Chef Kealoha Domingo to Open a Café at Capitol Modern Downtown

Fresh from a pop-up appearance at April’s Merrie Monarch Festival, Kealoha Domingo plans to open his first brick-and-mortar inside Capitol Modern this year. As one of the Islands’ leading Native Hawaiian chefs, his vision is to “produce delicious food that’s connected to our culture,” he says. “I’m not always gonna be serving something traditional, as in kahiko night. Sometimes it’ll be ‘auana night, a little bit more modern. I’m trying to find the happy collide of two different worlds. People think, I going eat Hawaiian food, kanak attack. It doesn’t have to be like that. Traditional foods are healthy. Eh, come eat a lū‘au stew with a coconut oil-roasted sweet potato.”

Photo: Aaron K. Yoshino

For the pop-up, having researched and learned that the Merrie Monarch himself, King David Kalākaua, loved oysters, Domingo offered the shellfish three ways: with a cilantro-lime-calamansi sauce, a chile oil with dried fish and ‘ōpae, and a compound butter with ‘opihi and limu he harvested. The intentionality behind dishes wraps in more than purpose, it brings in seasonality and hyperlocal sourcing.

Before he went full-time as a chef, Domingo was an elevator mechanic. But he was born into a family of cooks, and when his own love of cooking took over, he launched Nui Kealoha as a catering business. He appears regularly at the Hawai‘i Food & Wine Festival and is often called to present his food at Indigenous showcases around the world. Invited to cook at the James Beard House in New York, he pounded pa‘i‘ai to go with cured ‘ahi and ‘inamona.

The menu at Domingo’s café will be geared to the Downtown and Capitol District lunch crowds—which means a daily lū‘au offering with a vegan option or proteins like braised beef, pork belly, char-steamed fish and grilled Kaua‘i shrimp (“I do put a coconut brown butter sauce on it—everything in moderation”). Salads might start with local heirloom tomatoes and mix in limu or pohole fern shoots, and he’s mulling ideas for sandwiches.

“A guy who wants his black garlic and bourbon braised pork belly versus someone who wants a simple grilled shrimp with his lū‘au, both can be delicious and healthy and locally sourced,” Domingo says. “It’s recognizing that our Hawaiian foods, they already are healthy. And something like lū‘au is sustainable. It takes a taro farmer 8 to 14 months to grow taro, but he can get a new batch of lū‘au in two weeks. It’s high in nutritional value and prepared correctly, it’s delicious. Hawaiian food should uplift you and make you feel good about yourself.”

Mari Taketa is the dining editor of HONOLULU Magazine and editor of Frolic Hawai‘i.