Sam Choy opens Seattle restaurant
CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARADVERTISER.COM
Sam Choy
Hawaii chef Sam Choy opened his first brick-and-mortar restaurant in Seattle over the weekend, the first of a group of Sam Choy’s Poke to the Max outlets planned for the West Coast.
Choy said more than 800 people showed up on opening day, Saturday. “It was nonstop, wave after wave after wave,” he said by phone Sunday after arriving back in Honolulu.
The restaurant, at 5300 Rainier Ave. in the Seattle neighborhood of South Seattle, is an extension of a string of food trucks that Choy and his partner, Max Heigh, have operated in the city for nearly three years.
Instead of traditional advertising the restaurant relied on a “small blitz” on social media put out at about 9 a.m. Saturday, Choy said. Regular followers of the trucks showed up on the first day, he said, followed Sunday by “the friends of the followers.”
Choy’s Seattle food trucks offer poke bowls, sandwiches and a few plate lunches. New restaurant specials include teriyaki boneless short ribs and macadamia-nut chicken katsu. Four types of musubi are on the menu: poke, kalua pork and fried shrimp joining the Spam version carried over from the trucks.
Choy said he and Heigh plan to open four To the Max outlets in the Seattle area, but their next opening will likely be in Los Angeles or San Francisco.
18 responses to “Sam Choy opens Seattle restaurant”
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good luck sam
hope betta results ova there then here
It’s Columbia City not Columbus City…
It’s on Rainier Avenue in the south Beacon Hill district, a conglomerate of different blue collar ethnic folks. Not high scale but hey, it’s only poke he’s selling.
We used to laugh every time we saw one of his recipes in the Star-Advertiser. It would usually call for two pounds of butter and a quart of heavy cream, etc. In this day and age, who on earth is dumb enough to eat stuff like that. Wish the old guy well but if his restaurant prepares food like that, he’ll be out of business there in six months. Didn’t his restaurant here go bust too? The people in Seattle are very health conscious and you don’t see too many fat lard buts there like we have here.
He has a restaurant in Kona. I’m sure his 3 years of operating food trucks in that area has provided the groundwork for establishing his restaurant and menu according to the local tastes.
I think the restaurant in Kona is a partnership too. His original that he opened was really good but when he let somebody else run it for him it went down hill and closed. This is what people that use to go there told me.
I ate at the Kona Restaurant when it was opened a few months earlier. Breakfast was expensive and not enough food for the price, and the taste nothing special
But the location is good with a really nice view of Keahou area. I believe Sam Choy is a brand name listed on the tour guides so many visitors stop by there to eat.
The restaurant always seems busy with lots of cars in the parking lot so I guess the restaurant must be doing well.
Sure hope it’s a lot nicer of a place with better food than the dump he had in Kakaako. Ate there three times too many. Terrible!
Didn’t know he had a restaurant or “dump” in Kakaako. There was one in Kapahulu and one on Nimitz; went to both of those. Where was the Kakaako one located? Did it have his name affixed to it?
I had breakfast once at his Nimitz location. NOTHING to write home about, but what the heck, it was on a gift card. A few weeks later my kane and I went back for lunch….still had a gift card balance. This time, the food was so good. The shrimp that we ordered for pupu was enough for a meal. I hope he does well in his new, newer and newest ventures.
meant to say Iwilei…Nimitz
He has trouble keeping his Hawaii restaurants open.
Who in this day and age can keep a restaurant opened with ridiculous regulations and government intervention. With the per average dining budget to be the lowest in the nation for major cities, good choice Sam. Do business where you’re appreciated.
Wish Choy well however it does seem to me that his cuisine never got further than the lunch wagon level. His restaurants were a disaster which is why they all folded.
My understanding is that his original place in Kona where he got his start was not much better so it was surprising that he did manage to branch out from there to begin with
but as you all know, they all folded.
Sam’s concept and food was good at his restaurants and nearly all of them had a good run with only the Kahului and Lahaina ones being disasters. At the height of his restaurant career he had many partners using his name but very few actual partners like his current one. James Lee of Hehing was his original tablecloth type restaurants partner. Sometimes these partnerships are the reason thing don’t work out. He never had a restaurant in Kakaako.
Restaurants have their runs and very few last forever.
I knew Sam since his days in Laie where he had his start. Good luck and good fortune!
His food is marginal at best. Why do you think his restaurants don’t stay open? Even his recipes are not good.
I loved his Chinatown Omelet.