Sam Choy’s BLC will close at month’s end after 15 years

Popular for 15 years, the cavernous Iwilei restaurant bearing the name of a famed Hawaii chef and restaurateur and an old boat as a centerpiece will shut down at the end of the month after a series of fundraisers for nonprofits.

Parent company Good Eats USA Inc. has decided not to renew its lease for Sam Choy’s Breakfast, Lunch & Crab and Big Aloha Brewery, first opened in 1997.

The 50-some employees at BLC have been invited to apply for positions with the adjacent Aloha Beer Co. LP, co-founded by BLC owner James H.Q. Lee.

For the past two years, Choy has had no ownership interest in the restaurant, which has continued to use his name and recipes under a licensing agreement.

Choy will, however, return to the Iwilei restaurant he co-founded, to bring his unmistakable smiling presence to its last festivities.

Lee and Choy co-founded BLC after the success of Sam Choy’s Diamond Head, a fine-dining restaurant in which the two also were partners. They met as Choy, successful with his very casual restaurant in Kaloko Industrial Park on Hawaii island, was yearning to open an Oahu restaurant, said publicist Lynette Lo Tom.

In the same year it closed, 2004, the Kaloko restaurant earned an "America’s Classics" designation from the James Beard Foundation, a vaunted culinary organization.

By 1998, Lee was described in a news report as the "financial architect behind Hee Hing, as well as four of Sam Choy’s five restaurants." Lee’s family-owned Hee Hing Restaurant and Sam Choy’s Diamond Head both were at Hee Hing Plaza, at 449 Kapahulu Ave. Hee Hing is still in operation.

"I remember James and Sam came to me saying they wanted to open a crab house," Lo Tom said. However, they wanted to differentiate the crab house from the fine-dining scene Choy already had established on Oahu. "They wanted it to be fun, and casual, and different," so "I dreamt up ‘Breakfast, Lunch & Crab,’" she said.

When the 175-seat Sam Choy’s Diamond Head closed after 13 years, during the economic downturn in June 2008, the 25 employees were offered positions at the 550-seat BLC.

In Iwilei, the adjacent Aloha Beer Co., co-founded by another Lee partnership, "is going gangbusters," Lo Tom said.

Aloha Beer will expand its menu, work that will be overseen by BLC Executive Chef David Cruz, Lee said.

It will continue to use the BLC kitchen and will hire some of the BLC kitchen personnel to serve "heavy appetizers and entrees" daily from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.

There remain two Hawaii restaurants bearing Choy’s name — Sam Choy’s Kai Lanai in Kona and Sam Choy’s Island Style Seafood Grille at Joint Base Pearl Harbor Hickam.

Choy does not have an ownership stake in those restaurants, according to state business registration records.

Sam Choy’s Kai Lanai is owned by Colorado-based Kona Daze LLC, which lists Richard Holland as its sole officer.

Sam Choy’s Island Style Seafood Grille is owned by Honolulu-based Restaurants Hawaii LLC, in which George and Barbara Vandeman are the sole officers listed.