Four years after the closure of his last Honolulu restaurant, chef Sam Choy is reclaiming an Oahu presence, partnering with Hawaii Pacific University in a student dining facility at Aloha Tower Marketplace.
The restaurant, as yet unnamed, is going into the former Don Ho’s Island Grill space along the waterfront near Gordon Biersch.
It will serve students who live at HPU’s Aloha Tower campus or use school services there, as well as the general public.
The school announced the partnership on Thursday.
Bruce Edwards, senior vice president and chief financial officer at HPU, said the ground-floor Don Ho’s space will be completely renovated, “and will include an expanded outdoor footprint.”
The restaurant is expected to open by fall of 2018, he said.
The menu will be Choy’s, but an independent company will handle daily operations.
“I’m writing the menus, doing the food concept, and they’re doing the legwork,” Choy said.
Edwards said the school is in discussion with “a few companies that have extensive experience with student dining and restaurant operations nationally and locally.”
Choy said he is pleased to be returning to Honolulu, and not far from the site of his last Oahu restaurant, Sam Choy’s Breakfast, Lunch and Crab, on Nimitz Highway, which closed in 2013.
The chef has since launched a food truck operation and restaurant in Seattle, and opened another restaurant in Tacoma, Wash., just this week. All are operating under the name Sam Choy’s Poke to the Max.
In March the Sam Choy &Tita’s Seafood &Poke food truck opened at the Polynesian Cultural Center, a partnership with former professional football player Junior Ah You and his wife, Almira.
Choy said his menu for the HPU restaurant will include some Breakfast, Lunch and Crab favorites, such as the crab and Chinatown omelets, “and of course the poke thing.” He plans a build-your-own poke bowl station and “a nice, good pulehu steak.”
He’d also like to introduce what he calls a “reconstructed musubi” that he serves in Seattle — sort of an oversized sushi roll with nori, rice, sauces and slices of Spam, chicken katsu or poke. “Those are really taking off in Seattle.”
