Home cookin'.

That's what was on the mind of Masahiro Fujio when he came up with the name for his restaurant chain, Hinone Mizunone.

The words mean, roughly, the sound of fire, the sound of water, but they refer specifically to the crackling of a wood fire and the bubbling of a rice pot, recalled from the days of his childhood.

Fujio now has franchised dozens of restaurants, three-quarters of them Hinone Mizunone outlets in Japan. But he hopes the chain still delivers on the name's promise: honest home cookin' — the promise his father offered at the first family restaurant, opened in the lean post-WWII years in Tenma, Osaka. It was called Shokudo (restaurant) Maruten.

That, by the way, is his dad in the black-and-white picture hanging in the front of Fujio's new Island outlet of Hinone Mizunone, and Fujio is the little boy on the left.

Hinone Mizunone opened in Hawai'i a few weeks ago and, although Fujie thinks it brings something new to the market, the menu of teishoku sets, curry and Japanese noodles will be familiar to most. What is perhaps not as familiar is what Fujio starts with when he's asked why he decided to open in Hawai'i.

Gohan. Rice.

"Japanese people like rice. Hawai'i people like rice. He thinks Hawai'i people would like this kind of restaurant," says an interpreter for a jet-lagged Fujio. He has arrived in Hawai'i just this day, come directly to the restaurant for lunch, paused for an interview and then will go — where else? — directly to the golf course.

Indeed, the rice — Tamaki Gold variety — was something I noticed right away on my earlier visits to Hinone Mizunone, pillowy, billowy soft. "Sweet," Fujio said. Yes. And good rice can make a just average Japanese lunch into a feast.

Neighbors of the former Taco Bell at 1345 S. King St. watched with interest as the building was transformed from Mexican to Japanese, from Kingyo (a name favored by a former Fujio partner, but then abandoned when the partnership foundered) to Hinone Mizunone. All this took months. They kept me posted, eager to see what this new restaurant would be.

But finally, last month, very quietly, the doors opened and nearby business lunchers got a chance to find out if the wait was worth it.

And it was. While the menu is hardly ground-breaking, the prices are right, the service prompt and polite and the place is very attractively decorated in high-style contemporary Japanese mode.

The restaurant has drawn the interest not just of neighboring business lunchers, but of Japanese nationals. On a typical day, the conversations around the restaurant's tables are about half in Japanese and half in English.

Here's what you'll find (at least for now; breakfast and possibly dinner coming in the future):