The Owners of Giovedì, the 2025 Hale ‘Aina Awards’ Best New Restaurant, Are Unapologetically Themselves

Jennifer Akiyoshi and Bao Tran celebrated Giovedì’s first anniversary in early June surrounded by their team, friends and supporters. With a DJ spinning, neighborhood business owners popping by, and a joyous spirit overflowing into the Chinatown restaurant’s courtyard, I flashed back to when Encore Saloon occupied this space just over a year earlier. So much has changed, yet the community—the core of what’s made this spot special—is alive and well.

When Giovedì opened, I was drawn to its classy-cool vibe and Asian-Italian dishes. I came back the following month. Then again. And again. I tried to eat my way through the menu but couldn’t help returning to certain dishes—the prosciutto!—every time. It quickly became my favorite new restaurant.

And yours. HONOLULU readers gave Giovedì the Gold Hale ‘Aina Award for Best New Restaurant.

A Surprise at Every Turn

Giovedì’s dishes speak to Tran’s philosophy of simple elegance with Asian flavors and Italian techniques. The most popular, Prosciutto San Daniele, tells this story best. When Tran staged at a restaurant in Italy, he loved eating prosciutto with gnocco fritto, a hollow fried bread that you fill with meat. At Giovedì, he replaces the bread with bánh tiêu, a Vietnamese sesame doughnut his parents treated him to during childhood outings to the mall. The dish comes with house-made giardiniera pickles that add zing.

The menu is a joyful compendium of the unexpected. Spaghetti arrabbiata, a spicy classic, is brighter here, with fresh tomatoes, shiso replacing basil, and fermented chile instead of red pepper flakes. The Gnocchi Mapolonese echoes mapo tofu with doubanjiang and whipped tofu rather than Bolognese sauce. And the mushroom donburi combines Japanese Nanatsuboshi white rice with Italian venere black rice.

Tran’s version of Asian-Italian draws from his own heritage and what he’s learned from different chefs. “Fusion is tough because sometimes you end up offending one part or the other of the fusion,” he says. To avoid that, he says he asks himself, “Would a Chinese person and a Sicilian person both find joy and value in this thing? If the answer is yes, OK, we’ll put it on the menu.” The wine list bypasses big producers and popular brands to feature wines that fit Giovedì’s food or that come from proprietors whom Akiyoshi says she personally respects.

While signature dishes are constant, other items are refreshed every few weeks, often with input from staff members, who span different cultures. “We would not have Best New Restaurant without our team,” says Akiyoshi, who runs the dining room and is married to Tran. “It’s a small team of 15, but our team is what kind of made Giovedì what it is.”

A Long Time Coming

Two weeks after it started taking reservations, Giovedì plunged into darkness along with the rest of Chinatown. Last summer’s power outages forced Akiyoshi and Tran to temporarily close and throw away all of the restaurant’s perishables. “That was a scary moment,” Tran says. But they’d built up a support network since he and O‘ahu-born Akiyoshi moved here from New York in 2017 and began working for Mina Group at Stripsteak Waikīkī and The Street, so they were able to bounce back quickly.

“The intention of moving to Hawai‘i was eventually to have a restaurant, but it was very important for us to establish ourselves professionally first, whether it be like meeting farmers, vendors, and then also connecting with culinary and beverage professionals here,” Tran says. They built a reputation for their pasta, pizza and tiramisu at Mad Bene and Pizza Dadi before branching out on their own.

“There’s no one I trust more than [Tran] and myself,” Akiyoshi says. “I think it’s awesome to have someone by your side where your skills are super complemented by each other.”

They opened Giovedì as a pop-up at Waterfront Plaza in 2023. The $95 prix fixe menu was served inside a sausage factory. “We want to serve food that’s delicious, but in our own style, and really speak to what we want to make—not just necessarily what people want to eat, but stuff I really want to share with the world,” Tran says. The pop-up was a success, amassing regulars they hashtagged the #giovedigang. With that confidence boost, the couple was ready to move on to more permanent digs, and Akiyoshi estimates she looked at 20 spaces before Fête co-owner Chuck Bussler hinted about a place that was becoming available.

For Encore’s owners, it mattered that “we sold the business to the right team. It’s a couple who are going to do some really cool things,” Encore co-owner Danny Ka‘aiali‘i said at the time. “If they didn’t buy the business, we would have kept it going. We love our neighbors and the Chinatown community, so who we passed the torch to was very important to us.”

Encore’s last day was March 29. Akiyoshi and Tran got the keys on April 1 and opened Giovedì two months later. “How we got to the finish line was like a mad scramble, but at the end, we trusted ourselves,” Tran says. “You gotta believe in your skill set and your values. And I think people will come after that. And they are.”

10 N. Hotel St., Chinatown, (808) 723-9049, giovedihawaii.com, @giovedirestaurant

Katrina Valcourt is the executive editor of HONOLULU Magazine.