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By Dennis Oda, Star-Bulletin
Restaurant owner Helen Chock, right, and Kim Har Cheng
prepare food yesterday at Helena's Hawaiian Foods in
Kalihi. The popular eatery is losing its lease in February.

Lease runs out
for Helena’s

After 55 years, Helena's
Hawaiian Foods is forced
to vacate its Kalihi location

---

By Cynthia Oi
Star-Bulletin

The venerable Helena's Hawaiian Foods will have to move from the old wooden building in Kalihi where it has operated for more than 55 years.

The lease for the eatery that last year was chosen for a James Beard Foundation award has been terminated and the business must find a new home by Feb. 5, said Helen Chock, its 83-year-old proprietor.

Chock said landowner Kamehameha Schools informed her Jan. 5 that she would have to move. The restaurant has operated on a month-to-month lease "for a long time," but she thought she would have had six months' notice before she'd have to leave.

Helena's has had a 30-day tenancy arrangement for at least the last 10 years, said Kamehameha Schools spokesman Kekoa Paulsen.

By Dennis Oda, Star-Bulletin
Helen Chock looks a little flustered as she receives
a kiss yesterday from loyal customer Puna Liwai
in her Kalihi restaurant.

"The managers have had a number of discussions" with Chock about the situation, he said.

Leases for other businesses on the 5.1-acre site on North King Street near Farrington High School also have been terminated, Paulsen said, although most of the buildings have been vacant for some time.

He would not say what Kamehameha Schools has planned, except that "a couple of parties are interested" in developing the parcel.

Chock said Kamehameha Schools has been "very, very good landlords" and has asked it to help her find a new location.

Paulsen said Chock has been a "good tenant and if we can find another place suitable for her, we'd like to do that."

Chock would like to stay in the Kalihi area because it is familiar to her. Her father had a general store on the corner of Waiakamilo Road and North King for years before she started the restaurant.

Some longtime patrons dining there yesterday also want it to stay in the neighborhood.

Winston Quiaoit, who has been a customer for 20 years, was there to eat and to take out poi and pipikaula for his son, who is in the hospital. Quiaoit said he needs to have Helena's cooking at least once a week; if it relocates in another area, it will be "no good" to him.

Chock said other regulars want her to move to their neighborhoods.

"Irmgard Aluli, she lives Kailua, she told me she wants me to move to Kailua side," Chock said with a grin. "People say Wahiawa, Mililani, Kaimuki -- where they live, they want me to come."

Robin Maii, an Iolani School graduate who now lives in New York City, eats at Helena's once a year during her annual visits to Hawaii. She was introduced to Helena's by Chock's grandson, Clayton Katsuyoshi, her Iolani classmate.

"I'm so sad," Maii wailed. "I hope it doesn't close. Where will I go?" she said.

No worry, Chock said. She has no intention of shutting down the business.

"I'm not going to close," she said, although she plans to pare her 6:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. schedule. "My health is still good, and what will I do if I don't cook?

"I just have to find someplace else" but as of yesterday, she had no idea where the restaurant will end up.

She's open to suggestions, she said.

"Maybe somebody has some place. Tell people to call me, give them the phone number."

OK. It's 845-8044.