La Tour Cafe branching out to Aina Haina, then Kapolei

La Tour Cafe is expanding to Kapolei Commons and will open there in March.

The locally based, soon-to-be four-location La Tour Cafe chain owned by brothers and partners Trung and Brandon Lam will co-anchor the new building that will house Regal Entertainment’s 12-screen theater complex announced in July 2014.

The new location will become the company’s new flagship as the brothers’ largest store to date, at more than 3,000 square feet. It also will be the first to offer a full bar.

Given the amount of square footage they will have in Kapolei, the new spot will offer La Tour a chance to stage what Trung Lam calls “farmers markets” inside. Sister company La Tour Bakehouse is a regular exhibitor at farmers markets around the island, “but we don’t do that many on the west side,” he said. The farmers markets will feature La Tour products and possibly other local companies’ jams and jellies.

It might be helpful to note here that Trung, 34, and Brandon Lam, 31, come from a culinary and entrepreneurial lineage. They are the sons of Thanh Lam, founder of Ba-Le Inc., parent company of the Hawaii-based sandwich shop chain of the same name, and of La Tour Bakehouse, whose products range from breads, biscotti and lavosh to cookies and reputedly addictive macarons.

La Tour Cafe is a separate and distinct business, but there is complementary interplay between the entities.

The cafe is becoming the first in Hawaii to offer USDA-certified-organic breads and pizza dough. “Locally made organic breads,” Trung Lam said, noting the rarity of the statement.

Prices will not go up just because of the organic certification, they assured. “It will be an added value because we have the capability,” Brandon Lam said.

The interior and the food offerings at La Tour Cafe Kapolei will be “elevated,” he said, reflecting expanded knowledge gained over the expansion of the restaurant concept.

The La Tour Cafe culinary team has developed a preliminary menu for the Kapolei location because the bar will afford the company an opportunity to offer dishes that might not make sense at its other locations.

While there is a core menu for all locations, each has its own customized specials depending on the tastes of its customers, which can be area-specific and which change quarterly.

The rotating specials give the culinary team an opportunity to be creative, and they give customers a wider range of seasonal choices.

Heavier dishes are popular on the menu at the Nimitz Highway location, while the Pearl City La Tour leans in the modern-Asian direction, Brandon said.

One of the specials that soon will rotate out with the changing quarter in Pearl City will be char siu pork cooked using the sous vide method for 12 hours. Rather than simply sharing the information, Lam seemed to lament the impending change.

The brothers look forward to seeing what the East Honolulu community will favor at the new Aina Haina location, set to open next to Starbucks later this fall.

Chief baker Rodney Weddle is a partner in the Aina Haina store, which will have a large selection of pastries sure to be popular with customers who stop in to grab and go in the mornings on the way in to town, as well as with customers looking for snacks later in the day.

“We’ve built a team with the mentality of expansion,” Lam said.

The brothers said “quality real estate” is becoming increasingly rare and that commercial rents are going up.

Rather than wait, they seized the opportunity to expand into the new Kapolei Commons space, being built in a growing community.

Counsel pertaining to commercial real estate from Pacific Property Group Hawaii, combined with the restaurant industry knowledge of specialist Jo McGarry, has been valuable to the company, the Lams agreed.

The brothers opened the first La Tour Cafe in Iwilei in 2011. The Pearl City Gateway location opened in 2014. The Aina Haina La Tour, under construction, is set to open in mid-October. La Tour Cafe Kapolei represents the extent of the brothers’ 2016 expansion, Trung Lam said.

Reach Erika Engle at 529-4303, erika@staradvertiser.com, or on Twitter as @erikaengle.