Hawaiian Grown Kitchen - The Alley Restaurant - Segment 4

This week on Hawaiian Grown Kitchen, Executive Chef Grant Kawasaki invites The Alley Restaurant at Aiea Bowl with Executive Chef/Owner Glenn Uyeda and Chef Dean Heartwell to share the secrets that make this location a strike! Three recipes later and we have a sample of there famous Oxtail Soup, Tasty Chicken, and Furikake Crusted Ahi. To top it all off, a three layer lemon cake! Standing out front of Aiea Bowl at 9:30 on a Friday morning, it’s hard to see why chef Glenn Uyeda would have chosen this as the place to put his Cordon Bleu training on display. The exterior of the old bowling alley is plain and drab and a little desolate. In fact, it barely looks like it’s still in business. The parking lot, though, is full. And when you step inside, the cacophony of the bowling alley—the roistering of the crowd, the crashing of the pins, the balls rumbling down the maple lanes — it all starts to make Uyeda’s decision seem pretty sly. Because, when Glenn Uyeda and his brother, Gregg, bought the place three years ago, they envisioned a different kind of bowling alley — one that blended the retro charms of bowling with quality food and a nightclub atmosphere. As chef Uyeda puts it, “Our goal in this place wasn’t just bowling and wasn’t just food; our goal was to create entertainment.” The first thing that strikes you, of course, is the bowling. Even at this hour of the morning, all 24 lanes at Aiea Bowl are full. Senior leagues commandeer the facility every day from 9 to 11 a.m, and today the place is packed with hundreds of blue-shirted members of the Aikane Bowling Club. In the afternoons and evenings, the lanes are given over to youth leagues and open bowling. In fact, the bowling side of the business is booming. Glenn attributes that success largely to Mako Kobayashi, the former owner, who has managed the place since 1970. The Uyeda brothers put him on the payroll when they bought the alley. Bowling has increased and Mako still runs three leagues and ...