The Kitagawa family, who established Tokyo Tei 83 years ago, recently said goodbye to the restaurant famous for its light and crispy tempura and juicy teriyaki steak.

Eunice Kitagawa, whose grandfather Kyutaro Kitagawa founded the business in 1935, said the changeover to the new owner took place Nov. 30. The new proprietor is Song Colagross, who owned Cupies in Kahului for 15 years before selling it last year.

“Everything the same,” Colagross said of Tokyo Tei’s menu and employees on Monday.

Colagross is grateful to the remaining employees, who are teaching her about the business. She said she is not afraid of working hard.

She even learned how to cut sashimi from Kitagawa.

The eatery is award-winning, having been voted best Japanese food by readers of The Maui News and Maui Time.

Kitagawa’s mother, Betsy Cardoza, now 95, served as a cook for many years and was inducted into the Hawaii Restaurant Association Hall of Fame in 2009. The restaurant also received a Honolulu Magazine Hale Aina Award.

“It is bittersweet,” Kitagawa said Monday morning. “I feel really lost.”

For years, Kitagawa went into the restaurant at 5 a.m. to get things ready. She would stay several hours and then take paperwork home. She would even wake up at 3 a.m., after realizing she forgot to order something, and fax the order in the wee hours of the morning.

“The only time I had off is when I go to Vegas or an outer island,” she said.

The need for a break from the business has been coming for years. After Kitagawa broke her right femur in two places eight years ago, things have not been the same for her.

The next in line to run the business would have been her adult daughter, Tori Renschen. But as an only child and with an aging mother and grandmother, Kitagawa felt it would be too difficult for her daughter to take over the business without the family support that she enjoyed.

“For her to run the restaurant would have been too hard,” Kitagawa said.

Since leaving the business, Kitagawa said she misses her 25 employees, who could run the operation on their own. This includes her longtime cook, Naomi Ducosin, who has worked at the restaurant for nearly 40 years.

“She’s a great cook. She has a great taste. She knows how to do the shrimp,” Kitagawa said, admitting she tried her hand at the tempura but flopped. “I think the hard part is getting the recipe right.”

The batter consistency has to be correct and there is a technique to putting the shrimp into the oil, she said.

The recipes were passed down through her grandfather, Kyutaro Kitagawa, who was part of a sumo group from Japan that toured the state. As one of those low ranking sumo wrestlers, he and another man were in charge of cooking for the higher ranked wrestlers.

That’s where he learned his skills.

Wanting to break from the sumo world, Kyutaro Kitagawa and another man hid in the mountains on Hawaii island after their boat docked there. They never returned to the ship, which left without them.

Eventually, Mr. Kitagawa settled on Maui to run a restaurant founded by the sumo friend who stayed behind with him. The restaurant sat in the current First Hawaiian Bank spot along Kaahumanu Avenue in Kahului. The Kitagawas used to live behind the restaurant next to Kahului Harbor.

Eunice Kitagawa was unsure of the restaurant’s name back in 1935, but eventually it became Tokyo Tei. That was until World War II when the restaurant was named Rainbow Inn.

“Tokyo, no sound too good” during the war, she explained.

Eventually, the restaurant’s name once again became Tokyo Tei. It later moved next to the old Hokama’s in Wailuku and operated there from around 1958 to 1968.

By that time, Cardoza was working at the restaurant. Through the years, she improved the menu and added the teishoku or meal set option of hakata chicken, yakitori chicken, calamari and salmon, her daughter said.

Kitagawa’s father also worked at the business but went to Japan often. Her parents eventually divorced.

The restaurant near Hokama’s could hold 500 people and hosted weddings and many luncheons and meetings.

Special guests included then-Sen. John F. Kennedy, who would become president; actor Rock Hudson; Taiho Koki, sumo yokozuna or grand champion; and Richard Nixon, another man who would become president.

“We were kind of the place to go. It was big and it would fit that many people,” Kitagawa added.

Cardoza was innovative and ahead of her time, Kitagawa said. For example, her mother brought over a sushi chef, though that did not prove successful at the time. The restaurant also turned into a nightclub with musicians.

Later, Cardoza opened a bar, Gardenia, on Lower Main Street and closed Tokyo Tei. She also made her way to the old Maui Palms next to the Maui Beach and cooked Japanese and American food there.

Tokyo Tei made its return in 1979, when Cardoza opened the restaurant at its current location along Lower Main Street in the Puuone Plaza.

Kitagawa worked on Oahu as a bookkeeper for Benihana in Waikiki and later did the books for restaurants in San Francisco. She returned to Oahu and became the first female manager of a Benihana restaurant, which still is standing in Waikiki.

In 1983, Kitagawa came home to Maui to help at Tokyo Tei, handling the catering, including the food for funerals for Japanese families. She never mastered the cooking, though.

Also helping with the restaurant was Kitagawa’s husband, Mark Renschen (Kitagawa kept her maiden name), along with her sister, Lauren Chun.

With the selling of the restaurant, Cardoza has had to change her daily routine too. She no longer comes into the restaurant to check on things or grab a bowl of saimin from the kitchen for lunch.

Her mother is adjusting to life without Tokyo Tei.

It’s been more difficult for Kitagawa. She would go into Tokyo Tei even after the completion of the transaction to the new owner. She has finally realized that it is time to cut the ties and is looking for places to volunteer.

“I feel like I lived there,” Kitagawa said. “Anything goes wrong with it, I know what to do.”

* Melissa Tanji can be reached at mtanji@mauinews.com.