2 days ago
An Acclaimed Los Angeles Sake Bar Brings Beachside Bites To Hawaii
The culinary creatives behind L.A.'s Ototo sake bar are staging a restaurant residency at Mauna Lani in Hawaii through September 1, 2025.
Noe DeWitt
You never know what to expect from Ototo. Two years ago, the James Beard Award-winning Izakaya spot in Los Angeles dressed itself up as the fictional Netflix restaurant Midnight Diner for a Halloween homage. More recently, the Echo Park space transformed into a Japanese 7-Eleven with a one-night menu of crust-less egg salad sandwiches and custom canned chu-hi. Now, Ototo is popping up on the Big Island of Hawaii for a summer restaurant residency at Auberge Resort Collection's Mauna Lani.
Between now and September 1, chef Charles Namba and his restaurant (and life) partner and beverage director Courtney Kaplan are overseeing a beachy, barefoot version of what the Los Angeles Times called 'L.A.'s best sake bar.' Each evening, Mauna Lani resort guests can enjoy sesame-seed fried chicken wings, chilled hiyashi chuka egg noodles and other Izakaya delights with their Kohala coast sunsets.
Restaurant (and life) partners Courtney Kaplan and Charles Namba want to show how versatile Japanese sake and Izakaya flavors can be.
Ototo
The California-Hawaii-Japan connection certainly makes sense. With flavors that riff on Tokyo's casual taverns and yatai stalls combined with L.A. creativity (like a tasty spin on McDonald's Filet-O-Fish) and fresh-from-the-land-and-sea Hawaiian ingredients, Ototo's outpost is practically a tri-coastal flavor summit.
Surprisingly, this is Namba and Kaplan's first trip to Hawaii, which makes the residency a real-world test of Ototo's playful ethos. I checked in with them to hear how they're adapting their kitchen techniques and keeping that three-way mash-up delicious under Hawaiian skies.
David Hochman: You've done interesting pop-ups before but never anything outside Los Angeles. How did Hawaii happen?
Charles Namba: I'm not really sure, honestly [laughs]. Our PR person thought it would be a good idea. Mauna Lani invited us to do it and we said yes.
Courtney Kaplan: We've done collabs with friends and chefs in L.A., but to actually go someplace completely different was a brand-new experience. We thought it sounded really interesting to have this opportunity for people to eat our food and drink great sake on the beach, if only to prove how versatile these flavors can be.
Drawing inspiration from Japan, Los Angeles and Hawaii, the menu is a three-coast flavor summit.
Nani Welch
Hochman: How does one pack for a three-month culinary residency in paradise?
Namba: I packed one chef's knife and an apron. Mauna Lani took care of everything else.
Kaplan: We're not there the whole time. We still have a restaurant to run in Los Angeles, and there's a great team in place that we worked with. For us, it was about figuring out how to get the most from the fresh ingredients on the Big Island and match those with delicious drink pairings.
Hochman: What excites you most about what's available in Hawaii versus Los Angeles?
Namba: We've obviously got great farmers markets in Los Angeles but things somehow feel even fresher in Hawaii. We're doing a grilled fish in ponzu oroshi butter, with farmers market vegetables that are just bursting with flavor. We've got a 'keiki cuke' sunomono cucumber salad that tastes very much like Hawaii. We're using watercress from a nearby farm.
Kaplan: We're working with a local taro root farmer who's got a five-acre farm. He was showing us pictures of the hundreds of pounds of taro he's harvested.
Namba: But he's also got incredible fiddlehead ferns. It reminds you how much you can grow beautifully on the Big Island.
Hochman: You're pairing sake with burgers and fried chicken. What's the idea there?
Kaplan: I want people to see how much range sake has. We brought over Shiokawa Cowboy sake from Japan to pair with the burger. The sake itself is meaty and savory. Tensei Song of the Sea Junmai Ginjo comes from a coastal brewery. You get some of that salt-water taffy flavor of a small surf town. Then you pour something like Kameizumi Junmai Ginjo Namazake and it's big, tropical, fruity, fresh.
Hochman: What are you doing for fun? Must be hard concentrating on work with all those Mauna Lani beach chairs beckoning.
Kaplan: Honestly, we've been pretty busy with the project. We did do some snorkeling, and got to swim and enjoy the landscape. You can hike near Mauna Lani and look at the petroglyphs close by. There are lava formations around the hotel as well. It's pretty incredible.
Namba: We ate really well. The hotel has a restaurant called Canoe House that's run by Rhoda Magbitang, who was executive chef at Chateau Marmont and other places, and her food is excellent. She has this shokupan Japanese milk bread that I thought was amazing. The texture is perfect. It tastes like Japan. In Hawaii.
Hochman: Does all this Hawaii livin' make you want to give up Echo Park and move to a tropical island?
Namba: I love Hawaii. But after working at restaurants in New York and opening Ototo in Los Angeles—I have to say, I love the rush of the city.
The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
