The most difficult aspect of pandemic life for me has been restaurant planning. I tend to be a free spirit who goes with the flow, so I never really make meal plans, save for those work-related.
Otherwise, I never cared to lock myself in to plans until day of, so when friends called to ask, “Are you spontaneous?” the answer was likely to be, “Sure!”
Limited seating and hours over the course of the pandemic made reservations necessary, but, sometimes, I slide into old habits. When I arrived on the spur of the moment at the new Mr. Ojisan Neo Bar & Sushi on South King Street to a locked door and a derelict-looking exterior, I thought it was an “oh no” moment.
“Their website and social media say they’re open,” I apologized to a friend who accompanied me.
Just in case, we walked around to the back and found the door open. Relief.
Having moved into the space a month ago, the restaurant is still a work in progress, with signage and an exterior makeover to come. For now, the view from the street looks like a shuttered liquor store, but don’t worry, all’s well when you get inside.
The original Mr. Ojisan started as a ramen shop in 1989, catering to Japanese tourists in Waikiki. Nobu Kawaharada was working for a travel agency when a friend needed extra help at his ramen shop, and Kawaharada volunteered to help cook. With a newfound interest in food and hospitality, he purchased the ramen shop a year later.
After honing his craft by reading cookbooks and experimenting, Kawaharada found a local audience for donburi, udon and teishoku fare after moving to Kilohana Square in 1999, where it’s been a Kapahulu fixture for 22 years.
The fact that it’s been in business that long is a testament to the love and willpower of Kawaharada’s widow Keiko, who has kept the restaurant running because it was Kawaharada’s last wish before he died in 2002.
With a team of chefs, she’s not only been able to keep his legacy alive, but also has been able to expand on it. Now, in a bigger space and reborn as Mr. Ojisan Neo Bar & Sushi, the restaurant has transitioned from a small bedroom community family restaurant to a lively bar scene, with music videos from the 1980s through the present coming at you in every direction.
Be prepared to reshuffle your list of favorite sushi bars. This one will surely take up space at the top. The quality of the seafood is comparable to that of $250-plus per person omakase restaurants here, and includes fish flown in from Japan’s Toyosu fish market, which rarely appear on local sushi menus.
These include market price nodoguro (blackthroat seaperch), a fatty white fish associated with Honshu’s Ishikawa prefecture, and engawa, meat from flatfish fin muscles. It’s so limited that only two orders were available on my second outing. That is, enough for four pieces of nigiri that had to be divided among seven people.
Engawa has a light crunchy texture when raw, but getting it torched brings out the fatty, buttery quality that aficionados crave. You can get similar lush quality from chutoro nigiri (market, recently $12 for two pieces); one bite made me decide I needed seconds. I can only dream of what the otoro must be like, but at $45 (market price) for otoro sashimi, well, I wouldn’t be able to sample much else.
You can also get lobster nigiri (market price, recently $14 for two pieces), and sushi rolls are also available. Pieces of the volcano roll ($12), with a center of shrimp tempura, are arranged in a peak spilling a red-orange stream of ikura.
The restaurant’s signature is the Waikiki roll ($13) that starts with a California roll with a blanket of maguro, crowned by a slice of strawberry and finished with a drizzle of miso sauce. I’m usually decisive when it comes to foods I like or dislike but don’t have the definitive response to this one yet. The salty quality of the miso worked with the strawberry, but I couldn’t fit the rest of the fish and roll in my mouth at once so didn’t quite get the big picture with only one attempt.
For lunch, there’s udon, soba, donburi and teishoku dishes that include entrées like tonkatsu ($15), grilled salmon ($14), assorted tempura ($15), stir-fried bitter melon ($16) and excellent misoyaki butterfish ($19), cut thick with minimal sauce to better showcase the fish.
The shrimp tempura in the assortment is also given a fine coating of batter that results in the most delicate crisp, never forming that thick hard shell so prevalent in lesser hands. They do have a way with shrimp here, because an appetizer of whole deep-fried Kauai shrimp ($14) turns out so crispy you can eat shell and all.
There are double the a la carte main options on the dinner menu. These selections, such as grilled squid ($13) and chicken katsu ($13) can be turned into a teishoku meal for $4 more.
Specialties include a sizzling wafu steak ($20) and another original of wafu pizza ($12) topped with teriyaki chicken and mushrooms. It sounded weird when described, but turned out to be delicious.
With 32 years behind the Mr. Ojisan name, I’m looking forward to many more to come.
Mr. Ojisan Neo Bar & Sushi
1785 S. King St., Honolulu
Food: ****
Service: ***
Ambiance: ***
Value: ****
Call: 808-735-4455
Hours: 11 A.M.-2 P.M. and 5 P.M.- midnight daily; BYOB until they get their liquor license
Prices: Teishoku lunch without sushi
About $30-$40 for two; teishoku dinner without sushi about $50-$60 for two
Nadine Kam’s restaurant visits are unannounced and paid for by Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Follow Nadine on Instagram (@nadinekam) or on YouTube (youtube.com/nadinekam).
