Showtime at MW
Even during good times, running a restaurant is not for the faint-hearted. Normal issues, such as cash flow, inventory management, training and retaining staff can seem like too much of a headache when weighed against the industry’s typically low-profit margins.
When it came to survival at the start of the pandemic in 2020, MW restaurant owners Wade Ueoka and Michelle Karr-Ueoka proved to be particularly adept at surviving the phenomenon of shuttered dining rooms and cautious to-go customers.
The couple, who met working in the kitchen of Alan Wong’s restaurant, applied the same degree of creativity they had put into their regular and chef’s table meals and afternoon teas, and rose to the various pandemic challenges by giving people what they needed, including fresh and frozen meals to go, bake sales full of pick-me-up treats and a produce market to assist their farm partners.
Even now that society appears to have reopened for good, they continue to adapt to new rounds of challenges. In early 2021, they moved MW from its popular Makaloa/Kapi‘olani Boulevard site, as well as sister restaurant Artizen by MW, into JN’s Velocity Honolulu luxury auto showroom.
Artizen, formerly housed in the Hawai‘i State Art Museum, had closed since the start of the pandemic due to the absence of downtown traffic. Bringing the two venues under one roof provided an ideal situation for the couple.
Moving from a space with a 3,000-square-foot kitchen to one with only 1,000 square feet led them to work more efficiently and think about the economics of space.
“Once the pandemic hit, all the space we had just became an expensive storage room that wasn’t generating income,” Karr-Ueoka says.
But even after businesses started reopening, they had to deal with issues, such as a smaller labor pool, higher food costs and difficulty sourcing popular ingredients, such as Jidori chicken.
“There were certain things we took for granted,” Karr-Ueoka shares. “We did not expect salad oil to go from $50 to $88. Yet, we try not to raise our prices.”
“We want to deliver the same quality, so we try to find other ways to save, like not turning on our ovens so early in the morning,” Ueoka says.
And, although the Ueokas understood, in theory, that they would have an important role to play when entertainment returned to the Blaisdell Center, they didn’t have to address pre-show crowds for a year and were caught by surprise at concerts and theaters this year.
Case in point: They were confused by a series of 5 p.m. bookings during the run of Broadway in Hawai‘i’s production of the Carole King musical “Beautiful,” and the sudden vacuum when guests departed en masse at around 7 p.m.
“By the time we figured it out, it was done already,” Ueoka says. “Now, we always look at the billboard to see what’s coming up.”
He was prepared to offer event-oriented, three-course menus by the time New Kids on the Block came to town, so guests had an alternative to the restaurant’s more elaborate five- course tasting menu and could save time from having to piece together an à la carte meal that might include such specialties as crab cakes with wasabi koji sauce, duck confit or truffle-braised short ribs.
“It’s been a learning process knowing who our mutual audience is. We’ll see people for ‘Jersey Boys’ but for fights, not so much,” Ueoka says.
One thing that’s become easier is not having to reinvent their menu daily. “During the pandemic, we had to continually change the menu,” Karr-Ueoka says, for clients who were ordering bentos frequently.
Now, they’re more cautious about removing any dish from the MW menu because people insist on seeing their favorite dishes — such as the mochi-crusted Kona kampachi or Brandt brand Prime ribeye — each time they visit, and travelers often tell them they flew miles just to try one particular dish. They are about to face their biggest adventure this fall, when they welcome their first baby, a son, conceding, “We may not be able to be working 15 hours a day, seven days a week,” Ueoka admits, who is already toying with the idea of adding baby food to his repertoire, just as he started creating dog meals with the arrival of the couple’s pet chihuahua Pomeranian Echigo. Echigo’s pork or chicken dinner of the week is available at Artizen, and yes, people have confessed to eating the fresh mix of meat and vegetables themselves.
The big question is, would they want their son to follow in their footsteps? “Only if he wants to,” Ueoka says. “In order to do this, you gotta love it. You have to have a passion for making people happy, and you gotta work from your heart. If it’s not from your heart, people will feel there’s something missing.”
“In the restaurant industry, not too many people make money,” Karr-Ueoka says, whose financier father was initially disappointed by her choice of career. “He told me, ‘Can you do something that makes a little more money?’”
But the couple wouldn’t have it any other way. Every painful burn and scar up and down their arms from kitchen mishaps is a badge of honor that they proudly show off.
“I love my scars,” Karr-Ueoka states. “They’ve come to represent good memories.”
MW Restaurant, 888 Kapi‘olani Blvd., Ste. 201, Honolulu, 808-955-6505, mwrestaurant.com