Keaka Lee used to meet his high school sweetheart at the corner of Kīpaholauea and Pāhoa Avenues in the Wai‘alae-Kahala District of Honolulu. Now, a few decades later, they are married, and he is the chef and owner of Kapa Hale, a restaurant he opened in 2020 on the very same corner. So, to say his restaurant is personal is an understatement. “I grew up in this community, right up on the hill,” Lee says. His culinary career eventually took him away and off the island, but Lee returned with Kapa Hale, a restaurant featuring a modern take on Hawai‘i Regional Cuisine that incorporates influences from his career spanning more than a decade working in some of the country’s top kitchens in Honolulu, San Francisco and New York. From his time at Gramercy Tavern, he developed a love for vegetables, manifested in an entire section of Kapa Hale’s menu devoted to vegetables. It includes the Haku Lei Po‘o—a gorgeous circle of vegetables on the plate—“A Hawaiian crown to celebrate the farmers across the Islands,” Lee says. And drawing on his upbringing in Honolulu, with its mishmash of ethnicities, he incorporates twists on favorite local flavors, such as an okonomiyaki omelet and a taro and tahini lumpia. Read on for a conversation with Lee on his journey to opening Kapa Hale.

How was food a part of your life growing up?

I was the pickiest eater, just like my daughter now—she doesn’t like anything green. Whenever there’s fried rice at the table, I was that kid that picked out all the peas and green onions. There was a point where my mom said if you’re not going to eat what’s at the table, you’re going to have to make your own food. Making my own food as a kid was making saimin or cooking something from the freezer. But I would always watch my mom and popo make homemade stuff like wontons and jook. A lot of Chinese influence and stuff.

After being such a picky eater, I think what drove me into the industry was that I played a lot of sports in high school and was competitive. It was the competitiveness of the cooking industry that intrigued me. I wanted to keep pushing myself to become better, train myself to taste everything, to challenge myself to eat stuff I never tried before.

How did you decide to go into the culinary industry?

In college I didn’t really know what my major was. I thought I wanted to be a medical technologist or scientist. But after I took a couple of classes in the culinary field, it really pulled me in. I was already cooking at Red Lobster, though I didn’t really see it as a career. But after the classes, I thought maybe I can make something of myself in this. The culinary arts are not the most sought out career based on stress, hours and pay, but it really pulled me in because there was always something new to learn, something new to taste, or a different cuisine or different chef to learn from.

What are some of your favorite dishes at Kapa Hale?

I Love You A Laksa. We love the punny names in our food. When I eat a bowl of laksa, there’s always noodles, seafood, broth. I love the flavor; but every time I finish the bowl of laksa, I’m always left with that broth. It’s such a good broth but I don’t want to just eat it. So, we decided to make our own Malaysian curry and make it into a risotto. Instead of using cream and butter, we cook the arborio rice in the curry. It’s a non-dairy dish served with Kaua‘i shrimp, clams and scallops. It’s just a fun take on laksa. I love the chili, coconut and lime—the citrus flavors.

Another dish is called Where’s the Beef? This is our house tagliatelle noodles and we make a vegetarian bolognese. We use Small Kine Farms mushrooms and when they’re in season, we use Kolea Farm cauliflower. We roast it super, super hard and we chop it up. And then the same traditional techniques for bolognese: you deglaze with red wine, add carrot, celery and tomato. When making the pasta, we add a little bit of cream, butter and basil to it. What’s fun about it is people who love meat, they love this dish because they can’t tell there’s no meat in it. I tell my guests, we’re not here to trick you. We’re here to offer you a nice vegetarian dish that can be very familiar to someone with a palate for eating meat all the time.

How did you come up with the name of the restaurant?

Kapa was once used throughout the entire Pacific for clothing. The patterns on it told a story, and the techniques used in making kapa all remind me of cooking techniques: you pound it; you ferment it; you dry it. So, when I see a blank plate, it reminds me of a blank piece of kapa. And when I think of kapa, I think of stories being told. I wanted to tell my story through the restaurant patterns on the plates. I wanted to share my vision for my food. So, we decided to call the restaurant Kapa Hale, house of kapa: A Hawaiian storytold in a modern way through food.