Liholiho Yacht Club Looks Like a Hawaiian Restaurant, But Tastes Like San Francisco
Beets with radicchio, shiso ranch, sunflower seeds, and crispy sweet potato. All photos by Beth LaBerge.

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Food

Liholiho Yacht Club Looks Like a Hawaiian Restaurant, But Tastes Like San Francisco

"It’s as much of a Hawaiian restaurant as chicken curry katsu is a Hawaiian dish—which it really isn’t, but it’s very common in Hawaii. It asks the question of what is Hawaiian food, anyway? What is anything?"

We never said that Liholiho Yacht Club was a Hawaiian restaurant, ever. But people attach what they want to things. It's as much of a Hawaiian restaurant as chicken curry katsu is a Hawaiian dish—which it really isn't, but it's very common in Hawaii. It asks the question of "What is Hawaiian food, anyway? What is anything?"

Liholiho Yacht Club restaurant on Sep. 9, 2016 in San Francisco, Calif.

I was born and raised in Hawaii, and that experience definitely shaped my palate and my outlook on food and left the biggest imprint on me as far as flavors that I'm drawn to. The way that food brought people together—those are my earliest childhood memories. Where there's family and friends, there's food.

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In Hawaii, access to good food had nothing to do with class. I'm not necessarily talking about the quality of the ingredients, but about the effort that goes into it—being cooked from scratch and made with care.

Those are the flavors I grew up with. We didn't have ketchup in our refrigerator—we had hoisin sauce and oyster sauce.

My dad is from India, and my mom is native Hawaiian Chinese. My parents are definitely entrepreneurs, starting their own businesses from as early as I can remember. Even when my dad had a teaching job, they were still doing things on the side to work their hustle. One of their earliest was a lunch wagon that they would take to the beach and sell plate lunches. They also had a health food store, so finding, say, the best carob bar was part of life when I was four years old.

Liholiho Yacht Club restaurant on Sep. 9, 2016 in San Francisco, Calif.

I never had fast food until I was much older, never really drank soda until I was 11; that just wasn't really in my world. My parents worked a lot, so I spent a lot of time with my grandparents. My grandmother's from China, and she was a wonderful cook. She would shop [for food] every day, so many of our excursions were to the market. She cooked Chinese food, and my grandfather cooked Hawaiian food and grilled a lot. Both of my parents cooked, and all of my extended family cooked. For me as a child, if you cooked, you didn't have to clean—so I was like, "I'll cook—I don't want to do the dishes!"

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The flavors of Hawaii are based on the immigrant cultures that came there. Mostly plantations, pineapple, sugar cane, railroads—that infrastructure being built brought over Chinese, Japanese, and Korean people. Japanese is the main influence, because that was the largest population; then Chinese, and then Korean. Those are the flavors I grew up with. We didn't have ketchup in our refrigerator—we had hoisin sauce and oyster sauce.

Ravi Kapur, chef and owner of Liholiho Yacht Club, on Sep. 9, 2016 in San Francisco, Calif.

The idea of the plate lunch is workers from different ethnic backgrounds in the field having lunch together, and kind of being tired of the same thing and beginning to trade their food. That's really the idea of what Hawaiian food is. Then there's traditional Hawaiian food—which is not what we're talking about. That's a whole different thing.

In the same way that my grandmother came from China and cooked what she knew in the context of Hawaii, it's similar to what I would say I'm doing, being from Hawaii but living in San Francisco for all this time and being shaped by this place as well.

I went to college for a couple years, and it obviously wasn't right for me. And then I figured, I love cooking, I'm always cooking for my friendslet's give this a shot. I moved to San Francisco in 1998 to attend California Culinary Academy. Before that, I hadn't really considered what I wanted to do at all to generate income. But when I started going to class, it was basically like, wow, this is what I was meant to do. I wanted to be a line cook. You don't go to culinary school to be a chef; you go there to learn the basics of cooking. It was about hospitality in the sense that I liked people being able to enjoy something I made.

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Liholiho Yacht Club restaurant on Sep. 9, 2016 in San Francisco, Calif.

That's what people need to understand; chefs—I can speak for myself, as far as self esteem and food goes—we're [practically] on the brink of nervous breakdowns. We just want people to like the food. When you have these platforms for people to critique you and criticize you, it feels like they need to understand, I want you to like this. I don't want this to be bad. That's not the goal.

