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Josselin’s Beach
House sold

Most of the team remains, but
the new menu is lower-priced
and features regional cuisine

Star-Bulletin

The Beach House on Kauai, an oceanfront restaurant built into a $5 million annual business under chef Jean-Marie Josselin, has been sold and its dining room and menu remodeled.

Josselin's final service there was Jan. 9, but the chef/owner of A Pacific Cafe on Oahu says he will be back at another spot in Poipu within a year. "Lots of friends support me there, so it's kind of a natural for me," he said.

Josselin took over the Beach House in 1995 under a lease with Metropolitan Mortgage, which had owned the property for almost 50 years. He is widely credited with turning it into a premier location with a steady stream of patrons.

Metropolitan, based in Spokane, Wash., sold the 1-acre parcel to restaurateurs Roy Dunn and Mike Hooks, owners of three restaurants on Maui and one in Lake Tahoe, Nevada.

The new owners have kept most of Josselin's team in place. Executive Chef Linda Yamada remains in charge of the kitchen; General Manager Dana Higa in the dining room.

The new menu is lower-priced and features regional cuisine such as Local Boy Paella and Coconut Butter Mochi Sundae.

"The Beach House concept (dinner only) allows us to move to another culinary level and, we hope, will open new doors for the development of our business in the Islands," Dunn said.

The property was put up for sale a year ago. Josselin said he was offered a chance to buy it, but "the economics didn't work for me."

Josselin has four other restaurants in the islands, but his first was on Kauai, the original A Pacific Cafe, which has been open for 10 years in Kapaa. A new project is in the works, he said, and he expects to open back in Poipu at the end of the year, or early in 2001. "We'll be back on that side pretty soon."

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