UH med school finds right mix

Until recently, Kakaako was mostly known as a work hub, home to auto shops, warehouses, small businesses and the cheap-eats restaurants that serve this community.

Since being designated the coolest work-live community in Honolulu, that is changing. There’s a cost for new development, and while some view the cost of restaurant fare at face value and grouse about getting gouged, I tend to look at the cost of food and wonder how any moderate restaurant that serves no alcohol can make a profit.

Before the new development at Keawe and Auahi streets, I could always count on J’s BBQ for inexpensive Korean plates and sandwiches. My favorite spicy pork plate was less than $8. Since J’s has returned to a newer, glitzier home at SALT, that same plate is now a nickel shy of $14, the new reality.

But lunch costs are sticky. That is, most people don’t take note of the passing of time and the impact of inflation. They want to pay what they paid a decade ago. For those needing to search farther afield for lunch deals, the John A. Burns School of Medicine’s Cafe Waiola deserves a second look.

JABSOM opened with sister school Kapi­olani Community College’s culinary program taking charge of the cafe. With diverse choices every day, it became a popular lunch spot. Crowds dissipated with successive tenants who could not match KCC’s variety.

Now, Cafe Waiola might have achieved a perfect mix with two operators under its roof, one with a long track record and one new, respectively, Simply Ono and Olena by Chef Ron Simon.

SIMPLY ONO

I met Simply Ono owner Harris Sukita about 20 years ago when the news building was at 605 Kapiolani Blvd., and he set up shop in a lunchwagon at nearby Honolulu Hale. Reporters flocked there because he offered something different from the familiar teriyaki plates and beef stew of other lunchwagons (in the days before they became known as food trucks).

Fresh outta the then-Kahala Hilton, he launched Simply Ono in 1997 and became one of the first to offer casual gourmet fare at budget prices, out of a truck. Sukita wowed diners with such dishes as duck l’orange, beef stroganoff, rack of lamb, ostrich steaks, pastas to order and fresh fish ­— at a time when no one else was serving fish from a truck because of its perishable nature.

For Sukita, whose childhood dream was to operate a lunchwagon, it represented the ultimate freedom to offer whatever dish he could dream up.

Now at JABSOM, he and his wife and partner, Cora, another alumnus of the Kahala Hilton’s kitchen, continue to serve the same casual-gourmet-meets-local fare for which they’ve become known through their mobile and catering operations, plus a previous bricks-and-mortar flirtation at 99 Ranch Market.

The menu changes daily, but regulars can count on prime rib every Thursday and Hawaiian plates on Fridays. The rotation of dishes ranging from a prime rib banh mi ($10) to sushi bar-quality hamachi donburi ($10.50) keeps diners from becoming bored.

The hamachi bowl is one of my favorites here, along with pork and chicken adobo ($7.75 to $9) that doesn’t skimp on vinegar or black peppercorns.

The couple continues to operate with the philosophy of keeping prices down for the working man.

“I see people selling their plates out of trucks for $15, $20, even $32, and I can’t do that,” Harris said. “I mean, I want to make a profit, but I also want people to come back.”

Cora posts the week’s menus every Sunday night, but they’re always creating, so menus can be updated nightly. One dish to look forward to after Lent is the couples’ brontosaurus ribs, shortribs with the bones standing for dramatic effect.

Visit simplyono.com for menu updates.

OLENA BY CHEF RON SIMON

With luxury kitchen experience on three islands — Mauna Lani Bay Hotel and Bungalows on the Big Island, Kukui‘ula Club on Kauai and the Four Seasons Resort Lanai; plus Westgate Hotel’s Fontainebleau French restaurant in San Diego — chef Ron Simon and his wife, Rose, moved to Oahu for their children’s educations. He settled into The Pacific Club before opening at JABSOM last August.

Simon takes a cosmopolitan approach to food, offering up fresh salads and classical French preparations and Italian pastas, in addition to such local favorites as mandoo soup ($8.95), cold sesame soba ($7.25) and Korean BBQ chicken bi bim bap ($8.50).

His relationship with food distributors allows him to offer upscale hotel-quality fare at reasonable prices.

Every week you’ll find salads such as quinoa with roasted beets or a caprese of fresh mozzarella and cherry tomatoes over greens, at $3.50 to $5.95.

I’m especially fond of his grilled Pacific salmon with lemon-thyme butter sauce ($10.95), a luxury at half the cost you’d find anyplace else for this quality.

Menus change weekly and updates can be found at olena.chefronsimon.com.

Nadine Kam’s restaurant reviews are conducted anonymously and paid for by the Star-Advertiser. Reach her at nkam@staradvertiser.com.