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Isle chef
expanding to
Tokyo Disneyland

The restaurant is the last part
of a plan to launch five diverse
'entities' in five years

By Betty Shimabukuro
Star-Bulletin

A restaurant opening this summer at the edge of Tokyo Disneyland will bear the name of Hawaii chef Alan Wong.

Wong said he has entered a licensing agreement allowing the use of his name and menu at a showcase restaurant in an expanded section of the Disney complex. The amusement park is nearly doubling in size this summer with the addition of the Disney Sea Park and a hotel-cinema-shopping-restaurant complex called Ikspiari.

The Wong restaurant will be in Ikspiari, which opens July 7, the day of the Star Festival, or Tanabata -- an auspicious day on the Japanese calendar marking the seventh day of the seventh month.

The restaurant is owned by the Oriental Land Co., developer and owner of Tokyo Disneyland. It will be called Alan Wong's Hawaii, in part, Wong said, so it won't be confused for a Chinese restaurant.

"You're in Japan, you're in Tokyo, you know where you are, so it doesn't make sense to say 'Alan Wong's Tokyo'," he said. "We wanted to say Hawaii -- so people don't think they're going to get chow mein."

The Japan project will cap a 10-month period of intense activity on the part of Alan Wong's Restaurants. After operating just one restaurant on King Street for nearly five years, Wong opened the Pineapple Room restaurant last September and the Hawaii Regional Cuisine Marketplace in October. Both are inside Liberty House at Ala Moana. In February, Aloha Airlines began serving first-class meals developed by Wong on its Oakland flights.

Wong said it was his company's plan to launch five diverse "entities" within five years. The Japan restaurant makes entity No. 5; the King Street restaurant will celebrate its fifth anniversary Sunday.

Wong said he was approached 18 months ago about the Disneyland project and opted to proceed because of the marketing opportunities it offers. More than 30 million people are expected to visit the Tokyo Disney complexes this year, he said, and Ikspiari -- near the Maihama train station and along a monorail line circling Disneyland -- is a prime location.

The new restaurant will seat 94, similar in size to Wong's King Street restaurant.

Wong was born in Japan, although he moved to Hawaii with his family when he was 5 years old. He speaks some Japanese, but "I'm about to undergo a very intensive Japanese-language course."

The Japanese chef for the new restaurant is completing three months of training with Wong's Hawaii staff this month, learning to recreate most of the menu.

Wong himself will visit Tokyo for a week every quarter to monitor food quality. He said he is not interested in owning a restaurant in Japan. "Why would I? It's too far. It would be too difficult, not being there."