Last call for burgers
Longtime customers
By Peter Wagner
lament as Kailua mainstay
Andy's Drive-Inn
prepares to close
after 42 years
Star-BulletinTHE day will be marked with music, prizes and other festivities. But old customers of Andy's Drive-Inn, an institution in Kailua for 42 years, aren't much in the mood.
"It'll be like a funeral," said Buzz Santos, sharing a table with friends he's made over coffee, burgers, or a float.
Santos was 17 and heading into the Navy when Andy's opened on Oneawa Street in 1957. Now he's 58 and among the fixtures that will have to go.
Arthur Oliva, sitting nearby, went a step further.
"It's like losing your wife, or one of your kids," he said. "That's how bad it is."
The somber word is all over town. Andy's is over.
The bittersweet closing tomorrow will be highlighted by an entourage of hot rods and vintage cars -- the last of regular "Cruz' Nite" gatherings.
Assistant manager Lisa Rezentes tears up thinking about it.
"It's going to be something else when we close," she said. "It's emotional."
No more slush floats. No shrimp burgers. No mahi burgers or burger burgers -- regular, double, or double deluxe. And no yellow sauce -- Andy's signature hamburger sauce, the secret locked away forever.
"Numero uno is our yellow sauce," Rezentes said.
Out the window, she notices a man standing on a bench across the street with a camera."They've been doing that all week," she said. "People are stopping to take 'shaka' pictures next to our sign."
Owner Ben Lum recalls how he and his brother-in-law, the late Andy Wong, cleared a tree-filled lot on the edge of Kailua's Coconut Grove to build the restaurant -- an overnight hit in sandy little Kailua. "We didn't know Andy's would be as successful as it turned out to be," said Lum, now 72 and ready to retire.
Money was tight and the partners scrounged for used lumber and any tradesman that could be rousted for a day's work.
"Andy handed the carpenter a drawing and said can you build this with two helpers?" he said. "When the carpenter showed up, he said, 'Where's the two helpers?' Andy said, 'Here we are.' "
Robert "Rabbett" Abbett's
Quicktime VR panoramas of Andy's.Lum and Wong took their cue from Scotty's Drive-Inn, opened on Keeaumoku Street in 1956 and a big success with its 17-cent hamburgers.
"We went crazy," said Lum, who climbed the roof of the new restaurant when Andy's opened in mid-1957 to count a sea of cars. "We couldn't stop. We had to keep putting hamburgers on the grill."
Customers stood in three lines stretched to the roadway.
"We had money in our car trunks," Lum said. "It was all over the place. We didn't even have time to count it. One weekend we counted a week-and-a-half's receipts. We sat down and counted on the floor."
Andy Wong died in 1985 and Lum stayed on to run the place. It's still a good business, he said, though faltering in recent years to competition from McDonald's, Taco Bell, and other fast-food chains that claimed younger customers. But with no interest in the family to continue, Lum decided to sell the property."There's no one in the next generation to take over," he said.
Plans are afoot for an auto parts store on the property, now in escrow. Lum declined to identify the prospective buyer.
Meanwhile, manager Nora Agustin has been busy consoling customers clinging to Andy's in its final days.
"It's kind of sad because we have so many regular customers and they're like family to us," she said. "They're telling us: 'where are we going to eat from now on?' They look lost."
But those lamenting the end of Andy's may find some solace next week when Teddy's Bigger Burgers, a throwback to the 1950s with hamburgers, fries and floats, opens just down the street.
