liholiho yacht club sister restaurant

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Liholiho Yacht Club Returns to Nob Hill and Debuts New Restaurant in the Mission

Which also means that sadly, Dear Inga is finally and officially closed

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Liholiho Yacht Club , the wildly popular restaurant inspired by chef Ravi Kapur’s Hawaiian heritage, is shuffling restaurants and locations again. During the pandemic, the restaurant group shuttered its sister restaurant Dear Inga , and earlier this spring moved the more established Liholiho into Inga’s prime location on 18th Street in Mission Dolores. At that time, it was presented as a temporary move , which made sense during an era of dining restrictions: In terms of neighborhoods, the Mission has been busier than Nob Hill, which made it an approachable spot to serve takeout, and the 18th Street location also boasted a rooftop, which the team repainted as a rainbow paradise for outdoor dining .

But now, there’s another big update from the Liholiho team: Fans and regulars will be relieved to hear that Liholiho Yacht Club is returning to its original location on Nob Hill in spring or summer of 2022. The team will be debuting a new restaurant called Good Good Culture Club in Mission Dolores on January 11. Which means that sadly, if somewhat expectedly at this point, Dear Inga is finally and officially confirmed as permanently closed.

Good Good Culture Club is a team effort from general manager Aimee Arcilla, chef Kevin Keovanpheng, and chef Brett Shaw, and all three have come through the kitchen and dining room at Liholiho. Arcilla and Shaw are married, and the duo behind Hunnybee , the Filipino inflected pop-up that was working out of the Liholiho kitchen during the pandemic. Born and raised in the states, Arcilla is proud of her Filipina heritage, and Keovanpheng his Laotian upbringing, and they’re into what they’re calling “heritage-driven cooking” as “inspired by the Asian diaspora” — defined as Filipino and Laotian flavors featuring Californian ingredients and wood-fire techniques.

The new menu is simply divided into savory and sweet, and the small plates look particularly appealing, including halibut sashimi with tomatillo ponzu and smoked jalapeno, chicken wings stuffed with garlic rice and glazed in adobo, poppyseed steamed buns packed with smoked beef belly, and crispy rice balls with mushroom sisig. For dessert, there’s a “Halo Ha-Lao,” which appears to be a Laotian take on the iconic Filipino dessert, with ube ice cream, jackfruit, mango jellies, and coconut syrup. Check out the full menu below. No word on drinks yet, but bar director Janice Bailon is particularly into agave, so it’d be safe to expect tequila and mezcal cocktails.

With this new opening, Liholiho partners Ravi Kapur, April Storm, and Jeff Hanak shared that they don’t want to go back to “normal,” and say that they’ve raised wages, added a 20 percent service fee, and shortened service hours, in order to better compensate and support their team. In doing so, the Liholiho group is joining a number of other Bay Area restaurants that are trying to cut tips , although some have failed. “We don’t know if these changes will work, but we do know that we don’t want to go back to the old ways,” the trio said in a statement. “We are so grateful to have developed a strong following of diners and regulars in our six years of business. It takes a community to implement change, and we hope you can be part of it, too. That’s what Good Good Culture Club is about: positive change, heritage, love, aloha.”

Boor Projects, the same design team that envisioned Dear Inga only two years ago, is also overseeing the renovation again for Good Good Culture Club, and this time it sounds like they’re leaning into bright colors, several murals, and lush plants.

The Liholiho team declined to comment on Dear Inga: why they decided not to pursue that restaurant and what happened with their partnership with chef David Golovin. When Dear Inga opened in fall of 2019 , it was also a highly anticipated restaurant: Golovin is a sausage expert who supplied the links to Nopa for many years, and with Dear Inga, he dug into Eastern European “grandma food” not often seen in San Francisco, including labor-intensive sausages, smoked fish, stuffed cabbage, and more. During the pandemic, he shared the challenges of adapting that kind of food for takeout . Eater SF reached out to Golovin for comment and did not hear back as of publication time, but will update this story as necessary.

Good Culture Club is opening on January 11, with reservations opening up one week in advance. Hours will be Tuesday to Saturday, 5 to 9 p.m.

Liholiho Yacht Club

Good good culture club, a time-worn mission district cafe is being evicted, intergalactic and planetary paletas splash down in san jose, a silicon valley fine dining staple calls it quits after nearly a decade.

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Liholiho Yacht Club Readies For Reopening at Long Last

On Tuesday, November 22, Liholiho Yacht Club will make its debut for the third time — after originally opening on Lower Nob Hill in early 2015, pivoting in the pandemic to take over the 18th Street space that had housed a defunct sister restaurant, and now finally returning to its original home.

It's been a long road to getting back open for Liholiho Yacht Club. Much like another popular restaurant that just reopened, Delfina , it hasn't served a meal in its proper home space since March 2020. After briefly serving takeout in mid 2020 and early 2021, chef/partner Ravi Kapur and his team decided to take over the space that had been home to the newer Dear Inga , which had only just opened in the fall of 2019 and didn't survive.

