factory. You know, they expect you're going to spend only so much time at the table. Let's go, let's go, let's go. And you feel like you're on a balance sheet somewhere as a profit item. And sorry, but I don't go for that much. So, well, I want to go back to what we're talking about market and, you know, consumer taste and so forth. And the evolution of consumer taste is that I would argue is very conservative in Hawaii. And when restaurants come in and bring a refined taste, refined kind of restaurant, sometimes it just doesn't go over. I'll give you an example. Ichidai in Alamoana. Tempura, all right? In Japan, if you have a sushi place, that's all they serve. Tempura, that's all they serve. Yakitori, that's all they serve. Yeah, specialized. They don't have udon or noodles or whatever. And then we were there recently, my spouse and I, and we discovered that they're serving sushi now. They're serving noodles. And that's what people expect. They expect, and I'm coming to it, a Makai market in every restaurant, where every person in the family can order what they really want to eat. Yeah, right, right, right. That's why Makai market is so successful. It's unbelievably high volume space because at the same table, you can have a pizza, Japanese noodles, curry, and steak right there. And that's what people want. Yeah. And the barrier, of course, is getting there and getting parking and coping with the crowds. But it is very popular. Huge numbers there, huge numbers. So we haven't talked about fast food. I remember, let's see, middle 70s, maybe 75 or so McDonald's. First McDonald's was at Aina Hina, and it's still there. And rebuilt it two or three times, you know? Wow, yeah, it's quite an evolution. And I said, well, you know, what about Okazi? Okazi, what happened to Okazia? This, I prefer the Okazia. Food's healthier and all that. But there's McDonald's and those lines around McDonald's. And there's another one and another one proliferating through the islands. And now it's going to be hugely popular. I'm sure it's more popular than the competitors, Burger King and the like and Taco Bell and what's the other one, whatever. But fast food has a huge foothold in Hawaii. Now this is kind of tragic in the sense that we have a diverse cultural population. We have diverse, you know, food. We could have diverse food. Instead, we trundle down to McDonald's and have an inordinate number of meals at McDonald's. I'm just saying it's bad. Food's pretty good, actually, considering fast food. But this is not, you know, what we really need to have. We need to preserve the culture. We need to preserve the cultural foods. We need to improve on them instead of, you know, capitulating to mainland processed food and processed menus and all that. And, you know, if you ask me what we need to do here about food, I would say more local food, more organic food, more foods from diversified agriculture, more creative food, Brooklyn style. You know, and let's put it all, as you say, the Thanksgiving dinner. Let's put it all on the table. Let's make Hawaii cuisine completely diverse. And let's make it first class, not only the food, but the service, the presentation, and the facilities. Let's make it world famous. What would you add to that? Well, I think you have to, you're talking about ecosystem. Yes. And where do people go to study culinary arts, community colleges? And I was at UH Maui College for a while, and they have a fantastic class act restaurant there. They serve lunches, I think, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, or at least two, three. It's five-star. It's amazing. And they have students working in the front of the house, of the restaurant, and the back of the business. So that's, they learn how to interact with customers, take orders, finances, and of course how to get all the ingredients together. A lot of things going on. Another place that just opened, the former Canon Club, right? Oh, is that open now? Yeah, it's like, it's shaking down, it's going through trials, and that will be a culinary powerhouse. Who's running it? Kapilani Community College. Oh, it's part of the same school. Exactly, exactly. How excellent. Yeah, so that's a, again, and so, and Leeward also has a restaurant there. adjacent to McKinley High School. Great four or five courses being there. I remember those days, yeah. Right at the corner of Kapilani and Mexico. Yeah, it was very cheap. Professor took me there. It was unbelievable, a French meal. So that's where it all begins. And that's where a lot of people try to go out and apply their skills to really opening the trucks, food trucks, and small restaurants. And food trucks are in the entry way. The entry to... We can't finish this program without talking about food trucks. That's, it's fabulous what happened. Pony asked you, do you know her? No. She's the one who organized the whole food truck experience in the middle of Cacahaco, maybe five, six years ago, and it was just splendid. And all the people came from all over the island, from Kreps to Mexican to everything you want, and some of it was very good. And the problem with food trucks is she tried so hard, they tried so hard to retain a place I'm not sure they had, but we need food trucks. We need them as part of our special culture. Yeah, I'm very big now. In Seattle, Portland, they're part of the landscape of restaurants and food trucks. So they're symbiotic. And then they grow, and then really you open up a brick and mortar place part of it. And the other thing is, of course, where do you get the materials? The vegetables, the meats, and so forth. And coming back, and we can develop another show to this, I think there's been a lack of focus to applying computers, robotics, high-tech ways of growing food, other than putting a seed in the ground. No. In Japan, they have huge hydroponic setups in former semiconductor plants, for example. And they don't use that much water. The problem with agriculture today is water. And it disappears through the sun, through evaporation, many things. So you want to use less water and to measure it through pipes and software and computerization. So that's an area where computer science, robotics, agriculture, tropical, has to really combine forces. It's obvious what we should do. However, the old problem is who moves first. So is it industry? Is it the hotels? I'm not sure the hotels are really motivated for this. They want to serve the tourists, but not the local. They don't care to establish a local restaurant industry, mostly feeding the hotels. I'm not sure it's the Department of Agriculture, because they haven't really done all that much in developing diversified agriculture. They've had a long time since the plantations closed. They've had at least lip service for that, but it hasn't happened. Who is it? Is it the market? Is it you and me? Is it the investors? Investors here or elsewhere who meet these young kids and make them do calculus? You've got to look at not agriculture as a structural model. You have to look at venture capital software and startups as the model for getting this off. This is very ironic. If you go back to the early to mid-90s, David Murdoch was introducing organic vegetables and meats in Coila Lodge. So he was far ahead of his time, and he was attracting people from Silicon Valley who would pay high prices for foods that would be medicine-ly or physically or mentally beneficial to them. You see what I mean? But that was in the 90s. And that's something that he saw for saw coming in the future. And I think that's where we have the carbon niche, that when you come to Hawaii, foods are really good for you physically, mentally, that makes you live longer, detoxify you. 100-year experience. So it's health. It's taste. It's always got to be taste. It's diversity. It's local. But hopefully, it's not too expensive. Everyone can enjoy democratization of food. Maybe you and I should open a restaurant, Ray. You know what they say? Restaurants. And also, there's another part that we can devote another show to is nutrition, education and schools. See, the school lunch in Japan, they publish recipes and parents buy materials because it's so good. And they use locally sourced food. They never use frozen food. They use materials grown in that area. What DO school does that? You see what I mean? And that's the crux of the problem. I think if children learn how to eat really well, that will endure through their adult lives. One last thought and that is I visited the school district in North Kohala and there's a school there, elementary or middle school that's actually doing that. They're growing food. A big garden in the back in North Kohala is really impressive. And the neighbor islands can have their share of this great new thing. That's where it could start. Anyway, Ray, great to talk to you as always. We have to do this again soon. All right. Food is great. Food is great. Thank you, Ray Tsuchiyama, informed citizen on Think Tech. Life after statehood. Thank you very much.