The last time Chart House Waikiki shut down for any length of time was in 1975, after the restaurant was gutted in a fire.
It was closed for a year, owner Joey Cabell says — “almost the same as with this virus.”
A big difference: The restaurant was just 7 years old at the time of the fire; now it’s 53, Cabell is 82 and the latest reopening comes amid all the uncertainty of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. But Cabell is looking with confidence toward opening day, April 1.
No joke, although much is left to do. Almost all the appliances and equipment have been replaced, the exterior painted, wooden accents varnished. A walk-through last week showed it is very much a work in progress.
“Almost everything had to be replaced after all these years,” Cabell said.
The Chart House closed in August and many assumed it would not be back, he said, but his plan was always to try. After the closure, a new partner came into the picture and the restaurant’s second rebirth began.
AG Capital Partners, which owns several food ventures (best known is Champs Sports Bar & Restaurant in Kaimuki), approached Cabell and offered a new partnership to revamp and restore Chart House.
Adam Tabura, a consultant and spokesman for AG, is overseeing the reopening. Tabura is a veteran chef of resort kitchens on Lanai, Maui and Hawaii island, and gained celebrity as part of the Aloha Plate team that won Food Network’s “The Great Food Truck Race” in 2013.
He said they’ll start slow, with a staff of about 24, roughly half what it used to be. “We cannot run at full speed, we gotta see what the business gives us in the next few weeks.”
Should things go well, Tabura said, the restaurant will undergo a second, more extensive renovation and expansion.
Until then, Cabell said, the plan is to control costs. “We’re going to come back very carefully in every single way.”
Chart House opened in 1968 with just nine items on the menu. A top sirloin was just $3.95, with all-you-could-eat salad, bread, coffee or tea.
By the time it closed, the menu ran to more than 80 items, Tabura said, but it has been trimmed to about 40. Customer favorites — prime rib, oysters Rockefeller, garlic chicken, whole lobster, escargot and a bison filet — will be back, along with some new items, such as chicken piccata and scampi. It will still focus on classic cuisine.
Meanwhile, interior work proceeds, from a rebuilt fish tank, to new seat cushions, to live plants replacing plastic.
Cabell said the closure had its silver lining, as it gave him time to upgrade aging equipment and decor.
“It was a blessing in disguise. We went through every bit of our equipment, everything has been refurbished. If we had kept going the way we had been, we’d be breaking down all over the place.”
The hiatus also provided time to build the brand, largely the concern of Cabell’s wife, Yana. She said an online store is doing a strong business in logo wear, from T-shirts to replicas of Chart House employee aloha shirts.
The Chart House is one of the state’s longest-running restaurants in its original location under the same ownership. Cabell recalls meeting with super-developer Chinn Ho and securing a 10,000- square-foot space in Chinn’s planned Ilikai Marina, an adjunct to his Ilikai Hotel.
At the time, Cabell was involved in two other Chart Houses, in Aspen, Colo., and Newport Beach, Calif. His partner, Buzzy Bent, went on to open several more, but Cabell turned his focus to Hawaii, where he was born and raised.
Cabell’s storied pre-business career as a surfer and sailor has long set the personality for the Chart House. An image of him riding a wave makes up the restaurant’s logo, and shipboard themes show up throughout the restaurant, from the tables to the grates over the light fixtures. The name of the restaurant is a play on a shipboard chart room.
He surfed competitively beginning in the 1960s, winning titles internationally and joining the Duke Kahanamoku Surf Team. He was inducted into the Hawaii Waterman Hall of Fame and Huntington Beach Surfing Walk of Fame in California.
Cabell’s artisan skills are also incorporated into the dining room. “Anything that’s wood in here, we built it,” he said, meaning him, his friends and employees.
Tabura remembers coming to the Chart House in the 1980s from his home on Lanai, meeting up with family. “We’d have 15 or 20 of us; we’d be here, like, four hours.”
He views his collaboration with the Cabells as something positive that came of the pandemic. “I think COVID brought us together,” he said, and now they can move forward with a support system in place.
“As tough as times are, there is life at the end of the tunnel,” Tabura said. “We have to take advantage of that and jump in with two feet and own it.”
How far are they looking down that tunnel? The Cabells say they are talking to the Ilikai about a new lease — for 50 more years.
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TO BOOK A TABLE
Reservations for the Chart House for April 1 and beyond may be made at opentable.com. Slots for opening day are already nearly booked up.
