Questions I find myself answering frequently...
- "Where did you come up with that name for the restaurant?"
Just for the record, it's not a misspelling of either "Kona" or
"Grill"... ;) Keoni calls me "Kana Girl," so it seemed the natural
name for our place!
- "Is Kana your real name?" Yes, short for my middle name Makana,
which means gift... (I'm asked this question so regularly, perhaps I
should post a copy of my state-issued ID--or the various "Kana Girl"
tattoos sported by my husband?--to verify... ;)
- "Are you really from Hawai'i?"
Keoni was born & raised in Kaneohe on O'ahu; his mom is Hawai'ian,
and his dad's family has been in the islands for several generations
(came from the mainland to work on railroads). I'm an original
Idahoan, studied marine biology at University of Hawai'i and lived in
Hilo on the Big Island. (As a side note, I've been bemused by some online "sniping" by people maligning my lack of Hawai'ian heritage... So let me pause here to apologize for that accident of birth, and point out that at least I had the good sense to marry a Most Excellent Hawai'ian cook. ;)
- "How did you end up in Idaho?"
We'll go with the condensed versions... Keoni left Hawai'i in 1974 to
play football for Arizona State, moved back home in the early 90's, and
remembered why he left the first time: "It's an island in the middle of
the ocean." He enjoys driving for four hours and being somewhere ELSE.
;) As for me, my first husband, whom I met at UH, had a temporary job
that brought us to Boise; it was meant to be for a semester and then
we'd head back for marine bio grad studies, but plans change--that was
a dozen years ago, and here I still am. :)
- "Don't you miss Hawai'i?"
As I write this, it's 5 degrees outside, and my crazy Hawai'ian husband
is trudging out to his barbecue stubbornly dressed in shorts--so I'll
give this question a YES. :) He says he's "only homesick on the days
that end in -ay"... We do have a little piece of land waiting
for us on the Big Island, so down the road we're planning to land
ourselves back there. In the meantime, though, we can all eat as though we
were there!
- "What made you decide to open a restaurant--especially in this economy?"
The bare truth is that we were out of other options--a restaurant might
be a risky proposition, but we had absolutely nothing to lose! We're
both recovering alcoholics, both threw away our jobs with our drinking,
both had been looking for work for 9 months--but we don't look good on
paper anymore, and with so many people seeking work, we can't fault
employers for choosing people other than ourselves... My realtor (who
was helping us sell the house we could no longer afford to live in!)
called one night to say a restaurant in her building had closed
unexpectedly, the owners wanted someone in there quickly, and would we
be interested? We drove right over to peer in the windows and saw a
beach mural on the wall, which felt like a sign that this might just
come together for us! Keoni has been cooking since "small-kid
time"--learned from his tutu-ma and tutu-pa (grandparents), is
never happier than when he's singing in the kitchen, and has been doing lu'aus and catering for 18 years--and I'm happy to
tackle the "business end" of things. (Or to put it another way: I'm scared of the barbecue and he's scared of the cash register, but together we make one Most Excellent Team.) So the long and the short of it
is: here we are! Enjoying our days together, and thrilled to be
able to pay some bills again. :)
- "Wouldn't you rather keep that kind of history to yourselves?" Well, actually, no.
Part of our recovery is taking responsibility for the things that
happened in our disease of drinking, and another part is celebrating
this new life that sobriety has made possible. We're all too aware of
the stigma attached to alcoholism, and at the same time we're grateful
to have gotten our feet under us despite all the obstacles we've
experienced... So for those few of you who do read an "about us" page on a restaurant website, there's the real scoop! ;)
- "Who does your artwork?" The FAQ couldn't be complete without this question... ;) Our tattoo guy is Devon, at New Moon Tattoo on Fairview in Boise. And if you want to see a guy who's serious about being Hawai'ian, ask Keoni about his Spam tattoo! Which leads us to...
- "What's with the Spam?" Spam doesn't carry the stigma in Hawai'i that it does for some on the Mainland; check out Wikipedia on Spam if you're interested in some cultural history... More Spam is consumed in Hawai'i and Guam than anywhere else in the world; you can even get it at McDonald's there (see below)...
 - In the "more-than-you-ever-wanted-to-know" category (but hey, you read this far, so who knows?) you're welcome to visit Kana's Corkboard
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