A Shokudo for Grownups

Photo: Aaron K. Yoshino

“But is it in your top three?” I’m describing my favorite dishes at Kaimukī Shokudo’s new izakaya when I realize my friend has been waiting for an answer. And it’s a good question. More than 40 Japanese-style gastropubs dot Honolulu, the character of each and its small-plate appetizers calling to different tastes. I consider which places most often call to mine: Trendy, unfussy Nami Kaze, where local and Japan-inspired plates take global spins. No-frills Tori Ton, whose sidewalk picnic tables beckon with gobo fries and blistering hot yakitori. And yes, Kaimukī Shokudo.

Unlike the original Shokudo on Kapi‘olani Boulevard, where a generation of teenagers and 20-somethings came of age on sushi pizza and honey toast, Kaimukī Shokudo is for grownups. It hews rustic and traditional, a tunnel of geometric shadows and light in the former Heiho House space on 11th Avenue. It opened with lunch in April and added dinner in June, the menus of each contained on one page. While daytime fare focuses on tempura, rice bowls, and hot and cold soba with toppings that ramp up from the traditional to grilled duck, oysters and uni, dinner transforms the place into a neighborhood izakaya.

This is the iteration that’s drawn me back three times in three weeks. Dishes, for those who frequent izakaya, are at once familiar. If you choose right, they become the ones you order every time. Those I recount for my friend start with a fish of the day offered grilled, tempura-fried, simmered nitsuke-style or as sashimi ($18). The buri we get in a sweet-savory soy simmer is rich, delicate and pliant; it makes everyone sink back in their seats. On a different day it will be kampachi, another fatty fish that blooms as nitsuke, or leaner but still tender madai or hirame.

A simple dish of chilled eggplant and shishito peppers in broth, top; and madai, a fish of the day, in a nitsuke simmer. Photo: Aaron K. Yoshino

A plate of grilled vegetables ($14) is a playground of textures: rows of corn sliced off the cob, rounds of crunchy lotus root and yamaimo (mountain yam), mushrooms, okra and shishito peppers that you dab with sweet, nutty moro-miso or salt. And the Mentai Mochi Cheese Spring Rolls ($12 for two) are exactly what they sound like, and then some: piping hot, crispy, chewy and briny, with a cheese pull that even the Instagram-averse might be tempted to photo.

Also deceptively like the sum of its parts is Age Hitashi ($7), translated roughly as “fried and chilled in broth.” Spears of eggplant under an arrangement of shishito peppers topped with chile threads rise from a pool of tsuyu. The eggplant, soft on its slick surface and just firm enough in the center without going limp and mushy, is so perfect that when the dish is down to only the smoky broth, I pick up the bowl and drink it. And then I ask who the chef is.

It’s Yuya Yamanaka, the corporate executive chef at Westman Corp. (a rebrand of Diamond Dining). I know his pedigree: Yamanaka was the opening sous chef at Le Clown Bar in Paris, whose Japanese inflections on French bistro classics were written up by The New York Times and Eater. Recruited to Hawai‘i by Zetton Group, he opened upscale Paris.Hawai‘i in Waikīkī, then moved to Westman and helped devise Fukurou’s $125 prix fixe of Mexican-tinged sushi at Búho Cocina y Cantina. At Kaimukī Shokudo, the server’s answer to my question flashes me back to the oxtail soup at Waikīkī’s Westman Café—I tried it, put down my spoon and asked the same question. And got the same answer.

SEE ALSO: Mindblown: Legit Oxtail Soup and Soufflé Pancakes at Westman Café

There are no local or global inflections on Japanese cooking at Kaimukī Shokudo, just on-point execution and flavors delivered in modern takes that leave intact the essence of izakaya fare. Except for the beef curry. Like the oxtail soup at Westman Café, the beef curry at Kaimukī Shokudo ($9 half portion, $17 full) sticks out. It’s the stuff of company cafeterias in Tokyo—glossy Japanese curry yielding strips of melting washugyu beef and nothing else—done exceedingly well. “The curry?” Ryan Ko, Westman’s vice president of operations, is stumped when I ask why it’s among the izakaya dishes. “Ah! You know how the JAL (Japan Airlines) lounge is famous for the curry?” Actually, I didn’t know. “Chef Yuya does the business class meals for JAL.”

SEE ALSO: Kaimukī Shokudo Is the Izakaya This Neighborhood Needed

Ko says more Shokudos are in the works on O‘ahu, each spotlighting a different menu concept. At the seafood- and vegetable-centric Kaimukī locale, not every dish hits like the curry. I may be the only one not raving over the sweet-salty Okinawan sweet potato salad topped with ikura ($12). The kamameshi ($42) is drier and less lustrous after two well-grilled saba fillets—which you’ll find in exactly the same form on the lunch soba—are mixed in tableside. And while local izakaya fans may be disappointed, there is, as at most izakaya in Japan, no sushi. Which makes no difference to me. The izakaya at Kaimukī Shokudo is in my top three.

Open Thursday to Monday from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.; Thursday, Sunday and Monday from 5 p.m. to midnight, Friday and Saturday from 5 p.m. to 1 a.m., 1127 11th Ave., @kaimukishokudo