Tourists in beachwear, workers dressed for their high-end retail jobs, local residents outfitted casually or to the nines — all will have a new food destination when Dukes Lane Market & Eatery opens next week in Waikiki.
The latest ABC Stores outlet will offer fast-casual and upscale food options, including loaves of artisanal bread, a whole rotisserie chicken, a platter of oysters on the half shell, or “you can have a burger with Cristal (champagne) if you want,” said Kelly Degala, ABC’s corporate chef. Craving caviar? You can get that here, too.
Those with lesser needs can grab a smoothie or cuppa joe to go.
The food hall, opening July 5 in the Hyatt Centric Waikiki Beach hotel, is the long-planned vision of ABC Stores President and CEO Paul Kosasa, who lured Degala back to Hawaii after 21 years on the mainland.
“ABC had to reinvent itself,” Kosasa said.
The company’s stores have long offered food, from ready-made sandwiches to hot meals from full-service delicatessens, but he had something much bigger in mind, given consumers’ growing interest in food and food-related experiences.
Many of the eight venues within the food hall have straightforward, no-explanation-needed names: Bakery, Ono’s Burger Bar, Spitfire Rotisserie & Flatbread, Dash Fast & Fresh, and Market. There’s also Chill (bubble teas, gelato, smoothies and coffee), a full-service bar and The Vault, a shop selling high-end wine, spirits and craft beers.
The crown jewel is Basalt, a sit-down restaurant serving breakfast, lunch and dinner, and with a raw bar offering seafood cocktails of prawn, lobster or crab, as well as a seafood tower with lobster, crab, oysters, poke and sashimi. “We also will have caviar service,” Degala said. Degala plans to offer midrange caviar at Basalt, to add a bit of briny luxury to certain dishes.
DUKES LANE MARKET & EATERY
>> Where: 2255 Kuhio Ave.
>> Contact: 923-5692
>> Website: dukeslanehawaii.com
Hours
6 a.m. to 11:30 p.m.
>> Bakery (923-5694)
>> Chill
>> Dash
>> Market
>> The Vault
10:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m.
>> Ono’s Burger Bar
>> Raw Bar (923-5689)
>> Spitfire (923-5695)
Basalt (923-5689)
>> Breakfast: 7 to 10:30 a.m.
>> Lunch: 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
>> Dinner: 5 to 10:30 p.m.
>> Bar: 7 a.m. to 11:30 p.m.
Parking
Hyatt Centric Waikiki Beach, 349 Seaside Ave.
>> Full validation from Basalt.
>> Other venues: One-hour validation with $10 purchase
Basalt will be fast-paced and “nothing crazy-fancy” for breakfast and lunch, the chef said. “Dinner is going to be different. Dinner is going to be a showcase of food.”
The restaurant’s 150-seat space includes a communal table with a view right into the open kitchen.
The menu is described as global cuisine with local flavors: pastas made in-house, rack of lamb, venison, steak, lobster risotto, chawanmushi with lobster, crab and uni.
Basalt is toward the back of the large Dukes Lane space. Just inside the Kuhio Street entrance, Bakery will produce pastries, buns and breads for the food hall’s kitchens as well as for retail sale, and will offer fresh-fried doughnuts daily at 6, 7 and 8 a.m. Degala anticipates lines around the morning fry times.
Spitfire Rotisserie & Flatbread’s signature items will include Kona coffee-rubbed whole rotisserie chicken, honey- and soy-glazed “Chinatown duck,” tocino (Filipino cured pork), assorted burgers and flatbread pizzas. Plate lunch side dish choices will include macaroni salad inspired by Diner’s Drive-In (where Degala’s mother worked), green papaya slaw, Nalo greens and a choice of white, brown or garlic fried rice.
Ono’s Burger Bar will offer meaty and vegetarian burgers made with local meats and produce, served on Bakery’s buns, including a black one colored with charcoal, though “you can’t taste the charcoal,” Degala said. The shakes will be made with rich frozen custard.
One Ono’s side dish is called Butter Tots, made with mashed potatoes that are one-third butter. “I love butter,” Degala said. The tots are served with banana ketchup made from scratch, as are all the Dukes Lane sauces and condiments.
Ono’s will host pop-up events with visiting chefs from Hawaii and from food-centric mainland cities.
Down the line, “since we’re in condo city,” Degala plans a line of family-of-four meal kits to be sold at Market that can be taken home to heat, assemble and finish. Among choices are burgers, steaks and a ramen kit elevated beyond the infamously relatable dried-noodle experience.
Gregg Fraser, executive director of the Hawaii Restaurant Association and a former Waikiki restaurateur, said Kosasa deserves credit for reaching beyond ABC’s retail niche — convenience stores on seemingly every corner of Waikiki.
Dukes Lane is offering a new level of ease for customers, Fraser said. “We might have a new category of convenience restaurants here.”