Meet me upstairs

Collaboration has helped budding restaurateurs stay afloat during the pandemic, mostly through the sharing of underutilized kitchen spaces.

Now comes Upstairs, a collaborative new restaurant that has opened this month in place of Bills Waikiki, which closed its doors last August. The restaurant’s parent company, the Sunny Side Up Group, is the same, but the change in concept came with enduring the reality of COVID-19 and home country restrictions on travelers from Japan and Australia, the top two demographics for Bills. Key to survival would be a refocus on the local market.

Upstairs was conceived as a place where people could gather to enjoy coveted dishes around town. Its first collaborators are Yakitori Hachibei and upscale omakase-only Sushi Sho. It doesn’t hurt to have the familiarity factor to persuade people to take a chance on an otherwise unknown, untested second-story restaurant, where the room remains unchanged with its natural vibe, wood walls, skylight and open-air lanai.

While it’s been common to see dining room staff shortages all over town and see service suffer for it, Upstairs is unusually well-staffed, a winning situation for diners. Much of them were originally with Bills, and the long hiatus since last August has left them eager for a restart and this early on their excitement is palpable.

The drink menu is fun, with a mix of specialty sake, wines, fresh juices in the healthful footsteps of Bills, smoothies, cocktails and delicious mocktails that can be converted into cocktails. I happened to be in need of something healthful my first visit, so started with the green juice ($8) of local veggies with green apple, pear, ginger, mint and celery that disappeared in no time.

A cocktail of kiwi watermelon breeze ($8) was like a refreshing dessert of soft slushie-textured watermelon ice with kiwi, lime and agave. This was so good I had to have another on a second visit.

No doubt the drinks will put you in a good mood for the meal to come.

The menu offers a mix of local, all-American and Japanese specialties. Evening appetizers lean Japanese with the likes of satisfying hamachi sashimi ($15) topped with ponzu gelee and accompanied by a dollop of yuzukosho, shiokara (fermented squid, $7), kobujime (konbu-cured snapper, $15), and cream cheese ($6) fermented with miso and sake kasu from Island Sake Brewery. The tiny cubes of cream cheese took a back seat to slices of housemade baguette ($4) with butter. I always talk about avoiding simple carbs, but the baguette — crispy on the outside with a dense, chewy and moist interior — is one of the stars of the menu, a pandemic creation born from staffers’ ability to freely experiment while using up pantry supplies.

Also on the appetizer menu is the first of the Hachibei col-lab items: deep-fried Jidori chicken thighs ($10) meant to be eaten with a small pinch of salt and pepper. If you can only have one chicken item for the evening, I’d hold out for torimomo ($16) on the list of main dishes. The Jidori chicken thigh is roasted in chicken oil, and the combination of juiciness and spiced coating is a treat for the senses. It’s served with rice.

Hachibei’s other two offerings are oyakodon ($15) and chicken ramen ($15) served in ceramicware that mimics an instant ramen cup. The flavor of the chicken broth is quite mild, but can be boosted with condiments of yuzukosho, pickled ginger and nori. I loved the seared salmon salad ($18) over a mix of greens with cilantro, peanuts, chiles and lime. Its Thai influence was amplified by a fish sauce and red onion dressing, but I was offered a taste of a mellower fresh carrot dressing served with the all-greens Upstairs salad ($16) and preferred it. I believe the fish on fish flavor of the original Asian dressing will be too overwhelming for some.

Sushi Sho’s offering is its bara chirashi ($35), a tasty sashimi bowl comprising an assortment of fish of the day. “Bara” means scattered, and the small pieces of seafood are strewn over a bed of rice and slivers of tamago. In the bara style, vegetables are typically added to the mix, and when I visited there were slices of cucumber and mushrooms scattered between pieces of shrimp, ahi, hamachi, unagi, uni and ikura.

There were many other pieces of fish too small to be identifiable. The flavor is in the dish so no soy sauce is offered, though I believe many will require it.

Where Upstairs stands on its own is with local crowd-pleasers such as kimchi fried rice ($18), a kalua pork sandwich ($16), rigatoni carbonara ($19), lightly sauced spaghetti pomodoro ($15), and L.A.-style kalbi ($24), which refers to a thin flank cut across the bones, with each slice attached to three pieces of rib and meat.

There’s also the Upstairs burger ($20) that starts with a tender beef and pork patty, with sautéed mushrooms and onions, bacon and tomato jam with jalapeño aioli. When all combined, the flavor is that of a light barbecue sauce.

While the menu is fun and enjoyable, there wasn’t anything distinctive enough about these dishes to raise it above and beyond any other local restaurant serving the same dishes, so I think it was wise to introduce the name-recognition factor of the other restaurants to lure initial customers, and I look forward to see who they might be collabing with next.

Otherwise, what is most likely to bring me back are the service, cocktails, bread and desserts of strawberry granita ($10) coaxed out of fresh strawberries, and a light and refreshing coconut pudding ($10) layered with pineapple coulis, chia seeds, a scoop of coconut gelato and accompanied by fresh fruit.

Upstairs

280 Beachwalk Ave., Waikiki
Food: ***½
Service: ****
Ambiance: ****
Value: ***½
Call: 808-922-1500
Hours: 11:30 A.M.-2 P.M. and 5-9 P.M. Wednesdays-Sundays
Prices: About $80 for two without alcohol

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).