Kahiki Supper Club Read online

  Michael Tsao was a product of the American Dream. Born in Shanghai, China, he moved to Hong Kong as a youth. At the age of eighteen, he immigrated to the United States with $100 in his pocket and no prospects. Landing a job as a dishwasher, he set about working his way up in the restaurant business until he became general manager of the Beverly Hilton Trader Vic’s. During his tenure, it was rated one of the top five restaurants in the Los Angeles area. Declining the opportunity to become vice-president of the San Francisco operation (the most successful of all the company’s restaurants), Tsao decided to strike out on his own. “I’m not corporate material,” he said. “I’m a maverick.”

  After eleven years of managing Trader Vic’s, Tsao took Boich up on his offer. Packing up his family, chefs and managers, he moved to Columbus, Ohio. “I didn’t even know where Ohio was,” he said. “All I knew was Ohio State beat UCLA every year they played them in the Rose Bowl.”

  A graduate of Pasadena City College with a degree in business administration, Tsao was nothing if not ambitious. Over the next decade, he became president and general manager of the four-hundred-room Columbus Sheraton Plaza hotel. He also built upon the success of the Kahiki by introducing a chain of five Chinese fast-food restaurants and a steak house. One of the challenges he had to deal with was standardizing operations. According to Tsao, this was not unusual in ethnic restaurants. “Each person who is Chinese has their own version of how the food is flavored,” he said. “There’s no standard recipe.” Complicating matters further was the fact that tastes varied from Chinese students at Ohio State to patrons at suburban shopping malls.

  George Ono was also a bar manager at the Kahiki. Courtesy Sapp/Henry.

  Rather than engaging in opening more restaurants, Tsao turned his attention to manufacturing foods. He began packaging and freezing egg rolls, stir-fry meals and other Kahiki favorites. “In those days,” he told Martha Leonard of Business First, “we had a lot of immigrants coming from Asia, like Vietnam and China. The husband and wife can’t get a job because they don’t speak English, so I thought, ‘Why not let them come in and make egg rolls.’ So we began to sell egg rolls wholesale.” (Much to Bill and Lee’s annoyance, he sold them out of a freezer case in the restaurant’s lobby, diluting the ambiance they had worked so hard to create.)

  In 1989, a year after Tsao bought out Boich to become sole owner of the Kahiki, the “Son of Heaven” exhibition came to Columbus. Housed in the former Central High School, the exhibition of Chinese art and culture was expected to be a major tourist attraction and a boon to the local economy during its run.26 Working out of the basement of the Kahiki, Tsao had already begun supplying frozen food items to Kroger groceries. But when Columbus-based Wendy’s Hamburgers won the catering contract for “Son of Heaven,” it turned to him to provide the egg rolls.

  During the exhibit’s six-month run, Wendy’s sold a quarter of a million Kahiki egg rolls. What Tsao took away from that was that there was a wholesale market for his products, but he didn’t know how big a market. In 1991, the restaurant won a contract to provide food for state institutions, including colleges and hospitals. A year later, the Kahiki Supper Club was nominated as one of the top fifty restaurants in the country and awarded a Five-Star Diamond rating from the American Academy of Restaurant Sciences.

  Having decided to incorporate the Kahiki, Tsao formed a board of directors, chose a president and issued publicly traded stock shares. With the funds raised, construction began in 1995 on a $1 million, seven-thousand-square-foot frozen food processing plant immediately behind the restaurant. Soon Kahiki Frozen Foods began turning out products under the “General Tsao” label. During the next two years, the frozen food operation signed distribution agreements with Walmart, tripling its wholesale business, and 7-Eleven stores, adding perhaps five thousand or so more outlets. By 1997, its frozen food sales, branded and unbranded, approached its restaurant sales. The following year, they began to outpace them. As a strategic planning consultant put it, “With Kahiki, they found the soul was not in the wine bottle—the Kahiki restaurant. It was the wine—the food itself.” Consequently, their mission became putting their wine in new bottles.

  Composed by Columbus’s own Shep Edmonds in 1920, “Honolulu Lou” was just one of hundreds of pop songs written about the Polynesian islands. Authors’ collection.

