Chef files Chapter 11 for Kaua'i restaurant

By Andrew Gomes
Advertiser Staff Writer

Hawai'i celebrity chef Jean-Marie Josselin has resorted again to filing for bankruptcy to protect the liquor license at his Kaua'i restaurant A Pacific Cafe.

Josselin said the business is doing well, and will remain open, but a lingering state general excise tax delinquency from 1999 and 2000 barred him from renewing a county liquor license that expired June 30.

The Chapter 11 filing last week automatically renewed the restaurant's license to sell liquor. Josselin said liquor sales for about 25 percent of his business.

Josselin filed a similar bankruptcy petition a year ago, and was allowed to continue selling liquor because under bankruptcy law a liquor license is considered an asset that must be preserved. Normally, businesses must obtain tax clearances to renew their liquor licenses.

The state has an $85,000 claim against A Pacific Cafe. Josselin said he was close to reaching a repayment plan with the state to clear the debt, but an agreement could not be reached before the restaurant's liquor license expired.

"It's a leftover thing," Josselin said. "It has nothing to do with this year or last year. Last year, we catch up quite a bit, but we couldn't catch up all the way. We're doing pretty good right now."

Josselin said he hopes he can quickly agree on a repayment plan with the state, and dispose of the bankruptcy.

Last year's Chapter 11 petition for the Kaua'i restaurant was dismissed in September. Josselin also made a similar filing last year on behalf of A Pacific Cafe in Kihei, Maui, but he closed that restaurant, and $9,000 in assets were sold to pay a few creditors a fraction of $325,000 in claims, according to bankruptcy records.

The Maui restaurant was one of four Josselin closed on three islands in the last few years, after struggles dominated by Hawai'i's slow economy throughout most of the 1990s.

Josselin, one of a dozen high-profile local restaurateurs credited as the founders of Hawai'i Regional Cuisine, established himself in the Islands as executive chef of the Coco Palms Resort on Kaua'i, also has hosted a locally produced TV cooking show and published the cookbook "A Taste of Hawaii."

The Kaua'i restaurant, recognized by Conde Nast Traveler and Bon Appetit magazines as one of the best in the country, was Josselin's first in Hawai'i.