E&O restaurant coming to Hawai'i
By Andrew Gomes
Advertiser Staff Writer
The namesake son of the late Hawai'i luxury hotel developer Christopher B. Hemmeter is returning to the Islands with his Southeast Asia-themed restaurant chain E&O Trading Co.
Hemmeter partnered with fellow Punahou School grad and friend Kenwei Chong to establish a 175-seat E&O restaurant expected to open at Ward Centre early next year. The venture would be the fourth restaurant for the expanding San Francisco-based E&O Development Co., which Hemmeter started in 1997.
"It's exciting for me to be doing business back in Hawai'i," Hemmeter said. "When you grow up in Hawai'i, you never really lose your connection. I'm still connected."
The E&O concept is tied to the story of Christopher Bailey, a fictional character who traded European goods with the Orient (E&O) in the 1800s. Bailey's warehouse became a gathering place featuring foods from Southeast Asia.
E&O dishes — inspired by the cuisines of Indonesia, Malaysia, East India, Vietnam and Thailand — include lamb-stuffed flat bread, calamari with kaffir lime sauce, papaya and avocado salad, and prawns in saffron butter with black rice.
Chong said the original San Francisco E&O was designed to resemble Bailey's warehouse, but other restaurants vary in decor. The Honolulu restaurant will be built to look like an Asian open-air market.
"Imagine Chinatown 80 years ago," he said. "We're going to blow out the walls and make it feel like an open-air marketplace."
Chong said E&O, with an average check of $18 for lunch and $26 for dinner, is projected to bring in $3.6 million in the first year.
The restaurant will be next to Compadres Bar & Grill in the former space of A Pacific Café, which has been empty since November 2000.
Construction is anticipated to begin this summer, and it will cost about $2 million to open the restaurant, Chong said.
General partners in the venture are Chong, Hemmeter, Rodney Loo (another Punahou graduate) and Micah Broude, a restaurant consultant who helped Hemmeter start E&O.
Hemmeter, 40, came up with the concept in 1995 after earning a graduate degree from Harvard Business School.
He said he saw a gap between ethnic restaurants and high-end fusion-food establishments. He had developed a taste for Southeast Asian foods while traveling to acquire millions of dollars of art for the Westin Maui, Westin Kauai and Hyatt Waikoloa hotels developed by his father.
Broude helped Hemmeter open the first restaurant in San Francisco in 1997. A second E&O opened in San Jose, Calif., in 1999. A third is scheduled to open in Larkspur, Calif., in September.
The 35-year-old Chong, who has worked with international bond and currency investments for Chase Manhattan Bank, Jensen mutual funds and Bloomberg Financial Markets in New York and San Francisco, had been a limited-partner investor in previous E&O restaurants. He moved back to Hawai'i in 2001 and got into the records storage business.
"Because I live here and (Hemmeter's) roots (are) here, we decided to put a restaurant in Hawai'i," Chong said. "We think Hawai'i could probably sustain two or three."
"It's always been a concept we've been excited to grow," Hemmeter added.
Reach Andrew Gomes at agomes@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8065.
