Thanks to a ton of ice and religiously shut freezer doors, many O'ahu restaurateurs and food suppliers weathered Sunday's power outage without serious losses.

Savvy restaurant owners, chefs and managers used bar ice to keep more delicate items cold in the walk-in coolers, packing food in restaurant pans and scattering ice over and between the items. Chef-owner Bill Bruhl of BluWater Grill in Hawai'i Kai and some of his staff even came back in the middle of the night to refresh the ice.

Opening a freezer door was practically a firing offense in most establishments. "The first thing you do is you never open the doors so as not to lose the cold," said chef-owner D.K. Kodama of the Sansei/dk steakhouse/Vino and Hiroshi restaurant group. Kodama has been through power outages before and knew a well-filled, closed freezer will maintain proper temperatures for up to three days, so he wasn't too worried. However, when he spoke to The Advertiser yesterday morning, he was preparing to oversee a survey of products in all the restaurants:

"My word to my staff is, if you have any kind of question, throw it out. I'd rather take the loss than serve anything that's mediocre."

The state Health Department's advice to restaurants and food businesses is the same as to homeowners: Freezers in good condition can safely store frozen foods for up to 48 hours, 72 hours if they're fully stocked without a lot of air space. Refrigerated foods kept at 45 degrees or less are safe.

Rex Mitsunaga, program manager of the Department of Health Sanitation Branch, responsible for food safety among O'ahu's approximately 4,000 food purveyors, said most well-established restaurants have been through power outages before and have safety procedures and equipment in place. This week, O'ahu's nine sanitation inspectors are focusing on smaller, newer spots — businesses most at risk of misunderstanding regulations, or of being tempted to try to use up food that should be discarded.

"Most restaurants know they can't afford to try to salvage food at the risk of making their customers sick," he said.

One casualty faced by many restaurants: "The ice cream and sorbet were history," said Bruhl, whose power at BluWater was out from Sunday morning into the wee hours of Monday. Other restaurateurs said the same.

Meanwhile, Bruhl's supplier, Maurice Grasso of Honolulu's La Gelateria, was heaving a sigh of relief: His losses weren't what he'd imagined they might be as the hours ticked by on Sunday with no power.

"I didn't dare open the freezer, but then Gaspro opened up for half an hour and I went and bought a couple hundred pounds of dry ice and put it in my walk-in freezer. That really helped me out," he said. When the electricity came back on after 12 hours, he found that his only losses were among some of the more delicately flavored frozen sweets, with ingredients such as sparkling wine, which had separated and had to be discarded. He was filling orders again yesterday morning.

"I was sweating it, believe me. I don't understand why it took so long to get the electricity back," said Grasso, echoing the comments of many in the food business.

At Compadres Bar & Grill, general manager Kellie Harris said the primary loss was some high-end tequilas that were on display and salsa'd their way off a shelf during the quake itself. Though they did consider it prudent to discard some leftovers from the chiller, Compadres chefs were able to keep fresh and frozen foods at the proper temperature; they checked using instant-read thermometers to be sure. Power was out at Ward Center for about 10 hours.

At the Islands' four Ruth Chris Steak Houses and Romano's Macaroni Grill, owned by Desert Island Restaurants, it was business as usual by midday yesterday, though the O'ahu outlet at Restaurant Row had remained closed all day Sunday.

"We monitored the whole time until the power came on and we were able to maintain 20 degrees in the freezer and 45 in the reefers," said Desert Island Hawai'i regional vice president Paul Ah Cook.

At Y. Hata & Co. Ltd. on Sand Island, one of the city's largest wholesale food suppliers, President and Chief Executive Officer Laurence Vogel ruefully noted that they're expecting delivery any day of a power generator for the company's hundreds of square feet of refrigerator and freezer space. Y. Hata is closed from Saturday afternoon to Sunday afternoon, when crew arrive to begin filling Monday's orders, dispatching trucks around the city in the middle of the night.

With no generator in place and power out on Sand Island for 14 hours Sunday, the order-filling crew had to plan very, very carefully, grouping orders so as to open the chiller and freezer doors as seldom as possible. "There was no change in the required temperatures, and we were able to fill all our orders. We didn't miss a beat," Vogel said.

Reach Wanda A. Adams at wadams@honoluluadvertiser.com.