TheBuzz
TheBuzz
Familiar food
in a new placeWhen he started working in the family restaurant in New York at age 12, few chefs bore the rock star status some do now.
Phillip Paolo Sarubbi doesn't present himself as a star, but he has name recognition and will be visible at his Restaurant Row location, to open in early November.
"I'm going to be cooking and greeting because it's become my new venture," he said.
Serving Italian food with local flavors added to pasta, pizza, steak, seafood and salad, Paolo hopes to mirror the success of his first restaurant. It was a converted house on Beretania Street which gained popularity for huge portions of good food. After 10 years the house was sold to a Japanese church.
The Phillip Paolo's that opened at Alan Beall's Waterfront Row development in Kona in the mid-'90s now bears the name Michaelangelo's, for partner and operator Michael Medeiros. "He's like a brother," Paolo said. Paolo's other restaurants have not been as long-lived, battling parking and location problems, which he said are nonexistent in Restaurant Row.
After a Halloween sneak-preview buffet, Phillip Paolo's will open for lunch, then expand to dinner service. Take-out lunches had drained dine-in business from previous occupant Lucarelli's, so Paolo's ideas for the walk-up window at the other end of his kitchen include pau-hana ready-to-eat take-home meals and late-night service for wee-hours folk from The Row Bar and Ocean Club.
The biggest change from the short-lived Lucarelli's and Jameson's is the least visible. The lease has changed hands from The Row Corp., led by Beall and Al and Jane Sieverts, to Phillip Paolo, his wife, Connie, and Medeiros.
"We were not restaurant operators," Beall said. He and the Sieverts operate The Row Bar, which he said has turned a profit for all but two months of its existence. The bar will also serve Phillip Paolo's pupus.
Erika Engle is a reporter with the Star-Bulletin.
Call 529-4302, fax 529-4750 or write to Erika Engle,
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., No. 7-210,
Honolulu, HI 96813. She can also be reached
at: eengle@starbulletin.com