  Both internally and externally, the Kahiki was one of the most visually striking restaurants to be found anywhere. Courtesy Sapp/Henry.

  The Mystery Girl kneels to one of the twin moai guarding the entrance to the Kahiki on the cover of this advertising supplement. Courtesy Sapp/Henry.

  When the Kahiki opened, the wall of aquariums was an unusual feature for its time. Courtesy Sapp/Henry.

  In this advertising supplement from the Columbus Dispatch, the Mystery Girl raises her bowl to the fireplace moai. Courtesy Sapp/Henry.

  A visit to the Kahiki was at its magical best at night, when it was easier to pretend it was a tropical oasis. Courtesy Sapp/Henry.

  This photograph by Charles Moore of a couple “wahines” was later used as the cover of The Beachcomber Trio album. Authors’ collection.

  Wahines and customers surround Marsh Padilla in the Music Bar. Authors’ collection.

  The enormous fireplace moai with its flaming mouth and eyes graced the front of the dining menu. Courtesy Sapp/Henry.

  Tribal dancers are depicted on the cover of the Kahiki drink menu, which was produced by a firm in Chicago. Courtesy Sapp/Henry.

  Summoned by a gong, the Mystery Girl delivered the Mystery Drink to the table with much ceremony. Courtesy Sapp/Henry.

  An illustration of the celebrated four-person Mystery Drink taken from the menu. Courtesy Sapp/Henry.

  The advertising supplements included photos of “People You’re Apt to Meet at Kahiki.” Courtesy Sapp/Henry.

  Many celebrities visited the Kahiki more than once, especially those who performed in several Kenley Players productions. Courtesy Sapp/Henry.

  Gordon and Sheila McRae, stars of stage and screen, were just a couple of the many celebrities who had their photos taken by Johnny Gim. Courtesy Sapp/Henry.

  Arthur Godfrey, the “Old Red Head,” photographed with his favorite Mystery Girl, Tina Butts. Courtesy Sapp/Henry.

  While appearing in a Kenley Players production with actress Betty White, actor Jack Carson visited the Outrigger Bar. Courtesy Sapp/Henry.

  Children were also welcome at the Kahiki, as evidenced by this Kids’ Menu with the twin moai. Courtesy Candi Spencer.

  Celebrating a birthday with “smoking” drinks (from left): Leah Delcamp, Andrew Cloyes and Elise Meyers. Authors’ collection.

  Planning sessions for the Wine Cellar, Bill and Lee’s third restaurant venture, were held at the Kahiki. Courtesy Sapp/Henry.

  A conceptual painting of the Wine Cellar, Bill and Lee’s acclaimed follow-up to the Kahiki. Courtesy Sapp/Henry.

  The design for Saxon’s Sandwich Shoppes benefited from the Corban Morgan touch. Courtesy Sapp/Lee.

  When Bill Sapp and Lee Henry took their wives out to dinner, they had a choice of three outstanding restaurants. Courtesy Sapp/Henry.

  The Maui Lounge wahines are gathered around one of several tiki statues to be found in the restaurant. Courtesy Sapp/Henry.

  An illustration of Michael Tsao’s proposed Riverfront Kahiki in front of Veterans Memorial Auditorium. Authors’ collection.

  A brochure depicting the enormous fireplace moai with flaming mouth and eyes. Courtesy Sapp/Henry.

  This postcard shows the restaurant’s distinctive logo. Authors’ collection.

  At any one time, the Kahiki listed nearly forty “tropical” drinks on its menu. Courtesy Sapp/Henry.

  The founders of the feast Bill Sapp (left) and Lee Henry in 2014. Authors’ collection.

  A promotional brochure hinting at some of the delights to be found at the Kahiki. Courtesy Candi Spencer.

  Late in 1997, the Kahiki won a place on the National Register of Histor
ic Places. This was not a foregone conclusion since the building was only thirty-six years old and most structures are not considered until they have at least reached fifty. There was also some question about whether it was historically noteworthy at all. Then, in 1999, the International Restaurant & Hospitality Rating Bureau awarded the Kahiki Supper Club the Millennium Restaurant International Award of Excellence as One of America’s Top 100 Restaurants of the twentieth century. For any restaurant, this would be a singular honor, but for a restaurant in Columbus, Ohio, it was almost an unimaginable achievement. However, instead of propelling the supper club to even greater heights, it served as its epitaph. Less than a year later, the Kahiki was no more.

