Ethel’s Grill: Why It Closed and What Lies Ahead for the Longtime Kalihi Hole-in-the-Wall
It wasn’t just one thing, but the story from co-owner Minaka Urquidi mirrors similar issues at many local eateries.
Photo: Thomas Obungen
Ethel’s Grill closed Nov. 27, the day before Thanksgiving, and from the 2,304 reactions and 188 comments on its final Instagram post, you felt the magnitude of the community’s loss. The hole-in-the-wall on the back side of industrial Kalihi didn’t go out quietly. “This is not the END!!!” screamed the copy in owner Minaka Urquidi’s post. Her copy always screamed. “Beer battered Basa, Ume Shiso Chicken, Garlic Shoyu Steak!!!!! Happy Thursday!!!! Come and get it!!!!” was typical. “Come and get it!!!!” was a trademark. All of it was fitting for a menu that mixed gigantic plates and punchy flavors with gentler old-school classics, so you could find Hot Honey Chicken on the same day as Saba Nitsuke.
Three generations owned Ethel’s Grill; the first gave it its name. Yachiyo Ethel Unebasami opened the place in the 1960s. At the end of the next decade, the Ishiis bought it—Yoichi, a chef from Waikīkī’s big 1970s-era Japanese restaurants, and his wife, Ryoko. After a while, customers assumed Ryoko was Ethel, and she went along. The food was meant for dockworkers and truck drivers, many of whom stopped in daily.
By the late ‘90s, Yoichi’s signature plates were also drawing chefs, politicians and Downtown business types: his famed ‘ahi tataki sashimi in garlic shoyu, Japanese-style hamburger steak crowned with grated daikon and ponzu, and sumo-size bowls of oxtail saimin with squeeze bottles of chile pepper water on the side so you could shoot heat onto the tails as you ate.
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Minaka, the Ishiis’ daughter, grew up in the restaurant. She and her husband, Robert Urquidi, both pedigreed in Hawai‘i’s fine-dining kitchens, took over next, and their personalities overflowed onto the menu we know now. Robert’s signatures, including Okinawan taco rice, are likely to join his father-in-law’s at any future reprisal of Ethel’s Grill. “We will reopen sometime in the future at a new location,“ Minaka promised in her last post. “I will keep our current phone number and leave updated messages, so please check in on occasion.”
Here, as told to us in Minaka’s words, is the story behind the decision to close her family’s legacy restaurant after 45 years and what lies ahead.
Minaka Urquidi, Ryoko Ishii, Robert Urquidi, Yoichi Ishii in front of Ethel’s Grill when the generations overlapped in 2014. Photo: Mari Taketa
“For us, it was really sudden. The doctor told Robert, ‘You need a knee replacement. I can do it this Friday.’ Literally, we found out on the 13th of November, and the next day, I gave my one-month notice to my landlord. We barely thought about it.
It was a good time to close it down. It’s an almost 60-year-old building. The piping, everything. When it rains too heavy, water seeps through the concrete wall sometimes. And last year was REALLY rocky. One of the toughest years. There were a couple days, from 11, 11:30, the phone just stopped ringing.
I told my mom and dad we gotta close, and they were like no, just keep it going. So we hung on an extra year. Their thinking is as long as it’s open, money is gonna come in. But if anything came up like fixing the piping, I wouldn’t have been able to fix anything.
We spent a lot to keep it open, using our own savings and stuff. It hadn’t dawned on everybody else who was telling me to keep it open. We should have closed a year ago.
Before COVID, you could read the pattern every year, it was real steady. Holiday season, you’re gonna be busy. All of a sudden, COVID hit, past four or five years now, you cannot read a pattern. Back then, it was end of the month, everybody’s rent is due, people will come anyway. Not anymore. End of the month, people don’t come. The last 10 days, lunch rush, the phones would stop ringing at 12. I think everybody was saving for Christmas.
We closed and took one week to clean everything out, and three days later, Robert went in for surgery. It was a really quick decision for us, without thinking about the future too much. He was having a hard time standing all day. When we got home, he couldn’t walk from the car to the house.
I don’t even think we mourned it yet. We’ve been so busy, first with cleaning out the restaurant by ourselves, now with physical therapy and making sure Robert doesn’t fall and stuff. It’s sunk in, but I don’t think it really has. Even for Robert, it didn’t dawn on him until he was sitting at the hospital after the surgery. He was like oh shit, did we do the right thing? I was like yeah, we did.
I know it was sudden. We didn’t tell anybody. Even our longtime regulars, I didn’t tell them til almost after the fact. I had regulars, 25 years easy, that came every Saturday, every Wednesday, every Thursday, even through COVID. We knew what day of the week it was because they came. I knew they would understand. They were like yeah, Robert needs to get his knee fixed. Hopefully, you open up again, we’ll be waiting.
We haven’t thought about what we’re gonna do. We either do pop-ups, or we go find jobs. Mom’s like, you can close the restaurant, but don’t kill the name. Open up somewhere else, and people will come.
I don’t want to stop. We’re still cooks. Hopefully, we can revive the name somewhere else. Let’s just start somewhere new. We can find a real perfect place. Ideally, we want to open up a takeout window, like Okata Bento. We learned after COVID if we’re gonna open a food business, just keep it small and tight. Smaller place, smaller kitchen, lower costs. Smaller the better right now because of prices and staffing costs and everything. It’s just crazy. Me and Robert, we can do it by ourselves, just the two of us.
Til then, we have to do real shigoto (work) or find work at a friend’s place. We’ll give it another month or two. Right now, we’re all about ideas. Ideas are not enough, but what else do we do?”