It kind of hit me when I got to culinary school, and [my instructors said], "OK, sauté these vegetables." I sautéed my vegetables, and the instructors tasted them and said, "These are raw." Growing up with such a Chinese influence on cooking style in Hawaii, in my experience, vegetables were crunchy. But I was going to a school that was more French-based or Eurocentric, where vegetables were cooked through to the point where they were almost mush. But at that point, all I wanted to do was learn cooking, so I thought, Wow, I kind of need to forget what I know, because it's not right. The way I cook my vegetables isn't right. I didn't realize it then, when I look back, that was a moment where I was almost subliminally cut off from my culture.

When I started cooking at Boulevard, it was really cool because there was still a fence, but there was a big playground. For young cooks and aspiring chefs, it's really important to have boundaries and to know where things come from—to understand the cultural origins of dishes. While Boulevard was pulling from France and Italy and Japan and putting it through this California lens, I still had to understand the origin of the dish and the historical importance of it, to pay respect to something that has roots and not to dishonor it by saying, "Oh cool, that's a pierogi. I'm going to put truffles and foie gras on it and call it a truffle pierogi." I was able to put my spin on things, but there were boundaries. I never saw that as a negative.

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Tuna poke with sesame oil and radish on a nori cracker at Liholiho Yacht Club restaurant on Sep. 9, 2016 in San Francisco, Calif.

Boulevard was a very busy restaurant and attracted a certain type of clientele that knew what they wanted, so you could challenge people, but there had to be a hook in there. I kind of felt like my job as chef de cuisine was almost like being a producer: If you think about music, how do I make this a hit on the radio? That was very influential on my style, as was being around someone like Nancy Oakes, who's been in this business and in San Francisco for so long and understands restaurants so well.

After my son was born, I really wanted to take a step back. Up until that point, the restaurant was always the most important thing in my world; even my wife was second. Having a child is the quickest way to make you question what matters.

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I came back from my paternity leave and I walked into this restaurant and this kitchen that I built and designed, this project I'd been on for two years before we had even open, and as simply as I can say it, I thought, Who cares? I wasn't expecting that. I never wanted to be this person that's just does what I do and never questions it. And it was a good job—on paper, it was amazing—but it wasn't about that. I never had vacation. I'd lived here for 12 years and I'd never gone anywhere.

The worst thing you can do in Hawaii is not have enough food. But Liholiho Yacht Club is as Hawaiian as it is San Franciscan.

I stepped out, took a trip to Tahoe, came back and went to Hawaii—just saw some family, chilled out. My uncle in Maui was talking about how they used to sail catamarans and all their friends would come down, and then they needed to make some money to support their hobby, so they started selling food at these concerts. I was like, Holy shit, that's what I'll do. I'm going to start this pop-up, I'm going to call it Liholiho Yacht Club—which they called it—and I'm going to cook food that I enjoy eating.

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Liholiho Yacht Club restaurant on Sep. 9, 2016 in San Francisco, Calif.

The pop-up was really about food that I wanted to eat, and it sounds simple, but it was a point in my journey where I realized, Maybe what I make and what I like is good enough for everyone else. A lot of times, you're cooking what you think people want, or you're cooking what you hope they like as opposed to what you like.

[In San Francisco,] I think there are a lot of restaurants where it doesn't matter how much money you make, who you are—we're going to show you the same hospitality that we show a famous person that comes in here. And to me, that's great. Fine dining 15 years ago, ten years ago, is very different than now—it was exclusive, very expensive, formal. There were dress codes. I think there are times when I want the people in the restaurant to be people I can relate to, and not this classist thing where I have very little in common with the people that are dining. What's great about Liho is you come here, and the diversity in this restaurant is awesome. That's important to me and to my partners—there are families, there's old people, there's young people, there's literally everything. I think you can only do that when you make people feel comfortable.

Liholiho Yacht Club restaurant on Sep. 9, 2016 in San Francisco, Calif.

The worst thing you can do in Hawaii is not have enough food. But Liholiho Yacht Club is as Hawaiian as it is San Franciscan. It just doesn't have the same ring to it to say, "Man, this is a quintessential San Francisco restaurant."

But that's what this place can be; it can transport you. Like, Damn, I'm where I need to be.

As told to Hilary Pollack. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.