Foodflash: After 12 Years in Chinatown, The Pig & the Lady Is Closing to Move to Kaimukī

Photo: Aaron K. Yoshino

The Pig & the Lady, the modern Vietnamese-global restaurant that turned its lonely stretch of Chinatown into a destination for locals, tourists and celebrities and earned numerous James Beard Award nominations, is closing Aug. 22 and reopening in Kaimukī this fall. Years in the works and widely expected, the move was confirmed today by chef-owner Andrew Le, who opened the eatery with his family in 2013.

“It kind of feels like we went through our teenage years here in Chinatown, and now, we’re going off to college,” he says. “I think it’s gonna help drive the restaurant to find itself more. But yeah, it’s gonna push us to grow and hopefully do things better.”

Andrew Le, top left, and Alex Le, ca. 2016. Also pictured: Lawrence Ho (top); and Teri Fukuhara-Le, Ollie Le, Loan Le (front). Photo: Elyse Butler Mallams

Pig’s new Kaimukī spot will be at gleaming, glass-fronted Civil Beat Plaza on Wai‘alae Avenue. At up to 130 indoor and outdoor seats, it’ll be slightly larger than the Chinatown restaurant. Perhaps the biggest development: Weekend brunch is returning, supplementing lunch and dinner service. Eventually, there will be a chef’s counter. The open kitchen was made to Le’s specifications, says his brother Alex Le, who runs the farmers market operation.

“It kind of has a Chinatown look, but it’ll be more colorful, more bright. Not nececessarily as wabi sabi as it is now because things are done with a bit more intention,” Andrew Le says. “We had to really focus on how we can improve the spaces so they’re more efficient and have a better flow.” Murals and other art are being done by Chinatown artist Lauren Trang Mar and Pow Wow artist Jeff Gress.

The restaurant’s stand at the Wednesday Blaisdell, Thursday Kailua and Saturday Kapi‘olani Community College farmers markets will stay open.

Why Kaimukī? The space has been waiting for the Les, for one, and it’s a block from Toys ’n Joys, the popular hobby shop the family ran until they opened the restaurant. It’s near the public housing where Loan and Raymond Le raised their family after arriving as refugees from Vietnam. Says Andrew, their third son, “It’s the stronger sense of community. Growing roots in a neighborhood that means a lot to us. Seeing our family and my kids grow in the neighborhood that I grew up in, that’s gonna mean a lot to me.”

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A former sous chef at Chef Mavro, Le debuted The Pig & the Lady in 2011 as a farmers market stand and roving pop-up. When the Les took the plunge with a brick-and-mortar two years later, they kept the farmers markets and Pig’s more traditional Vietnamese menu of street foods and home cooking. That freed Le and his restaurant cooks to experiment “with our creative spins and no-fear approach to trying new iterations of traditional Vietnamese classics, and at the end of the day, just trying to make something very delicious but approachable, that people connect to.”

Like the pho French dip banh mi sandwich with 12-hour brisket, hoisin, Thai basil and chimichurri, a twist that’s never left the menus. Or the more recent Moloka‘i venison tartare with D’Anjou pears, fish sauce and grilled cheese toasts. Or the famous Le Fried Chicken (fried chicken is totally not a thing in Vietnam) with pickles, peanuts, makrut leaves and money sauce.

The James Beard nominations—at least six—followed. “We wanted to make our vision of what Vietnamese food is,” Le says, “and bring up its reputation. Vietnamese food deserves a seat at the table at highly regarded restaurants, and it’s a cuisine that should be revered just as much as Western cuisines like Italian and French, with proper quality and proper technique that really elevate the natural tastes of Vietnamese food.”

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Le was 29 when he opened Pig. A lot happened in the 12 years that followed: The family opened Piggy Smalls at Ward Villages (and closed it seven years later) and partnered with a Japanese corporation to open The Pig & the Lady in Ebisu, Tokyo. Chefs who came up in Pig’s kitchen include chef de cuisine Kristene Moon, Brandon Lee of Double Fat Ice Cream in Waikīkī and Chris Kimoto at Skull & Crown Trading Co. on Hotel Street.

The targeted opening for Pig & the Lady in Kaimukī is this October. Once it’s open and settled into its groove, Le says, he wants to bring back the Chinatown spot as a full-service restaurant. That’ll take at least another year. As for what kind of food it will serve, whether an extension of Pig’s signature modern Vietnamese-global or a different direction entirely, that’s TBD in a whole ’nother chapter.

83 N. King St., (808) 585-8255, thepigandthelady.com, @pigandthelady

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