DEAN SENSUI / DSENSUI@STARBULLETIN.COM
Ray Sagum, general manager of the Hawaii Athletic Club, coaches chef Sam Choy in lifting weights. In high school, Choy says, he could bench press 250 pounds. "Now, about 35."
Sam Choy says he's been
scared straight into reversing
a lifetime of bad health habits
Other chefs may have more restaurants or fancier tables, but when it comes to the face of Hawaii's cuisine, you're lookin' at Sam Choy.
Sam I am
Sam Choy's business and charitable endeavors:Restaurants: Three in Hawaii, plus franchises in Japan and Guam. A contract has been signed for six franchises in Indonesia.
Cookbooks: Due next month is a project with the Makaha Sons on how to host a luau. It will include a CD of Sons' 16 songs to play at your luau.
School visits: Choy visits two public middle schools each month to talk to at-risk students about cooking and the value of education. In four years he has made 140 school visits.
Big Brothers, Big Sisters: His annual spring fund-raising dinner, "A Gourmet Affair," will feature guest chef Todd English in 2004.
Endorsements: His commercials are running for Pizza Hut and Aloha Shoyu.
Poke Festival: The Big Island event is held each September and has grown to include regional poke contests on the mainland.
Cooking show: "Sam Choy's Kitchen" airs at 6:30 p.m. Saturdays on KHNL/NBC.
Food products: The Sam Choy lines of sauces, dressings and frozen foods are in national distribution.
A 385-pound man with a smile as wide as the sky, Choy has absolute presence, the type that fills any room he enters.
Now, just imagine if he were skinny.
Choy would like to.
After 53 years of eating a lot and exercising not much at all, Choy got the Phone Call last month. It was from his assistant, relaying news from the doctor: "Dr. Wong just said your blood sugar is out of control, your cholesterol is out of whack. He's very, very scared."
That's Choy's recollection of the call. This is how he remembers what came next, when he saw the doctor, Eugene Wong: "He told me, 'Sam, simple. Dominoes. Once you start to fall apart somewhere in your body, I don't know if I can control the effects.' "
ON FRIDAY, Choy will receive the Outstanding Alumnus Award at Hookipa 2003, the annual fund-raising dinner put on by Kapiolani Community College's culinary program (for more on Hookipa, see D4) It seemed a good time for catching up.
The best place for that turns out to be the Hawaii Athletic Club at 7:45 one morning, as Choy pumps away on a cross-training machine. He's made this a five-day-a-week habit for a month now, and it pretty much defines what's new in his life.
Choy will do 40 minutes on this machine, which works his legs, arms and heart. "When I started, my legs thought they were going to explode. And that was after two minutes."
Through time, though, he's built confidence and endurance. "You come everyday, you find the fun," he says. And that he has: "When you're done -- you're happy."
Wong, Choy's doctor, says he has sent his patient to dietitians, a personal trainer, even a psychiatrist to deal with what Wong considers an addiction to food. "I've been trying to scare him for the last 10 years."
He has prescribed medication for high blood pressure and cholesterol, warned Choy about his blood sugar and told him he was consuming too much salt, which shows up as swelling in his legs and feet.
Nothing stuck. No diet, no exercise program, not even a regimen of pills. "Some of these things I can detect by his blood tests," Wong says. "I can tell he's not taking his medication, and he says, 'Yeah, yeah, I haven't been taking it -- it's too big for me to take.' "
Actually, Wong allows that for a man his size, Choy is not facing any "major concerns." But Wong says tests earlier this year showed some blockage in Choy's arteries. It became clear that it was time to fix things or really hit the wall.
"I told him, 'You're going to die. Don't you want to see your granddaughter grow up?' "
The granddaughter. That would be 5-year-old Samantha, more often called "Tini," who lives with Choy and his wife, Carol, in their Kona home. It is clear that nothing comes between Choy and this little girl.
Every Tuesday, he says, is their "date night." He takes her to hula class, then out to any place she desires. It's even scheduled in his book, "Pick up Tini, go to hula."
Tini is the daughter of Choy's son, Sam Jr., who was 18 -- a "little kid," Choy says --when the baby was born. "After two months he brought her home. In one hand he had the baby, in the other hand he had a bag of diapers, and he went like this ..." Choy pushes his hands forward, as if presenting a package.
Carol Choy says her husband has more time and patience for Tini than he did for their boys. Sam Jr. and Chris, a freshman at Hawaii Pacific University, grew up when Choy was away a lot, building his business. "Second time around is better."
In their 24 years of marriage, Carol says, her husband's weight has always been a problem. He's started many diets; "never finished."
Tini gives him a reason. "I tell him, 'You want to see her? You live long. You gotta lose weight.'"
It's lunchtime at Choy's Nimitz Highway restaurant, Breakfast, Lunch and Crab. Choy has just finished a snack of Korean-style sushi and plans on a salad for lunch. Breakfast had been a bit of kalua pig and a poached egg.