  By then, rumors had begun circulating that the Walgreens Company, the largest drugstore chain in the country, had its eye on this particular piece of property for one of its ubiquitous pharmacies, and these were confirmed in April 2000. At the end of June, Michael Tsao announced that he would sell the site to Walgreens. The decision was bittersweet; as much as he hated to part with the Kahiki, he was grateful that there was someone willing to buy it at all. “It was like the Field of Dreams—they built it and the people came,” Tsao said, describing the restaurant’s initial success when it opened in 1961. However, thirty-nine years later, “We saw the writing on the wall with Easton and Polaris [shopping malls] drawing people away. Everything has its life span.”

  Although in retrospect some people have questioned it, there is little reason to doubt he was being sincere when he said:

  At this point, we look at, the Tiki culture has to be preserved. What we intend to do is take the current Kahiki and reproduce it as the same shape of the building, like a canoe, and then taking the interior, rebuild it using the same decorating packages, in fact, the same floor plan.

  The prospect of the Kahiki being bulldozed to build a Walgreens pharmacy led publisher Otto Von Stroheim of the Tiki News to write, “It would mean the devastation of the first or second most important tiki restaurant in the world!” Walgreens spokesman Michael Polzin said at the time, “Walgreens has a policy against destroying historic buildings…The company just doesn’t think the Kahiki makes the cut. This building is unusual, but it’s not very old.” Of course, the National Register of Historic Places held the same opinion and elected to list it anyway because it was so unusual and historically significant.

  With the turnover of the property to Walgreens, Tsao relocated his frozen food operation to a twenty-two-thousand-square-foot facility near Port Columbus International Airport. It had grown quickly to where it was producing ninety to one hundred varieties of frozen entrees, snacks and egg rolls each day for distribution to supermarkets, delis, cafeterias and warehouse stores such as Sam’s Club and Costco. “It would have been so easy for my wife and I to just take the money and go to Hawaii and lay on the beach, but we didn’t. We wanted to save the Kahiki brand and create jobs for a new immigrant base.” His goal was to make it the preeminent provider of frozen foods in the country. Toward that end, he hired Alan Hoover, a marketing executive with International Paper Company and Sonoco Products Company, as vice-president of sales. The idea of rebuilding the restaurant would have to sit on a back burner until he got the frozen food division on a profitable footing.

  Meanwhile, the Kahiki closed its doors to the public forever on August 25, 2000. Various artifacts from the restaurant were retained and put into storage. Some of them purportedly were donated to the Columbus Zoo; others resurfaced when the Tropical Bistro opened a couple years later. In 2004, Kahiki Frozen Foods was recognized for having the highest percentage gain of any publicly traded stock in Central Ohio, rising over 190 percent for the year. Then, on July 22, 2005, Michael Tsao passed away due to heart failure resulting from diabetes-related complications. Any hope of the Kahiki rising again died with him.

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  TROPICAL MEMORIES

  It’s often hilarious to me that I’m writing about Tonga or some tropical place and there’s a blizzard outside and the cows are on their backs with their hooves in the air.

  —Tim Cahill

  Coincident with the proliferation of tiki culture was the appearance of such shows as Hawaiian Eye (1959–63), Adventures in Paradise (1959–62), Surfside Six (1960–62), Gilligan’s Island (1964–67) and, later, Hawaii Five-O (1968–80) and Magnum PI (1980–88). All of these programs incorporated elements of tiki culture in their settings while Gilligan’s Island is a practically visual textbook of all things tiki. Columbus Coated Fabrics, manufacturer of Wall-Tex, went so far as to once sell a “Kahiki” wall-covering pattern. And in part, this was what drew customers to the Kahiki.

  Christine Hayes, daughter of the late Columbus newspaper columnist Ben Hayes, described one of her Kahiki experiences in the Short North Gazette:

  When we went to the Kahiki in the afternoon: gray wintry day outside, coziest blue aquarium room inside. The one-year-old with us tramped all over the place, from fish-admiring to mock-thunderstorm-on-birds. There were few customers, so the young parents and the delighted grandmother (me) chose the best table and ordered fancy drinks. In lighting the grog, the waiter spilled the drink all over the table. Flames leaped up, but they did not burn the surface, or us. The orange-red glow on our faces contrasted sharply with the marine-blue of the aquariums. The one-year-old was impressed, we were elated.

