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New owners
flap wings
at Hooters

AVOIDING obvious and cliché references to lifting, bolstering, enhancing or augmenting, this column reports that changes are coming to Hooters at Aloha Tower Marketplace.

The Georgia-based parent company notified the state Department of Labor in late July that it was negotiating the sale of the restaurant and if a deal was reached, the change would affect 52 employees about mid-September.

The incoming owners have registered an operating company, Hoowaii Inc. with the state. Brothers John and Robert Pardini also have received permission -- from the Honolulu Liquor Commission -- to make physical changes to the restaurant famous for its chicken wings and other things.

John is a former past president of the California Restaurant Association and "for years ran The Greenhouse, a posh upscale restaurant in Fresno," said publicist Rick Bubenik. He also owns a catering company called Grand Occasions.

The brothers, who come from a family of restaurateurs, are Hooters franchisees who operate a location in Fresno and opened their second last night, in Sacramento.

The Pardinis plan nine Hooters in all, within two years.

Of the more than 400 Hooters around the world, 168 are company-owned and most of those are in the eastern part of the mainland, Bubenik said. It made sense for the company to sell the Honolulu location to West Coast-based operators.

What not to wear

Johnny Mango's fabric isn't for sewing into a Tommy Bahama-type shirt.

The store actually carries designer textiles for the home, not le homme (the man).

"We have tropicals and luxury fabric and indoor-outdoor fabrics ... in a range of prices," said owner Brett Sowell, the former manager at the now-closed Showplace South Hawaii home interior store.

The indoor-outdoor fabrics are not all just stiff green canvas, either. "The fabric has made incredible strides ... some of them are actually even soft, and have a pile to them," he said.

The Johnny Mango Home Textile Collection is at Gentry Pacific Design Center on Nimitz Highway and is open from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.