Hawaiian Style Cafe opens in Tokyo

HILO — Hawaiian Style Cafe’s newest location opened its doors March 31, but you’ll need a plane ticket to get there.

And once you get to Tokyo, take the subway to the upscale Ginza district’s newest shopping center, TokyuPlaza Ginza and head up to the 10th floor.

The name’s a little different — Guy &Jo’s Hawaiian Style Cafe, per a quirk of the licensing agreement — but one look at the menu will let you know you’re in the right place. It’s safe to say there’s no other restaurant in Japan selling 10-inch macadamia nut pancakes.

“They kept the big boys in there, like us,” said Guy Kaoo, who with wife Gina, owns the original Hawaiian Style Cafes on the Big Island. “I guess they realized that that in itself is an attraction.”

Kaoo received a phone call “out of the blue” about two-and-a-half years ago from an associate of Tokyo restaurateur Fumio Shishido. Shishido owns several Japanese restaurants in the city, but was interested in opening one of a different style, as it were. An agent had noticed Hawaiian Style Cafe through social media and decided to take a closer look.

“Initially, I was a little skeptical,” Kaoo said. “I didn’t think it was going to go anywhere, and then the second phone call came, and the next thing I knew, they flew into town.”

“They came and met with me, loved the restaurant, loved the food,” he said.

Shishido and his team, which included chef and cookbook author Rieko Suzuki, began negotiating a licensing agreement. Kaoo did not disclose the financial terms, but said under the contract Shishido is able to open as many Japan-based Hawaiian Style Cafes as he’d like.

“I hope he does; it’s good for us,” Kaoo said. “He’s young and energetic, and I think he wants his company to grow.”

The initial meeting took place in late 2013, but it took time to get the Tokyo restaurant open largely because Shishido was searching for the right real estate. He’d planned to open in Tokyo Station, but ultimately landed in Ginza, home to some of the most expensive real estate in the world.

Tokyu Plaza Ginza is one of the district’s newest locations. The center opened March 31.

“The cost to open up a place in Ginza is exorbitant,” Kaoo said. “To open it up in a brand-new shopping center like that is pretty staggering.”

Kaoo attended the restaurant’s grand opening and returned last month for the filming of a TV program.

“The first day I went in the place was busy; there was a line outside,” he said. “I went back in the evening for the filming, and once again, there’s a line.”

Guy &Jo’s Hawaiian Style Cafe is a 50-seat restaurant with a bar, open seven days a week for brunch through dinner. The menu is smaller than the Big Island’s extensive lineup, featuring mainstays like loco moco, Portuguese sausage and poke that have been adjusted to better suit the Japanese palate. That’s common when cuisine hops country lines.

“Some of the Japanese restaurants (in Hawaii) are different from the ones in Japan, because it’s adjusted to our tastes,” Kaoo said.

The presentations of the food are “outstanding,” he said.

In keeping with the new restaurant’s location, prices are a bit more than those at its Big Island counterparts: one 10-inch pancake (“Ginza” style, according to the menu) runs 1,500 yen, or $13.81. Two pancakes (“Hawaiian” style) are 2,200 yen, or $20.25.

Some of the restaurant’s coffee comes from Mountain Thunder Coffee Plantation in Kona. The Portuguese sausages could not come from their normal supplier in California (they are made using Kaoo’s recipe, but outsourced), so a new contract had to be made with a Japanese company.

“You know what, they did a good job,” Kaoo said. “It’s really good.”

Hawaiian Style Cafe opened its first location in Waimea in 1993. Guy and Gina Kaoo became owners in 2005 and opened the Hilo location at the Manono Street Marketplace in 2012.

The Big Island locations consistently top the lists of crowdsourcing review sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp: the Hilo location is currently ranked No. 3 of all restaurants in town on TripAdvisor.