Choy is consulting with his BLC chef, Aurelio Garcia, about a range of subjects -- some upcoming special events, the Thanksgiving episode of his cooking show, the texture of the day's clam chowder. They meet this way daily, Choy says, and he similarly checks in with Elmer Guzman, the chef at his Diamond Head restaurant. Even if he's not cooking in his restaurants daily, they're still his restaurants.
Here, the conversation takes a bit of a left turn. Choy brings up a recent review that said his restaurants were overrated. "That ticks me off. People have no idea. They're clueless."
It's clear that Choy is sensitive about this, that he believes he is considered less of a chef because he's figured out other ways to earn a living than spending all his time in the kitchen. He does have his food product lines, celebrity endorsements, cookbooks and his appearances at food festivals on the mainland, Choy says, but he still reserves his deepest passion for cooking.
His response to negativity is to break down his operation, check procedures at each level, see if there really is something that needs fixing. They've found in the past, for example, that servers could go to their tables better prepared to discuss the menu. "We break down all the way to the bottom and work it back up." If he can't find a problem, he says, he doesn't worry about it.
Same thing for criticism aimed at him personally. "After you break yourself down, you work back up. You move on."
Choy was an athlete at Kahuku High School -- football, track, golf and surfing. At 5-foot-7, he weighed 190 pounds, 210 at his heaviest.
DEAN SENSUI / DSENSUI@STARBULLETIN.COM
Sam Choy works out on an elliptical trainer at the Hawaii Athletic Club, alongside his executive assistant, Sally Watanabe-Kim. They spend 40 minutes each morning on the machine, then move on to weights three days a week.
Alvin Moreira, who played on Kahuku's offensive line with Choy and remains one of his best friends, says Choy was never small, but was always agile. "Don't let his roundness fool you. ... Even now, he looks kinda round, but he handles his weight."
Choy's trainer, Ray Sagum, general manager at the Hawaii Athletic Club, says Choy is light on his feet, which is helping him kick-start his exercise program. "A guy his size usually can't do this much."
Sagum's plan is to bring Choy along slowly. Gradual progress, such as being able handle heavier weights -- "that's the fuel that will keep him going."
So far, diet hasn't entered the picture, although Choy says he is trying to eat better and less. Sagum has him keeping a food diary and expects to help him develop an eating plan soon.
The object is not to focus on the numbers on the scale, but on Choy's overall health, Sagum says. He believes Choy should lose no more than 3 or 4 pounds a month. "The change is for life."
Sagum tried for a year to get Choy into his gym. He didn't know the chef, but recognized him as a public person who needed some private help.
Choy's executive assistant, Sally Watanabe-Kim, says she probably made a dozen appointments for Choy at the gym. "He always escaped. He tried so hard to get out of it."
This was typical of every effort she made to focus him on his health. "We'd go walking. It would last about a week and he'd think of a reason he couldn't do it any more."
Now Watanabe-Kim picks him up at the airport every weekday after his early morning flight from Kona. They go straight to the gym and work out side by side for at least an hour. From there it's breakfast (a light one) and the day's business, followed by an evening flight home.
Choy allows that he couldn't do this without her persistence. "The hardest part is just making sure you show up," he says, and she takes care of that.
Choy has a phrase for his past behavior: "Free Willy." "I been eating like this about 38 years. You know, 'Free Willy,' just eating, not having any idea this is killing me."
The weight started picking up when he was 21 and began cooking, Choy says. "I was tasting and picking." And no longer exercising.
He made his bigness integral to his persona -- "Never trust a skinny chef," he'd say. But, enough. Too many people have been driving the point home. The wife, the doctor, the assistant, the trainer.
"People start calling and caring," Choy says. "You think something must be wrong."
But back to the original point: Is a slimmed-down Sam Choy still Sam Choy? Can we trust a skinny chef?
He grins. He's not planning to lose weight in his smile.
"People will appreciate me small, too."
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Hookipa 2003
Hookipa, the annual benefit dinner for Kapiolani Community College's culinary programs, is a fund-raiser with an enviable reputation. A sold-out reputation.For two years, all 40 corporate tables have sold out before invitations even went out. These tables for 10 go for $2,000 to $10,000 apiece. At that rate, the event is making money before the $100 and $200 single tickets even go on sale.
The event consistently raises $125,000 to $150,000.
Chairman Kelvin Ro credits the event's honorary chairwomen, Betty Wo and Joanna Sullivan, for working to sell the corporate tables and securing donations that make the event feasible.
Friday night's Hookipa at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel features 12 cooking stations run by student chefs. Entertainment is by Robert Cazimero and his halau, Na Kamalei. Sam Choy will be honored as outstanding alumnus.
Very few individual tickets remain. Call 734-9570.
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calendars and events.
