Sansei exiting
Restaurant Row,
KFVE-TV launches
news at night

SANSEI Seafood Restaurant & Sushi Bar is leaving Restaurant Row after service Monday night, to make way for a new restaurant by a new partner of Sansei owner D.K. Kodama.

Chef Hiroshi Fukui will leave L'Uraku restaurant and partner with Kodama and master sommelier Chuck Furuya.

Sansei will leave behind its new little sister-restaurant and wine bar, called Vino.

Taking Sansei's place will be Hiroshi's Eurasion Tapas: Hiroshi as in Fukui and Eurasion as in Europe, Asia and fusion, said Kodama.

Hiroshi's was accepting employment applications Tuesday and yesterday as Hiroshi's Eurasion Bistro, "but I think they changed it to Tapas now," Kodama said.

"With Hiroshi, it really will be a fun restaurant with great food, great prices and great service," Kodama said. He emphasized that the food to be served at Hiroshi's will be Fukui's creations, not Kodama's.

So-called small-plate restaurants are highly profitable and increasingly popular, according to industry publication Nation's Restaurant News.

The small-plate restaurants take their cues largely from Spanish tapas-style dining, offering small portions of different foods, popular for sharing and sampling a wide variety of dishes.

"You and me, we probably have eight appetizers instead of an appetizer and entree," Kodama said. "Most places you go now, you don't need the starch and you'd rather pick on a vegetable you like, not what the chef thinks you should have."

Hiroshi's will also offer what Kodama called "demi-entrees" and will have a full bar with an emphasis on wine, capitalizing on its 16-spigot cruvinet. Sansei is pulling up stakes to serve sushi and steaks at the Waikiki Beach Marriott Resort & Spa.

The new Sansei is to open Sept. 21. The adjacent steak house is to open Sept. 25 and Hiroshi's is slated to open in early November. It will be open for dinner seven days a week, Kodama said.

"We had a great local following (at Restaurant Row) and we thank the locals and hopefully they'll go into Waikiki," he said.

New news

So, KFVE "The Home Team," will launch a new nightly local newscast at 9 p.m. starting Oct. 18.

"The big premise here is obviously the fact that we feel there is a market and an audience that would like their night-time news one hour earlier. This model has been successful throughout the country. Success is obviously a relative term, but we know what our expectations are," said Fink.

Nine o'clock is when the major broadcast networks air the heavyweight shows of their prime-time lineups, such as "Law and Order" and its spin-offs, "CSI" and its spin-offs, "ER," news magazine shows and the final season of "NYPD Blue." KFVE's "The Simpsons," in syndication at 9 p.m., will go away. "The King of Queens," also in syndication, will continue to air at 9:30. If UH sports events go long, the news show will be shortened to hit the 9:30 "King of Queens" start time.

"Obviously they're going to be up against very stiff competition," said Rick Blangiardi, Hawaii market senior vice president of Emmis Communications Corp. He also oversees the operation of competing Honolulu television stations KHON and KGMB.

"It's an interesting move. We will watch and see how it progresses," he said.

KFVE will hire four people, including an anchor, reporter, videojournalist and a producer.

"We have not determined who the anchor will be but it will not be one of our current 6 or 10 p.m. anchors (on KHNL)," Fink said.

Some of the hires could come from within KHNL's news department, but four people will be added to create a 44-person department for both stations, he said.

Staffing the newscast to have the right look could prove a challenge, as KFVE's UH sports programming draws a wide spectrum of viewers while the audience for its shows such as "Everwood" and "One Tree Hill" is generally young.