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Three years after a fire blazed through the kitchen at Hotel Molokai, the island’s only hotel is finally poised to start serving food again.
A new restaurant, Hale Kealoha, began serving pupu this month from its new oceanfront home at the hotel, situated about 2 miles east of Kaunakakai. It will begin serving three full-service meals next month, with a grand opening celebration scheduled for early December.
“There’s a lot of excitement not just because it’s a new restaurant, but because there’s a great need,” said Tammy Smith, one of the owners. “There’s a great need for employment, great need for a new venue. This is not one brand-new place, but it’s a place where they (Molokai people) can come back to now.”
Smith and brother Kama Hoe moved from Oahu last month to open the restaurant, and be closer to their parents, Herbert and Julie Hoe, who retired to Molokai 24 years ago.
“In them being able to live here and have an amazing life here, for us, it’s about giving back to the community that takes care of our parents,” Smith said. “It’s a privilege to be here on Molokai.”
For now, the eatery is serving pupu, including poke, smoke meat, chicken wings, quesadilla and lumpia, from 3 to 9 p.m. daily. The state Department of Health needs to complete a final inspection of the facility before it can begin offering full-service meals.
Smith expects the inspection to be completed later this week, giving the restaurant the green light to begin serving breakfast, lunch and dinner.
This is the family’s second restaurant. Its first, Kealoha, opened in Kailua, Oahu, last year, and has already become a mainstay serving up Hawaiian classics like chicken long rice, laulau and beef stew.
Those won’t be on the menu for the Molokai restaurant.
“We serve Hawaiian food in Kailua. I no need bring Hawaiian food over here. Everybody makes their own luau over here,” Smith said.
Instead, the eatery will serve fine-dining dishes sourced locally.
“We know we cannot go 100 percent (local), but as much as possible, we want to be able to support local farmers, fishermen,” she said, adding that the menu includes dishes with locally farmed shrimp, Molokai-grown beef, sustainably caught fish and staples like the Molokai sweet potato and ulu (breadfruit).
“The Molokai community, they like eat nice food. They not gonna come over here for one plate lunch. They not gonna come for loco mocos,” Smith said, adding that she wanted to respect other “plate lunch kine” restaurants in town.
Dishes will be priced “moderate to high-end,” which Smith said is just the reality of doing business on Molokai. Still, she hopes residents will enjoy the range of choices.
Her approach is: “Keep it simple, keep it clean, keep it aina healthy, give people new flavor.”
And she doesn’t just want to feed the people, she wants to train them, too.
The restaurant has hired 20 people, all Molokai residents, to fill various positions, she said. More openings are expected once the restaurant is “up and running.”
For the island that has long held the highest unemployment rate in the state, those jobs go a long way.
Molokai saw a 9 percent unemployment rate last month, according to statistics released Monday by the state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations. That’s down from 15.2 percent in September 2014, but some say the numbers don’t paint the whole picture.
Molokai Chamber of Commerce President Robert Stephenson pointed out that the drop in unemployment rate could be reflective of the island’s shrinking workforce.
There were 2,550 people in the workforce (both employed and unemployed) last month, down from 2,700 people in September last year. That could mean people are moving away or seeking jobs off island, or are no longer qualifying for unemployment benefits.
The island’s economy has seen major blows this year alone, with the shutdown of the iconic Molokai Drive Inn restaurant and significant cutbacks for the Molokai ferry.
It’s also hard to conclude that unemployment on Molokai is down, since figures are rounded to the nearest 50, Stephenson said. The numbers show that employment has increased from 2,300 to 2,350 people in the last year, but that margin could in actuality be significantly smaller.
“It’s difficult. Many people don’t have jobs. It’s difficult to get loans. There’s not a lot of economic activity over here,” Stephenson said, adding that while construction has rebounded from the recession on Maui, Oahu, Kauai and the Big Island, it remains slow on the Friendly Isle.
“Things are very slow,” he said.
Because of those reasons, he and others are excited that the hotel restaurant is opening.
“We’re really excited,” he said. “It’s been over three years since the fire, and over that time, it left a lot of Molokai folks without their favorite place to go on aloha Fridays, for dinners, for special events.”
The space holds a special place in his heart. He and his wife were married there in 2010.
“It’s one of those magical places where no matter what’s going on, you show up and you’re always welcome to join in whoever’s party and whatever’s happening.”
The new eatery also will likely to bring some added business to the hotel, which has struggled to fill rooms in recent years.
When asked whether he thinks the restaurant will help boost occupancy numbers, Hotel Molokai General Manager Michael Drew said, “I don’t think, I know it will help.”
“We’re really looking forward to this partnership. We believe this will be a long, solid partnership between Hotel Molokai and Hale Kealoha,” he said.
Maui chef Tante Urban of “Tante’s Island Cuisine” in Kahului had announced last May the restaurant would be expanding to Hotel Molokai, even holding a groundbreaking ceremony at the site on May 16, 2014. But the deal was off by November, The Molokai Dispatch reported.
“It’s been a tough business,” Urban told the newspaper. “We agreed that it’s better if we separate.”
Hale Kealoha is here to stay, at least for now. It has signed a five-year contract to operate the restaurant at Hotel Molokai.
“We’re excited for the future. We know what tomorrow brings, but I don’t know what five years brings. My hope is that we can continue to support Molokai in this way and give back to this community and grow with the community,” Smith said.
The early-morning fire that gutted the kitchen, laundry and storage rooms at the hotel June 19, 2012, left 35 employees of the former Hula Shores restaurant and bar without work.
Damages were estimated at $650,000. Firefighters responded to the fire around 3:30 a.m. and found about 75 percent of the bottom floor of the two-story structure engulfed in flames. A fire inspector later determined the fire’s cause was accidental, because it started in the storage room behind the kitchen, which was padlocked when the blaze broke out. No injuries were reported.
* Eileen Chao can be reached at echao@mauinews.com.