The Pig & The Lady Slated to Open This Fall in Ward Village

Piggy Smalls will serve some of the Chinatown favorites, plus a new breakfast menu.

May 19, 2016

Catherine Toth Fox,

The team behind the award-winning The Pig & The Lady is planning to open a second location this fall.

Photo: Olivier Koning

Fans have dreamed of a second location of The Pig & The Lady, somewhere with better parking, maybe breakfast, take-out soft serve.

And, come this fall, that will all come true, as the Hale ‘Aina award-winning Chinatown restaurant opens its second location—called Piggy Smalls—in the old Kua ‘Aina space at Ward Village.

“We’ve been thinking about a second location for a while, and we’ve been talking to Ward for at least four months now,” says chef/owner Andrew Le, a James Beard Award nominee. “We wanted to be sure that it was a good location, that we had good support from the landlords, and we would have the creative freedom to do whatever we wanted.”

Le says the plan is to renovate the 1,600-square-foot space from a counter-service eatery to a full-service restaurant. There will be an open kitchen and dessert production area, with seating both inside and out for about 90 diners total. Le signed a seven-year lease on the space.

“As far as design,” Le says, “we want to have some of the same aesthetics as in Chinatown, that kind of vintage, industrial feel with wood elements.”

Expect the menu to be similar, too, but with its own specialties. Some of the most popular items from the Chinatown location, particularly the pho dishes, will likely be on the menu here. But Piggy Smalls will be serving breakfast—P&L is only open for lunch and dinner—which means a whole slew of new dishes, including toasts, house-made jams, soft-poached eggs, pastries, breakfast pho and an assortment of pickled items. It will offer coffees, teas and juices, and the bar will focus mainly on beer and wine. The soft serve popular at the Chinatown location will also be served here—and to go. And Le is already thinking about special weekend brunch menus.

“Everything we do, it’s about making food that people can eat every day,” Le says. “The food has to be craveable, it’s nourishing, it’s food that’s meant to make you feel really good. That’s what Piggy Smalls will be, a mini version of The Pig & The Lady … It’s like the little brother. It won’t be the exact replica of the Chinatown restaurant. This location will have its own identity.”

Brandon Lee, a sous chef at P&L, will take over as chef de cuisine of Piggy Smalls. Le says he plans on hiring between 30 and 40 new employees for the Ward restaurant.

In the meantime, Le is also revamping the menu at the Chinatown restaurant. He will be introducing new lunch menus today, including a Ni‘ihau lamb burger, a kale Caesar salad, a Vietnamese com tam (broken rice) dish with roast pork and a new version of mazemen (a no-broth ramen). A couple of weeks after that, he plans on unveiling new dinner items and making changes to the dining area, including installing comfortable, custom-made booth seating.

Le says the family is still committed to its farmers market pop-ups, with no changes to that schedule for now.

“It’s really exciting,” Le says. “It’s like having a second child. You have an idea of what it’s going to be like, but you just don’t know the personality yet. It’s going to be a really exciting space.”