At Sekiya’s Restaurant & Delicatessen in Kaimuki, the home-style cooking of Japanese grandmothers and aunties has been the main draw for 87 years, and the youngest generation of family operators is making sure it stays that way.
In 1935, Taisuke and Katsuko Sekiya opened a small okazuya on School Street in Kalihi, featuring okazu (small dishes) — favorites like Japanese tempura, sushi and namasu — and shave ice; it was called School Delicatessen. Plate lunches for 10 cents followed during World War II, and by 1944, saimin and BBQ sticks were added to the menu.
Sekiya’s moved to the end of Kapahulu Avenue in 1947, and also began serving sit-down meals of sukiyaki, fried ahi and pork tofu at only a handful of tables. In 1955, it moved to its present location across from Kaimuki High School, where it’s still thriving as one of the few old-time restaurants run by the third and fourth generations of family.
Dean Hara, company president and grandson of the founders, said his mother and aunt taught him how to make everything when he worked as a night cook in the 1990s. Their basic advice was: “You gotta watch, learn and do. … Just do it (he laughed), the old style. You gotta taste your food, keep on checking to make sure the taste is on par.” Though he stopped working at the restaurant to take a post office job in 2001, he still helps out for the New Year’s Day rushes and other occasions.
His mother, Doris Hara (who died in 2020), and late aunts, Dorothy Kaito and Janet “Teru” Morihara, were three of the founders’ five children to take over the business as the second generation. When the eldest daughter Dorothy Kaito died, her branch of the family sold its share of the restaurant. After that the Morihara branch of the family ran the operation until 2013, which included Janet’s daughter Joy and son David (he was also vice president of the company).
Dean Hara is among the third generation of family to work there with his wife, Faye Hara, who has been general manager since 2016; she previously worked as a bookkeeper. Faye Hara said she still consults with Joy Morihara over the phone about recipes, restaurant procedures and how to fix certain things in the old building: “She’s my Yoda. She always helps me!”
As the fourth generation, Deanna Hara, daughter of Dean and Faye Hara, is the marketing manager and assists with everything alongside her husband, Leonard “Trey” Paresa, who is one of the main cooks and managers. For a while, Deanna’s brother Ben helped at the restaurant, but he’s moved on.
Dean Hara said Sekiya’s popularity is based on cooking the classic dishes the same way his grandparents made them. The saimin dashi (broth) is still made from scratch; the sushi is seasoned and rolled the way his grandmother used to do it; and the butterfish embodies the shoyu-sugar flavor balance that’s been a signature of Sekiya’s cuisine.
“The nitsuke butterfish, that’s our style. Shoyu, sugar, water and oil, that’s it, very simple. We have to only use Kikkoman (shoyu); that’s what it’s always been. We tried Aloha, but it was too different, the taste,” Dean Hara said.
But the flavors are hard for new cooks to replicate because they only have general guidelines or approximate measurements, said Dean Hara. “It’s not a real recipe, not accurate; it’s one scoop of this, and a scoop is different for different dishes,” he added, laughing.
“It’s just hard work and love,” he concluded, when asked why people are so fond of Sekiya’s food.
Paresa, cook/manager since 2015, worked his way up from cashier, server and dishwasher. He is trying to convert the guidelines of spoons and scoops into standard cooking measurements of cups and spoonfuls so that the flavors, especially the sauces, are consistent. Deanna Hara chimed inthat her dad custom-made a spoon to ladle out the right amount of shoyu, “but what happens when the spoon breaks?”
Future generations of cooks won’t have the fine-tuned taste buds of Dean or Doris Hara to rely on, Paresa said.
He was rewarded the most by the matriarch’s feedback. Doris Hara would always tell him if his cooking was too salty or undercooked, but when she’d say, “‘Oh, good!’ That was my favorite feedback because then I know I’m doing it right!” Paresa said.
Many dishes are labor-intensive, especially the traditional kobumaki (stuffed kelp rolls) and the maki sushi rolls that are ordered by the hundreds for New Year’s Day.
“Not too many restaurants make these kinds of food anymore,” or they sell packaged versions, Deanna Hara said. One of the most time-consuming dishes is the marinated gobo (burdock root) offered daily at its okazu counter. It is still shred by hand and retains a firm texture, but they’ve recently bought a tool to make the shredding easier than just using a knife, she added.
Faye Hara said it’s sometimes hard to duplicate the same flavors from the past, since the aunties mixed their own unique sauces, and many of the ingredients are no longer available, too expensive or difficult to obtain regularly. The restaurant also lost a few of their longtime vendors because of the pandemic.
“We no longer can buy island-raised chicken” because it became more cost effective several years ago for the vendor to get the poultry from the mainland.
“We used everything from the chicken,” including the carcass to make the dashi broth for the saimin. “Now we have to purchase the chicken bones separately,” Faye Hara said.
Quite often, common ingredients like tofu, gobo, watercress, Japanese cucumbers and green onions are hard to get because of the weather or other factors, and they have to get things from the mainland — “it’s not the same,” she added.
Being short-staffed as most restaurants have been during the pandemic made it necessary to cut back on a few menu items, and to reduce opening hours, Faye Hara said. The staff is down to 30 now, where before the pandemic, they numbered almost 50. Most of the eight cooks (including two part-timers) are stretched to working six days a week and struggle to cover three different food stations instead of just one.
No matter the hardships, Dean Hara said it’s vital to keeping the family business going.
“For my mother’s sake, my grandma’s sake, the aunties. … They all worked here and they put their blood, sweat and tears in here,” he said. He feels fortunate that the family has always had members to carry on the legacy, like his daughter.
Deanna Hara and Trey Paresa said they enjoy being part of the family business and see themselves working there the rest of their lives.
“Even with the uncertainties because of COVID, we’re still going strong,” Deanna Hara said. “It’s like a legacy: everybody knows Sekiya’s — people say: I remember going there with my grandmother. And we always get this: ‘Oh, you cannot close down, we love your food so much!’”
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Sekiya’s Restaurant & Delicatessen
2746 Kaimuki Ave., 808-732-1656
