Alan Wong returns to Honolulu

Six years after Alan Wong shut his South King Street flagship during the coronavirus pandemic, his name is back over a dining room in Honolulu, this time inside The Kahala Hotel & Resort. Public reservations at Alan Wong’s began on April 8, 2026, after hotel guests got early access in late March. (kahalaresort.com) (hawaii-guide.com) This is not a brand-new chef trying to break through. Alan Wong won a James Beard Foundation award in 1996 and built one of Hawaiʻi’s best-known fine-dining restaurants after opening Alan Wong’s in 1995. (archive.jamesbeard.org) (alanwongs.com) His old restaurant mattered far beyond one address on King Street. Gourmet ranked it No. 6 in America in 2001, and the restaurant stayed open for 25 years before Wong turned in the keys on November 2, 2020. (alanwongs.com) (staradvertiser.com) The new restaurant takes over a room that already had weight in Honolulu dining. It replaces Hoku’s, The Kahala’s signature restaurant for about 30 years, which served its last dinner on February 20, 2026. (alohastatedaily.com) (hawaii-guide.com) Wong did not use the comeback to start from scratch. The opening menu brings back dishes people associated with the King Street era, including ginger-crusted onaga, the whole tomato salad with li hing mui ume dressing, and “The Coconut” dessert with haupia sorbet in a chocolate shell. (alohastatedaily.com) The hotel is also keeping part of its old rhythm in place. Dinner at Alan Wong’s runs from 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, while The Kahala’s long-running Sunday brunch continues separately from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. with live music. (spectrumlocalnews.com) (alohastatedaily.com) The food itself is still framed around Hawaiʻi Regional Cuisine, the style Wong helped define by mixing local fish, local produce, and the islands’ many immigrant food traditions into one fine-dining menu. The Kahala’s own description says the restaurant is built around “freshly farmed ingredients from the land and fish from our seas.” (kahalaresort.com) That is why this reopening landed like bigger news than a normal hotel restaurant launch. It brings back a chef whose original dining room helped shape modern Hawaiʻi restaurant culture, and it does it in one of Honolulu’s most established resort properties instead of a smaller test run. (honolulumagazine.com) (travelweekly.com) Wong hinted back in 2020 that closing King Street was “not the end.” On April 8, 2026, that promise finally turned into a dining room again. (westhawaiitoday.com) (kahalaresort.com)