Wine and Dine Hawaii
 |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
Le Bistro
| Le Bistro |
|
Alan Takasaki |
| Bistro |
French
|
 |
  |
5730 Kalanianaole Highway
Honolulu, HI 96821
Phone: 373 7990
Neighborhood: Aina Haina
Map |
Alan Takasaki marches to the beat of his own drum. In a sleepy strip
mall in Aina Haina, with Kentucky Fried Chicken on one side and a
7 – 11 on the other, the 49 year old chef/owner of Le Bistro has
created what few of his peers have been able to achieve; a busy,
solidly booked neighborhood restaurant with incredibly good,
classically inspired food, a moderately priced wine list and an
enviable ambiance. Utterly modest, but with a quiet
confidence that’s never far from his gentle, smiling exterior,
Takasaki could, in fact, be the poster boy for the self-effacing,
humble kind of professional we in Hawaii love. Ask him about the
style of food at Le Bistro and he shakes his head, ruminates for thirty
seconds or so and then answers, “I don’t really know what it is. We
don’t tell people too much about a style – we haven’t given it a name
- because we don’t want to get their expectations up.” Talk
about his experiences working at world famous Michelin starred
restaurants Le Bernardin, La Truffe Noir, QV and with legendary chefs
Joachim Splichal and Gilbert Le Coze and he’ll tell you how lucky he
was to have had such mentors. And ask about the phenomenal success of
Le Bistro and he smiles ,shakes his head and says it probably has a lot
to do with good luck.
But truly, good luck has almost nothing to do with Alan Takasaki’s
success. In fact, it was a stroke of near catastrophic bad luck that
led to his return to Hawaii from Europe -a move he never intended
to make. On the recommendation of Gilbert Le Coze and
thorugh other European relationships, Takasaki spent a summer
training at restaurants in Bordeaux and the Dordogne, building
experience. “But on my way through Paris, somebody stole
everything I had,” he remembers, recounting the tale so somberly
that you get the impression he still misses those long-gone
possessions. “I had a shirt and a pair of jeans and shoes and that was
it,” he says. Disillusioned, he returned to Hawaii where he
drifted through some ‘really tough,’ years. “I knew I wanted to open my
own place,” he says softly, “but I had no money and I was pretty much
just in survival mode.” He admits to thinking then that he’d lost
his feel for cooking and was uninspired by the Hawaii food scene of the
late 1980’s.
But tenacity prevailed and with enough funds to finally open his own
place, Le Bistro debuted in September 2001, a week before the
events of that month sent restaurants across America into a
downward spin. “ We were lucky, in a way”, he says. “People tell
me now that they felt sorry for us and that’s why they came out to eat
at the restaurant, and I’m grateful for that.” It may have been true
that local customers felt that the young, local chef could use a morale
boost in his first, difficult months, but it may also be just another
of the self effacing statements Takasaki seems comfortable with. A more
likely scenario is that from the day he opened, discriminating diners
recognized that they had a phenomenon uncommon in Honolulu
- a true neighborhood bistro. But great food and good luck, is only
part of the recipe for a successful restaurant. Ambience,
service, consistency and attitude are all crucial for longevity.
At Le Bistro, wait staff wear jeans and stylish black shirts, act
professionally and are attentive, smiling and enthusiastic. Sunny
yellow curtains, minimal décor, soft lighting, linen tablecloths
and just enough space between the tables so pauses in conversation
don’t leave you eavesdropping on your neighbors, makes for a
intimate setting. And while reservations are strongly recommended, even
the most well heeled customers seem happy to wait outside in the
parking lot for a table. Waiting for our table one night, I chatted
with a prominent Honolulu businessman who proclaimed Le Bistro
–‘absolutely the best restaurant in Honolulu.”
The food is almost addictive. There are simple, unpretentious
presentations of dishes like escargot, foie gras, French onion soup,
lamb chops, twice cooked breast of muscovy duck and short ribs and
certainly the food has a certain comfort element ( creamy, simple
mashed potatoes, red wine reductions, rib eye with cognac and Roquefort
butter, exquisite pork chops and French country beef stew), but
it is food so perfectly executed that the flavors linger long
after you go home. One night after dinner I woke up craving the
orrecheiette pasta with Italian sausage, spinach, tomatoes and garlic.
I had had them as an appetizer just hours before, and
couldn’t wait to devour an entire bowl of the tiny little pasta ears in
their meaty, rustic sauce again.
And while Takasaki might protest that the menu is simple, it
thrives because it is built upon classic techniques. “A lot of the
time, as a young chef, you don’t understand those dishes, and you can’t
see the bigger picture,” he explains, referring to his ‘crazy’, early
days of working with Gilbert, Joachim and others, “but a lot of the
dishes I learned are classic ones that can be reproduced and taught
quite easily. Twenty years later I can see their place.”
Takasaki insists that most of the dishes on the menu are there for the
customers, not glamorous dishes designed to bring attention to
the chef. “They’re not always the ones I’d do to challenge
myself”, he says, quietly, “ but you have to think, what do people want
to eat two or three times a month? I think that it’s this kind of
food. We added dishes in the early days because people would ask for
them and they’ve stayed on the menu because they seem to work.”
There’s something wonderfully refreshing about this gorgeous
restaurant in the middle of a parking lot – and about the chef too. I
ask Alan what it is he’s ultimately doing in the kitchen – what
his goal as a chef/owner is, and he pauses for a really
long time. We sit quietly in the silence of his empty restaurant as he
thinks. “I’m just trying to survive, really,” he says. Our
kitchen is small, it limits what we can do and we compromise all the
time. “Maybe,” he adds, “at the end of the day, that’s a good
thing.” And on his success in running a restaurant that has almost a
cult following of diners? “I admire everyone who manages to run a
restaurant here in Hawaii,” he says. “To be successful, you really have
to have things fall into place. And I think that we’re really lucky.”
Wait until you try his food. Luck has absolutely nothing to do with it.
|
|
| |
 |
|
|
|
