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Kobe’s Japanese Steak House owner Martha Haleakala stands by the bar in the popular teppanyaki restaurant in Lahaina on Friday. After closing the restaurant Dec. 30 due to a lack of chefs, the family announced Wednesday that it would shut down for good due to staffing and the state of the economy. — The Maui News / COLLEEN UECHI photo

LAHAINA — When Martha Haleakala walks through the quiet dining room of the shuttered steak house, she sees 30 years’ worth of memories — the teppanyaki grills where local families celebrated their birthdays, the soda gun behind the bar where her granddaughter and friends used to drink straight from the nozzle.

So it broke her heart to finally make the decision to shut down Kobe’s Japanese Steak House for good — despite surviving two years of the pandemic and being in good shape financially — due to a lack of chefs who were vital to its operation.

“We made it though the pandemic, COVID, all the mandates, all the restrictions, everything that went with that,” Haleakala said Wednesday afternoon from the restaurant where she still shows up every day to answer the phone. “The last thing I ever expected was to suddenly find that we didn’t have chefs.”

Haleakala, her daughter Torie Hoopii and granddaughter Ashley Ishikawa announced the restaurant’s closure in a Facebook post on Wednesday.

“Unfortunately, we have been unsuccessful in hiring chefs, and with the current state of the economy and lack of staff, we have decided it’s time to officially close our doors,” the family said. “After 36 years, we have decided as a family it’s time to start looking for a buyer for the restaurant or someone/business interested in opening up something in this current location.”

The interior of Kobe’s, once bustling with chefs entertaining customers and fire flaming from grills, is quiet on Friday. — The Maui News / COLLEEN UECHI photo

Kobe’s has been closed since Dec. 30 when it was down to two chefs and was forced to cancel more than 300 reservations for New Year’s weekend.

Since then, they’ve been doing everything possible to fill the vacancies, calling up chefs who used to work at Kobe’s, arranging part-time or temporary help.

“Nothing worked and it’s been two months,” Haleakala said. “Now my landlord is saying, ‘What are you gonna do?’ That’s what I say to myself every morning when I wake up — what am I gonna do?”

Two years ago, Haleakala was asking herself the same question. Most businesses, including restaurants, were forced to shut down in March 2020, and the ones that could reopen months later faced a litany of restrictions. Teppanyaki, whose central charm comes from the intimate setting of customers seated before a chef as food is prepared on an open grill, wasn’t something that could be packed into a takeout container.

But Ishikawa, the manager, was determined to help Kobe’s roll with the punches.

Family members pose for a photo during the 35th anniversary of Kobe’s Japanese Steak House last year. The restaurant has long been a family affair since owner Martha Haleakala bought it in 2002. Her granddaughter Ashley Ishikawa serves as the manager. — Photo courtesy of Ashley Ishikawa

“We can do it, grandma,” she said.

Ishikawa ordered all the supplies, the gloves, the hand sanitizer. She made the signs. She trained the staff. Kobe’s launched takeout services in June 2020 and reopened three nights a week starting Father’s Day weekend. The restaurant expanded to four nights a week in August 2020 and five nights a week in October 2020. Takeout, even without the onion volcanoes, was so popular that the restaurant kept it up along with dine-in service throughout 2021.

Despite the fact that “teppanyaki wasn’t really conducive to social distancing,” Kobe’s managed to make it work, with chefs cooking for double the amount of tables due to customers having to space out throughout the restaurant.

“And we did survive all that somehow,” Haleakala said.

But, like many other businesses, Kobe’s ran into the problem of staffing, as chefs moved off island or took other jobs. Kobe’s went from six chefs to four at the beginning of December. The restaurant closed its upstairs floor with nine teppanyaki grills. It lost another chef right before New Year’s Eve, and with only two chefs remaining, Haleakala knew they couldn’t handle the holiday rush.

Kobe’s, which is tucked just around the corner from Front Street, has been a Lahaina staple for 36 years. — The Maui News / COLLEEN UECHI photo

With a staff of 32 before the pandemic, Kobe’s was down to 22 workers when it closed in December. Haleakala said that Kobe’s is fine financially; it doesn’t have any loans and didn’t even take Paycheck Protection Program aid from the federal government during the pandemic. But as she watches prices go up — a 5-gallon container of cooking oil that once cost $46 in November shot up to $81.98 in December — Haleakala is wary of the world to come.

“My granddaughter was born the year I came to work here. This has been a family business for a long time,” Haleakala said. “And it’s like, listen, old lady, this new normal stuff, you don’t know what’s going on anymore. And I look at the food costs, the inflation and everything. I don’t think I know how to run this place anymore even if I had chefs.”

“It’s really heartbreaking to me,” she added. “I’ve had many years here and I’m not a young lady anymore, but still, it was my life for a long time.”

The end of Kobe’s also means the closure of Oku’s Sushi Bar run by Norihiro Okumura, whose sushi “is equally as popular as anything Kobe’s puts out,” Haleakala said. For years, Oku’s has had an arrangement with Haleakala where he paid her for the drinks sold at the sushi bar and she paid him for the sushi sold in the dining room.

Haleakala, who came to work at Kobe’s 28 years ago, bought the business in 2002 from Rob Gardiner, a Canadian restaurateur who founded Kobe’s in 1978 with Hy Aisenstat, according to the restaurant’s website. They opened Kobe’s in Rancho Mirage, Calif., and in Waikiki before expanding to Maui in 1986, Haleakala said.

On President’s Day in February 2002, Gardiner, who lived in Arizona and had terminal cancer at the time, told Haleakala that he wanted to sell Kobe’s to her “because you have always taken care of it for me like it was your own,” she recalled.

She took over in July 16, 2002, shortly before Gardiner died on Sept. 27, 2002.

Since then, Kobe’s has been a part of the family. Ishikawa said she “grew up in diapers at that restaurant.” Staff members helped her with her homework after school. Classmates spent afternoons at the restaurant drinking from the soda gun. When there was a fire on the pali and they couldn’t get home, the family slept at the restaurant.

Over the years, Ishikawa has held nearly every job at Kobe’s, serving as hostess, waiting tables, helping in the kitchen and, when they were really shorthanded, cooking at the teppanyaki grills. Five years ago she became the manager.

“I’ve just seen it go from being very busy and successful with staffing and just all around to just taking hits left and right with the pandemic, with staff, with food cost increases,” Ishikawa said Friday. “Just seeing the influx of things, and it’s like, how are we to survive? You know, the love and passion that we have there can’t keep us going forever.”

Even with the pandemic, Ishikawa said she believed the restaurant would stick it out.

“Everything just kind of went downhill so fast, just the timing of everything,” she said. “You know, when the pandemic first hit, I was like, ‘We got this. We can make it work.’ And I was so driven and ready to do what I had to do to keep the restaurant going. And we were doing it.”

She’s still holding out hope that Kobe’s will come back in some form. “It’s done in Lahaina, but we’re hoping in the future to bring it back,” maybe in Central Maui, she said. Former customers are eager for the return of one of Maui’s only teppanyaki spots, calling Haleakala and asking Kobe’s to reopen, and sharing fond memories with Ishikawa on Facebook.

“It’s sad. It’s even more heartbreaking now just to see all the love and all the support from the community. It’s unreal,” Ishikawa said.

* Colleen Uechi can be reached at cuechi@mauinews.com.

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