  At the Kahiki, the key to making each visit a memorable experience was having the right staff. Wanda Stevens was Bill and Lee’s secretary and the “Mother Superior” of the Kahiki. Bill readily concedes that she was “the glue that held everything together.” Anytime anyone needed anything at all, they turned to Wanda. If a problem arose, she would listen to what Bill and Lee had to say and then tell them how it ought to be done. “She had the pulse of the Kahiki,” he says. When she suggested that Linda should start learning the business because she “needed something to do,” she was put to work blacking out the photo in the brochures. Once a Vietnamese lady who worked in the gift shop got sick with cancer. Wanda took care of her when she couldn’t care for herself and continued to do so until she died.

  Lee and his wife, Marilyn, plucked Craig Moore from the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration to be the manager of the restaurant and added Phil Chin, a mechanical engineer, to be the head chef. William D. “Bill” Harrison asserted that he basically bluffed his way past eighty others who were applying for the job of maître d’ by claiming to have experience at Germany’s famous 4 Seasons restaurant and then chatting with Bill Sapp in German. Marek “Chills” Verne had formerly been with Mario’s International. He worked his way up from waiter to bartender and then maître d’. Johnny Gim worked in the kitchen, tended bar and later became an assistant manager. With 180 employees, there was plenty of opportunity for upward mobility.

  The Outrigger Bar acquired its name from the full-size outrigger canoe that hung over it. One day, Bill told two of the bartenders, Tommy Joseph and Robert “Bob” Karst, “You guys be careful. There’s money missing, and Lee’s lying up in the canoe, watching.” Apparently, they believed him and spent much of the evening looking over their shoulders.

  Karst, a longtime employee of both the Kahiki and the Wine Cellar, had grown up in the restaurant business, and his wife, Mary, had worked at the Top. His family had owned and operated the Broad-Nel Restaurant.

  Bill and Lee were upstairs in the office talking one evening when the phone rang. Bill picked it up and heard someone say, “Where’s the pizza?”

  “What’re you talking about?” Bill asked.

  “Where’s the pizza?” the voice repeated.

  “Who is this?”

  “Tommy Joseph.”

  “Tommy, you’ve got the office upstairs.”

  “Ohhhhh,” Tommy said and then hung up.

  On another occasion, Tommy called Bill Harrison on the intercom at the bar. “Hey Sarge,” he said, “We got carry-out.” Harrison was nicknamed Sarge from his time in the army. Harrison replied, “We don’t do carry-out.”
Tommy said, “You do now—she’s passed out at the bar and needs [to be] carried out.”

  Customers dined in a variety of huts that formed a make-believe Polynesian village. Courtesy Kojo Kaman.

  Hal Naguchi from Chicago was hired as general manager. He was, Harrison said, “a strong and gifted manager” who got things off on the right foot. “The cooks were all chow hands,” Lee pointed out. “We couldn’t get any at first, so we put ads in Chinese newspapers in San Francisco, Chicago, etc., and interviewed them over the phone.” They bristled under Chin’s direction.

  As Harry Truman famously said, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” Well, the kitchen at the Kahiki got heated at times. Once a Chinese chef who will remain nameless got in an argument. Grabbing a cleaver, he took a swing at another employee and cut through a copper water line. Water sprayed out all over the place.

  Another time, as Lee and Marilyn pulled into the parking lot at the Kahiki, they were met by manager Craig Moore, “wearing a white suit and a face to match. One of the dishwashers had stabbed another in the buttocks.”

  When the Kahiki first opened, large-scale aquariums—both fresh and salt water—were not common outside of zoos. Naturally, they required regular maintenance, and a company was hired to clean them. One day, a substitute worker showed up to clean the restaurant’s wall of aquariums. He proceeded to put all of the fish, over one thousand, in the same tank—with the piranha. And the piranha proceeded to eat all of their exotic (and expensive) fish. Bill was not pleased.