Open now for just six months, Richie’s Bar & Grill is bringing back local traditions and introducing new ones at Richie Ogata’s bar and restaurant in Lihu’e. With his dream of owning his own venture realized, Ogata wants to offer
Open now for just six months, Richie’s Bar & Grill is bringing back local traditions and introducing new ones at Richie Ogata’s bar and restaurant in Lihu’e. With his dream of owning his own venture realized, Ogata wants to offer something for everyone.
“I just started making box lunches,” Ogata said, which he sells from 6 a.m. until 2 p.m. Monday through Friday at the restaurant for pick-up. “It’s made to sit; made for on the go,” Ogata said, adding it’s a lunch option for people at work, school, or out on a hike or adventure for the day. The $6 or $8 boxes, which include fried noodles, some kind of meat, musubi, and more, does not have to be refrigerated like the food in plate lunches or bentos, making it a convenient option, something Ogata remembers from the past, specifically at the Lihu’e Delicatessen, which offered them before Hurricane ‘Iniki.
The food in Ogata’s box lunches, as well as the food served in his restaurant, is all his creations, 20 years in the making, he said. His cooking has been influenced by the patriarchs in his family.
“My dad and my grandpa were always cooking,” he said. His grandfather, originally from Japan, taught Ogata many of his culture’s recipes, including the “sweeter side” of Japanese food. “And my dad was a retired fire captain in Kalaheo, and you know firemen, they’re all good cooks,” Ogata said.
At Richie’s, his self-named restaurant, Ogata has the bar and grill side with an extensive pupu menu as well as lunch and dinner, and his new steakhouse side, which transforms into a nightclub later in the night.
Richie’s steakhouse menu features, well, steaks — rib eye, T-bone and more — served with mashed potatoes and a medley of garlicky sautéed vegetables. It’s traditional, hearty fare, and boasts a mud pie on the dessert menu made with Ogata’s own crushed cookie crust and a cylinder shape of ice cream he forms himself.
The bar and grill menu is more diverse, offering traditional grilled pupu steak and the novelty deep-fried dill pickles with ranch dressing, a dish Ogata admits he saw on a food network show and decided to try out. He also serves panko-crusted stuffed chicken, and house-fried saimin loaded with bacon and vegetables.
“That’s the best part of having a restaurant. You take a recipe and fool around with it, try it, but do it your way,” Ogata said. “I take local food and try to make it better.”
Ogata also is innovative on the bar side as well, creating new drinks weekly, like the current Strawberry Patron martini made with a li hing mui powder rim. Richie’s always offers Jell-o shots and shots in test tubes, something seen regularly at O‘ahu nightclubs. Other drinks are the bubblegum flavored martini or the POG, a drink made with pineapple, orange and guava flavored vodka made on Maui. He also has Rolling Rock and Heineken Light on draft, the only such pairing on the island as far as he knows.
“All my vendors, if they have a new flavor, they will come to me, we will do something with it,” he said. Ogata is interested in offering a venue like those on O‘ahu, which he says there is a demand for here. He hosts “college nights” for ages 18 and above on Tuesdays and Saturdays with deejay and dance music in the converted steakhouse side. Ogata doesn’t know how many in the crowd are actual college students, but the nights are becoming popular.
“I want to bring O‘ahu’s ideas to Kaua‘i, but Kaua‘i takes a while to catch on,” said Ogata, who was born and raised on Kaua‘i but lived on O‘ahu for a period of time as a bartender. He’s thinking forward in some ways, but looking to the past for inspiration as well, like offering complimentary, chef-chosen pupus at Richie’s during the long happy hour from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. during the week.
“That’s old-school, back in the day, during happy hour, to offer free pupus,” he said. And he’s not talking about a bowl of peanuts, but options like shrimp shumai (dumplings), soybeans, fried chicken and his house-fried saimin.
Upcoming at Richie’s is a local band featured at the end of each month, UFC fight nights featured on the many flat screens among the pool tables, and Ogata “can’t wait” until football season starts up again, eager to offer something for everybody.
Richie’s is open Monday through Friday from 11 a.m. until midnight, and Saturday and Sunday from 5:30 p.m. to midnight. For more information call 246-6300.
