Old-School Diners We Love: Teshima’s Restaurant

Photo: Gregg Hoshida

Nostalgia is a powerful ingredient. It flavors our food with memories that make it that much more delicious. That bowl of saimin you ate with your parents in the third grade. The first bite of Zippy’s chili after coming home from your first semester in college. Cheeseburgers at Kenny’s at Kam Shopping Center in Kalihi, where I grew up. Everything tastes more amazing when sprinkled with nostalgia.

Photo: Gregg Hoshida

Such is the case with Teshima’s Restaurant in Kealakekua. The Big Island restaurant has been serving delicious local and Japanese-American food since 1929. Whether it’s the beef sukiyaki in a cast iron nabe, velvety slices of sashimi paired with crispy shrimp tempura or a story about Grandma Mary Shizuko Teshima, who helped open F. Teshima General Merchandise store and worked in the restaurant until she was 105 years old, everyone here has a memory to share.

Photo: Gregg Hoshida

My first visit to Teshima’s was in the mid-1990s. There for work, I had been told I should dine here at least once. The flavors then were the same flavors today—wholesome, honest and familiar. The beef sukiyaki tastes exactly like my grandmother used to make it. The rough cuts of lightly pickled cabbage tsukemono remind me of dinners at Wisteria with my parents.

Everywhere I look are photos celebrating the Teshima family and their restaurant from the earliest days to now. I look at the wrinkles in the vinyl booths and the coats of paint and think about the generations of diners this place has served.

Photo: Gregg Hoshida

Breakfast starts at 7 a.m. with old-school local fare: choices like eggs, Vienna sausage, a short stack, corned beef hash, homemade hamburger patty. You can get miso soup or nabeyaki udon if you want. At lunch and dinner, the menu and its dishes are heartier. This is when the popular combos appear—mine is the No. 1 Teishoku with sukiyaki, miso soup, rice, sashimi, tsukemono and vinegary sunomoro. Local-style plates stretch from Sweet Sour Spareribs and Kona Upcountry Chop Steak to Ono Breaded Pork Chops and Fresh Kona Coast ‘Ahi.

Photo: Gregg Hoshida

As I am eating my lunch, I think of how the story of Teshima’s is not unlike that of my own family. Both started as immigrants from Japan looking for a new life; my grandmother came to Hilo as a picture bride more than a century ago. When Teshima’s turns 100 in 2029, the food will undoubtedly taste all the more delicious.

Daily 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 to 9 p.m., 79-7251 Mamalahoa Hwy, Kealakekua, teshimas_restaurant.com, @teshimas

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