Fairway Tavern, owned by chef Adam Gilbert and business partner Chris Natale, has been a project that’s been years in the making — specifically since 2019, Gilbert says. The eatery is located at the ʻEwa Villages Golf Course, which is a municipal golf course, but the restaurant is open to the public.
“There’s a big push to put local businesses to occupy concessions for the City and County,” Gilbert says. “I’ve been working on this project since 2019, and then it got put on the backburner during the Covid-19 pandemic.”
In the meantime, Gilbert sold his Kapolei-based restaurant, Plantation Tavern, in 2020 — the eatery was open for about six years — and opened Monarch Poke shop in Pearl Kai Shopping Center in 2021.
“The poke shop was really just to go back in the community and see what’s going on,” he says. “It was almost an experimental thing. We really lived on catering there.”
Fairway Tavern’s current space was vacant since 2019, according to Gilbert.
“For the last six to seven years, it was called The Ville; everybody in ʻEwa knows The Ville,” he says. “The bid (for this space) went out about two years ago and we won it.”
Since December 2024, Gilbert and Natale worked on renovating the restaurant — “We did the floor, we repainted the whole place,” Gilbert says — and the eatery’s tables and chairs came from now-closed Sansei and D.K. Steakhouse.
The eatery is called Fairway Tavern to pay homage to both, its golf course location and Gilbert’s former Plantation Tavern.
“If you look at our logo compared to Plantation Tavern, it’s very similar,” he says. “The intent is to remember — subconsciously or not — that we’re the same ownership, same business and same food.
“The whole concept of the tavern almost fits in better here than it did in Kapolei,” he adds. “You’re on the plantation here. When you pull in off Renton Road, those are all original plantation buildings.”
Gilbert sold the Monarch Poke space in Pearl Kai a few weeks ago, and announced its closing on social media.
“I was going to run them both, but at the end of the day, I couldn’t figure out how to do both,” he says.
The eatery’s grab-and-go section — open from 7 a.m. — is designed with golfers in mind, as it features musubis, croissant breakfast sandwiches, breakfast burritos and breakfast bentos, according to Gilbert.
“We have five different breakfast bentos, which have white rice, scrambled eggs, and meats like Portuguese sausage, Spam, corned beef, and Little Smokies,” Gilbert says. “We run musubis and hot dogs all day for the golfers with a fast turnaround on the ninth hole.”
The lunch menu, which is served from 11 a.m., features a similar style to Plantation Tavern, Gilbert notes. Many dishes feature larger portions, designed to be shared family-style.
“We put pride and care into what we do; we make everything from scratch,” Gilbert says. “We do a lot of upscale local food — Hawaiian, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese and Korean — and we use French techniques, but not to be pretentious. It’s just to add more flavor and depth in what we do.”
Several dishes feature the same recipes from the Plantation Tavern days — including the eatery’s signature poke nachos — but some dishes are new creations.
“I tried not to do too many similar dishes because I feel like I’ve grown a lot in seven years,” Gilbert says. “At the same time, there’s stuff the community won’t accept that we don’t have.”
The poke nachos have been a longtime customer favorite, both at Plantation Tavern and at Monarch Poke. They feature a bed of crispy wonton chips topped with your choice of spicy or shoyu poke, chopped tomato and avocado; they’re drizzled with homemade unagi sauce and Sriracha aioli.
“We do spicy and shoyu poke only,” Gilbert says. “It’s the same recipe as Plantation Tavern; the first one (poke nachos) we did was in 2012.”
The sizzling sisig ($16) features crispy pork belly that’s chopped and mixed with red onions, garlic, ginger and Thai chili.
“We put a calamansi dashi aioli on it, and a fried egg,” Gilbert says. “We’ve never done that dish before; it’s super good.”
He explains that certain dishes on the menu — including miso yakitori chicken ($12), crispy chicken wings ($14 for six, $21 for 12), garlic chicken ($14) and Kochujang beef skewers ($21) — are specifically included as affordable options for golfers.
“There are some very intentionally selected items for the golf community to find value,” Gilbert says. “The chicken yakitori is new; it’s five chicken sticks with 12 ounces of chicken. You can get that for $12, you can get a scoop of rice for $2; for $14, you have a whole plate.
“Everything’s homemade,” he adds. “We cut the chicken, marinade it for three days in a miso marinade, then skewer and grill it.”
The Korean-style beef skewers are made with rib-eye and come with cucumber kimchi. Meanwhile, the garlic chicken features the same recipe from Plantation Tavern.
