French toast beckons on the Leeward side

An unexpectedly closed restaurant means scrambling for a Plan B. Sometimes it doesn’t work out but sometimes it proves serendipitous. That’s how I found myself wandering into Button Up Cafe, in the small Pearl City Plaza along the rail route on Kamehameha Highway.

The restaurant seats about 20 for breakfast until 11 a.m., and lunch thereafter. On Sundays it’s breakfast only. On the menu are Korean-influenced plates and satisfying, homespun day-starters that exceed expectations for diner-style fare.

Chef/co-owner Thomas Kim learned his craft at Le Cordon Bleu, Los Angeles, and paid his dues in kitchens in Beverly Hills and Santa Monica, Calif., before — as a member of the National Guard — being assigned to duty at Guantanamo Bay.

After his service ended, he decided to return home and took a chance on the small space, where a previous restaurateur had struggled to attract customers willing to brave the closed lanes and traffic associated with rail construction.

Luckily, Button Up’s short ribs and French toast proved irresistible to diners. The menu also includes juicy Korean braised short-rib Benedicts ($12.95) and kalua pork loco mocos ($10.95), made from scratch and free of MSG.

Kim, who opened the restaurant with childhood friend Brian Park, was also making his own corned beef, a 10-day process that proved too difficult to continue with the demands of running the restaurant. Park had signed on as business partner but had to join Kim in the kitchen once the restaurant caught on, thanks in part to the wow factor of the cafe’s French toast.

Choose from two thick slices of Hawaiian sweet bread ($4.95) or stuffed strawberry cheesecake French toast ($7.95). Onto this goes your choice of fresh strawberries, blueberries, bananas and/or whipped cream, at $1.50 per addition. The resulting miniature tower is the Instagram-worthy selling point every restaurant needs these days to get attention in this hypersaturated marketplace.

It didn’t start out that way, said Kim, who confessed to knowing nothing about Instagram before opening the restaurant. “If you look at early photos, it wasn’t that nice. My friends told me I had to change it.”

Also lifting the restaurant out of the realm of the ordinary is its local-style poutine ($5.95) with choice of thick french fries or tater tots finished with light gravy, cheese, chipotle mayo and green onions. A short-rib version is $8.95, and I’m particularly enamored of one featuring kalua pork ($7.95).

Lunch plates lean toward Korean-style barbecue chicken ($10.95), meat jun ($10.95), more braised short ribs ($12.95) and a mixed plate of the chicken, jun and kalua pork ($11.95).

I’m fairly adventurous most of the time, but not at breakfast, when I like things simple, and my preference is either an omelet or classic breakfast of eggs (scrambled) and Portuguese sausage or bacon. Here the classic breakfast of rice and eggs with choice of Spam, Portuguese sausage or bacon is $7.95.

Three omelet choices are offered, and I passed over the Portuguese sausage and Spam ($10.95) and bacon and mushroom ($10.95) in favor of the spinach and mushroom ($9.95), also filled with onions, mozzarella and plenty of firm, butter-sauteed baby ’bellos. Yum. Add $1.95 for a choice of tater tots, white rice, fried rice or potato “hash” — which is not a hash, but cubes of unadorned oven-roasted potatoes.

For the sake of trying something different, I also ordered a breakfast ciabatta sandwich of scrambled egg, provolone and Portuguese sausage ($6.55). Other meat options are bulgogi, corned beef and bacon ($6.55 to $7.95). I loved that the bread was soft, not hard as a rock as at other outlets.

Longtime readers of this column know I’m the outlier individual who does not crave carbs. I don’t eat bread unless I can gauge it’s really good bread, and I retreat from white rice. This is the rare restaurant that made me return for a ciabatta sandwich, and yes, I will definitely be back for French toast.

Now settled in this venture, Kim has other ideas he wants to bring to the table. Given that reliable restaurant workers are in short supply these days, it might take a while to realize, but he’s definitely on my watch list.

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