A July 2026 Honolulu Star-Advertiser report recounts the family histories behind Ono Seafood and Repetti's. Lance Brug spent nine months building his restaurant with his own hands, finishing the family's food truck at the same time. When the doors opened at 501 Kealahou Street on July 4, 2019, the sign read Ono Seafood, the same name already known across town in Kapahulu, where his wife Kim's mother Judy Sakuma had started selling poke as a side hustle back in 1995. Judy is 89 now. She still stops by the Kapahulu shop nearly every day.
That story matters if you live in Hawaii Kai, because it is not really about one restaurant. It is about a pattern that has quietly taken shape here over the past few years, one that changes how you should read every new sign that goes up along Keahole Street or inside the shopping centers off Kalanianaole Highway. The newest places to eat in this neighborhood are rarely new concepts testing the market. They are existing family kitchens, some with decades of history elsewhere on Oʻahu or on the mainland, opening a second door here.
Three Kitchens, One Pattern
Walk into Repetti's Pizza & Provisions in Hawaii Kai Shopping Center and you will find hand-tossed New Jersey-style pizza, homemade pasta, and focaccia baked fresh that day. Hatch Clarke opened the shop in October 2022, but he learned the craft in the 1970s working alongside his Italian brother-in-law, first at Serpico's in New Jersey, then later at Serpico's Pizzeria in Pukalani and Prison Street Pizza in Lahaina. Prison Street Pizza did not survive the 2023 Lahaina wildfire. Repetti's, named after the maternal grandfather of Hatch's son Liberty, who now helps run the Hawaii Kai location, carries the recipe forward. In the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Liberty says of the dough his father grew up making, "We haven't changed that formula at all."
A few minutes away, in the same shopping complex as a 24 Hour Fitness, Jesus and Claudia Lazcano Orias run Clau and Chui's Cocina, which opened its Hawaii Kai doors in 2024. The name blends nicknames: Clau for Claudia, Chui for Jesus, a common shortening in Mexico. In Aloha State Daily, Claudia explains, "My husband is from Mexico City and I'm from South Mexico," and the menu reflects both, going well beyond tacos and burritos into dishes other Mexican restaurants on the island don't carry. Tacos run four to five and a half dollars a la carte, or you can order the taco carousel, ten assorted tacos with a choice of carnitas, asada, chorizo, pollo, or brisket, for forty five dollars. A taco salad served in a tortilla bowl, twenty one dollars, is the newest addition.
Line these three up and a shape appears. Ono Seafood's Hawaii Kai location arrived in 2019. Repetti's followed in 2022. Clau and Chui's Cocina came in 2024. None of these openings made a splash the way a new development or a national chain announcement might. Each one was simply a family bringing an existing food business to Hawaii Kai.
The Same Street, Two Saturday Morning Markets
If the restaurants tell a story about continuity, the farmers markets tell a story about capacity. Hawaii Kai has had a Saturday morning market at the Towne Center for years, tucked behind the Panda Express at 333 Keahole Street, running Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday mornings starting around 7:30. It has been a fixture long enough that most residents don't think of it as news anymore. It's just where you go for produce before the heat sets in.
What changed this year is that Saturday now has a second option. Abl Collective, founded by Sondra, launched a weekly farmers market at Hawaii Kai Shopping Center in the summer of 2026, running Saturdays from 8 a.m. to noon. The market is built around Hawaii-grown produce, local farmers and small business makers, with educational activities woven in for families. It sits close enough to the Towne Center market that a resident could plausibly hit both in the same morning without moving the car far.
Two Saturday markets within a short walk of each other is not something you'd expect in a neighborhood that isn't adding much in the way of new commercial square footage. It suggests the demand for a place to buy from a local farmer rather than a supermarket has grown enough that the neighborhood absorbed a second one without displacing the first.
Where to find them:
- Hawaii Kai Towne Center Farmers Market — Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday mornings, behind Panda Express, 333 Keahole Street
- Abl Collective Farmers Market — Saturdays, 8 a.m. to noon, Hawaii Kai Shopping Center
What This Actually Tells You
None of this is dramatic. Nobody broke ground on a new building. No chain restaurant announced a flagship. What happened instead is smaller and, if you live here, more useful to notice: a handful of families brought businesses with established histories to Hawaii Kai. Judy Sakuma's poke recipe crossed town from Kapahulu. Hatch Clarke's pizza dough crossed an ocean and outlasted a wildfire before landing on Keahole Street. Jesus and Claudia Orias brought two different regions of Mexico into one kitchen at their second location. And a farmer-led market opened as an additional Saturday morning option.
If you have lived in Hawaii Kai for a while, you already knew some of this without being able to name it. You knew Repetti's felt different from a pizza place that just opened somewhere. You knew the new taco spot near the gym had a story behind the name. What connects them is that each has roots beyond its Hawaii Kai location. That is a different kind of growth than a lot of neighborhoods see, and it's worth noticing while you're deciding where to grab dinner this weekend.
If you ever want to talk story about the neighborhood, whether it's the food scene, the market schedule, or anything else about life here, Christy P Aiwohi is always happy to connect.
