At Heart: “I Got the Feeling Everybody Was There for the Love of It”

Where the Heart Is

Maui Fresh Streatery  |  Fujiya Hawai‘i  |  Little Vessels  |  Central O‘ahu Event Center

In the world of food and restaurants, the most resonant stories go beyond what’s on the table. Here’s Part 2 of the four-part package “Where the Heart Is” in the December 2023/January 2024 issue of HONOLULU Magazine.

Photo: Aaron K. Yoshino

Making Old-School New Again

Sometimes, life isn’t like a box of chocolates, it’s more like a tray of mochi. Mochi stuffed with crunchy peanut butter or a fresh strawberry cradled in sweet red beans. Pumpkin crunch mochi for fall, yuzu liliko‘i or ube haupia mochi for anytime, chocolate peanut butter Oreo mochi on special. At the new Fujiya Hawai‘i, one of Honolulu’s two remaining old-school mochi shops, you never know what you’ll find—which was exactly the case for Devin Wong when he took over the 70-year-old shop two years ago.

Mochi is one of those treats that pervades the local snack scene. Wong grew up with it, the soft pillows of chichi dango and sweet, bean paste-filled rounds that show up year-round at potlucks and in company break rooms on Girls Day. By the time he came to Fujiya, after the pandemic set in motion a chain of events that left the place without a manager, Wong already had a long history in food. He’d owned Milano Freezer gelato and yogurt shops, co-owned the Makino Chaya seafood buffet, and was working at Koha Foods.

Fujiya was different. “When I got to meet the staff”—half of whom he thinks were more than 70 years old—“I got the feeling that everybody was there for the love of it,” he says.

Photo: Aaron K. Yoshino

Heart, in fact, drove the transition. Buoyed by memories of the Fujiya sweets his grandmother brought home from work at Shirokiya, Chris Kanemura—whose main job is owning and running a Maui café that helps survivors of sex trafficking—bought Fujiya with his family in 2018. Just before the pandemic, they poured more than half a million dollars into building out its bright new storefront in McCully and importing state-of-the-art senbei- and mochi-making equipment.

When Kanemura asked Danny Kim, a friend and owner of Koha Foods, who might make a good manager, Kim suggested Wong—his own employee and brother-in-law—essentially paving his way back to entrepreneurship. Wong owns 90% of Fujiya Hawai‘i now.

“It’s a legacy business. It’s Hawai‘i-style mochi. That’s what we have to pass on to the next generation,” Kanemura says. “It’s super good, a nod to the old style, but it’s also new. Devin had the same vision.”

Wong talks about teaching old-guard employees to replace long hours of brute work with efficient processes, and college-age part-timers the basics of counting money and using a broom. His workdays start at 6 a.m. and often run 12 hours, ramping up to 20 hours in late December. He’s coming up on his third New Year’s at Fujiya, when mochi-making for ozoni soup—the symbolic first meal of the year for many Japanese families—means days of nonstop work.

Wong lights up when he talks about it. “You just bring in all your uncles, aunties, friends because there’s never enough labor. My two kids are here, my wife, my brother-in-law,” he says. “That’s kind of an exciting time, being with your family.”

Photos: Aaron K. Yoshino

On days off, Wong and employees often show up to throw around ideas for new flavors. The most promising ones get run by Kanemura for feedback. That’s how almond float mochi at Chinese New Year and pizza manju for the Super Bowl joined a growing lineup of new-style traditional sweets, all of it posted on Instagram for younger generations to discover. This year, there was even a James Beard Award nomination for Outstanding Bakery. For Wong and the evolving world of local snacks, life really is like a tray of mochi—you never know what you’re going to get.

930 Hau‘oli St., fujiyahawaii.com, @fujiyahawaii