If you want something lighter, options range from fresh sashimi-grade ahi (market price) — “We get fish from the auction,” Gilbert says — to watercress, tofu and tomato salad ($16). The latter features watercress from Sumida Farm; the salad is topped with baked tofu and served with a slightly spicy patis (fish sauce) dressing.
The menu also features several creative dishes, each with a story behind it. The smoked crab and kimchi dip ($14) with wonton chips used to be a special at Plantation Tavern. It was also on the menu in a takeout deli container at Monarch Poke, Gilbert says. The current rendition comes in a ramekin and it’s baked.
“It’s almost like a crab artichoke dip, but it’s a smoked crab and kimchi dip,” he says. “It’s got some spice; it’s a good appetizer or shared item.”
Gilbert also explains that the scallop noodles ($17) on the menu have been a long time coming. He made a crispy garlic chili oil poke at Monarch Poke; the Fairway Tavern dish features sauteed garlic bay scallops that are seasoned with salt and pepper, and added to a garlic compote butter mixture.
“Once that (the garlic compote butter) melts down, we throw in an egg noodle and then we add the crispy garlic chili oil sauce that we used to make poke with,” Gilbert says. “It’s super addictive; I’ve been working on it for a long time.
“When I wrote the menu to open dinner at Monarch Poke — which we never pulled off — it was on the menu there,” he adds. “I was experimenting with it there, and it just never got to the table. So it’s like a two-year-in-the-making situation that’s never happened, but it’s like a three-recipe variation to make one (of these).”
Other menu items include the Tavern burger ($11), lilikoʻi barbecue kalua pork sandwich ($15) and the mahi mahi sandwich (market price). Customers can make their sandwich a combo by adding shoestring French fries or a green salad (additional $3.50). Gilbert says they’re especially proud of the Italian meatball sub ($18) and the Philly special ($18). Both are inspired by his business partner, Chris Natale.
“I’m from Philly originally, but I’ve been here for more than 31 years,” Natale says. “I’ve had people ask me for years, ‘What makes a Philly cheesesteak so good?’ To tell you the truth, a lot of it is the roll; 70% is the roll. There’s something about East Coast bread — the water makes really good bread; that’s what makes a good sandwich."
When looking for a good Philly cheesesteak, Natale adds that the “diced onions gotta be in there already; you shouldn’t have to ask for it” and that the cheese should be “incorporated with the meats as it’s cooked, not just put on top.”
Speaking of cheese, the business special orders Cooper Sharp Cheese from Philadelphia, along with bread from New York, to make this sandwich.
“The Cooper Sharp cheese is a thing back in Philly,” Natale says. “It has a nice bite to it; it’s really good. It’s (the bread) a good Italian roll and it helps to make the sandwich that much better.”
The meatball sub features a combination of recipes, but also pays homage to Natale’s brief gig selling meatballs during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Everything was shut down, and one of my friends started selling margaritas,” he remembers. “He said, ‘You should sell something.’ I am Italian; I started selling meatballs by the dozen with my homemade sauce. It became a little business for a minute there; I stopped and people still ask me, ‘Are you doing more meatballs?’ A meatball sub is hard to find on this island.”
Gilbert encourages customers to save room for desserts like the housemade ube cheesecake with coconut cream sauce ($9) — which was featured at Plantation Tavern and Monarch Poke — banana cream pie, served with sliced bananas and crème anglaise ($7) and chocolate dobash cake with a raspberry coulis ($12).
The banana cream pie pays homage to one of the beloved desserts at former ‘Ewa plantation restaurant Tenney Tavern, according to Gilbert.
“It burned down and never reopened,” he says. “But there a lot of people in this community that still remember it. It had very specific things — it had a juke box; it was known for its veal cutlet, Green River drink and their pies. They specifically had a banana cream pie; we threw a pie back (on the menu) for that.”
In the coming months, customers can look forward to weekend brunch — before football season starts, Gilbert says — and dinner service. The eatery also offers catering and features a space for weddings, according to Gilbert, who says the eatery has around 135 seats.
“We’re going to be open for dinner, but we’re going to let the staff settle, learn the lunch menu and get a groove,” he says. “We have a bunch of catering for events coming up for graduations.
“The kitchen’s huge here; we have way more ability to do more,” he adds.
CONTACT
Fairway Tavern
ʻEwa Villages Golf Course
91-1760 Park Row, ʻEwa Beach
Fairwaytavern.com
Instagram: @fairwaytavern.hi
Open daily, 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. (full service from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.)
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Kelli Shiroma Braiotta can be reached at kelli@alohastatedaily.com.
