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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Old cafe in Hilo has new life

Eddie Gan didn't realize when he took over the hole-in-the-wall diner at the corner of Keawe and Mamo streets that it's a Big Island institution going back almost half a century.

By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist

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HILO, Hawai'i — Eddie Gan didn't realize when he took over the hole-in-the-wall diner at the corner of Keawe and Mamo streets that it's a Big Island institution going back almost half a century. It looks like a set from a 1941 Andy Hardy movie.

Eddie doesn't know who Andy Hardy was, of course, because he comes from South China. But he's discovered that his soda fountain is from another time in America. He's got the old, original syrup pumps for lemon, strawberry, vanilla and cherry. There are three spigots for dispensing Coke. Ask for a banana split and you get it in a 1941 dish.

When a customer orders the beef stew special, Eddie goes into the kitchen while his wife tends to customers at the red Formica counter with 14 stools. When the stew is ready, Eddie opens the bat-wing doors of a little window and rings the bell. It's like the bells that hotels in the 1930s used to summon a bellhop to the front desk.

Albert Araujo came in and plunked himself down on a stool. While waiting for his beef stew, he explained that he's a longtime customer at what is now the Big Island Ohana Cafe, the latest incarnation of what began as Elsie's Fountain and morphed into the Mamo Diner.

"When I was a small kid, I came here after school," Araujo said. The kids rode Columbia and Schwinn bicycles.

Eddie's mother, a native of China, acquired the diner and operated it with his sister. When he came over from China, Eddie went to work cooking at the Black Rock Cafe in Pahoa. Then his mother and sister opened a restaurant in Atlanta and Eddie took over the Mamo Diner.

Eddie talks a mile a minute and gets along with everybody.

"I wanted my restaurant to be like a big family," he said. "That's why I call it the Big Island Ohana Cafe."

The previous owner had cards left over from when the restaurant opened in 1941. They fit into holders above the soda fountain and read "Milk Shake," "Chocolate Sundae," "Root Beer Float," "Hot Fudge Sundae," "Banana Split" and "Orange Freeze." I told him he'd better watch "Antiques Roadshow" and find out what the original signs are worth.

He said that every time he talks about changing the diner, his customers rise up in protest.

"He doesn't know he's got a treasure here," Araujo said.

There are four tables with four chairs each in a color that used to be called "blond." Behind the counter is a wall covered with post cards written by Eddie's tourist customers after they went back home. The cards tell how much fun they had eating there.

Eddie is on top of the world because his wife arrived last year and his mother will give him half interest in the cafe if he can make it pay.

He works so hard, he's never been to the volcano.