The space on 18th Street near Valencia, originally built out for Farina two decades ago, allowed for ample outdoor seating as the industry continued to grapple with lengthy pandemic restrictions. And in the bustling Mission, it has since made way for a new sister concept, Good Good Culture Club , which had its debut just after the new year in 2022.

One can see the pan-Asian DNA of Liholiho in the new restaurant — it's under the helm of chef Kevin Keovanphang with Kapur and longtime Liholiho chef Brett Shaw overseeing as well — and its flavors are less Hawaiian-inflected and a bit more Southeast Asian.

But now it's time for Kapur and Shaw to bring back the very popular Liholiho Yacht Club at 871 Sutter Street, with signature dishes like the tuna poke on nori chips, and hopefully his off-menu homemade Spam and excellent, sticky ribs with kimchi-chili sauce — the menu is still being finalized, so we can't know for sure. The Chronicle reports on some new menu items, like a swordfish katsu with pickles, and duck liver mousse on banana bread with jalapeño marmalade. There's also a dish of ukoy -style vegetable fritters with a creamy dipping sauce.

Chef Edwin Bayone III (who formerly worked in the kitchen at the Inner Sunset's um.ma ) is the new sous-chef, per the Chronicle. And the beverage director is now Sean Kelley, who started off as a bartender when Liholiho opened almost eight years ago.

"We’re always pushing on texture and layering of flavors and thinking about how things build in a dish but sit with you," Kapur tells the Chronicle. He adds that the new menu reflects the chefs' "collective voices," and "The flavor profiles are still rooted in heritage-driven cuisine — the experiences and the people and the cultures that we’re connected to and that inform us."

Kapur, who was born and raised in Oahu, worked his way up in SF kitchens and eventually became chef de cuisine at Boulevard before becoming the original executive chef at Prospect. He left Prospect in 2013 to join what he called "a gypsy roving circuit" of pop-up chefs around town, launching Liholiho Yacht Club as a pop-up at the former Citizen's Band in SoMa and at State Bird Provisions. The brick and mortar Liholiho came together with help from Nopa partners Jeff Hanak and Allyson Jossel, opening in 2015 — Jossel left to pursue other ventures not long after. Kapur's wife, April Storm, is now a partner as well as the restaurant group's communications director.

The name Liholiho Yacht Club has its roots in Kapur's family. As Kapur explained, "Back in Hawaii in the early 80's The Kealoha uncles would race Hobie Cats. They threw parties ('pop ups') to pay for their supplies. They would go to the beach and throw a party, fire up the grill, ice down the beer, and get a band to play... They realized they needed a name for their 'organization' and the brothers who lived on Liholiho street decided to name it Liholiho Yacht Club."

Returning fans will notice some tweaks to the dining room at Liholiho, which has been undergoing a remodel for months now. The layout is basically the same, but booth seating now has leather cushioning on it, and there is some new, wavy, patterned mural work on the walls by Oakland muralist Kalani Ware .

Also, we have an update on the swank downstairs space, Louie's Gen-Gen Room , which as of our last report had no plans for reopening. Per the team, it's now going to open in early 2023 with a new cocktail list by Kelley — but there's no word on whether the savory waffles and crudos are coming back as well.

For those who have grown weary with QR-code ordering — which has become a permanent fixture at a number of restaurants around town including Good Good Culture Club — you can rest assured that Liholiho Yacht Club will be returning with the traditional model of servers taking orders.

The reservation books are not yet open, but you can find them here when they do. The official opening is November 22, following some friends-and-family events.

Previously: Liholiho Yacht Club Sets Reopening For October (or 'By November')

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photo credit: Carly Hackbarth

Liholiho Yacht Club

February 27, 2023

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The shaved pig head salad from Liholiho Yacht Club will overwhelm you with awe. You know, the kind inspired by a top-down, golden hour drive over the Golden Gate Bridge. Frisée and Asian pears, tossed in a zingy fish sauce vinaigrette, surround glossy slices of pig head like an edible halo. And the meat melts the second it hits your tongue. The salad is a spot-on indicator of what this Lower Nob Hill spot does best: completely original dishes that are in their own class. 

A lot has changed in Liholiho Yacht Club’s world since their two-year hiatus starting in 2020. The restaurant underwent an interior refresh. And the team opened Good Good Culture Club , the lively sister spot in the Mission and one of the most fun places to eat in the city. What hasn’t changed is that Liholiho is a bucket-list restaurant for milestone life moments you’ll be telling stories about for the next ten years.

The menu is described as “heritage driven,” and here that translates to salads, snacks, and meats and seafood influenced mostly by South and East Asian cuisines. Liholiho is doing its own thing, combining every flavor under the sun to turn out dishes that feel new. And the impressive presentation makes them almost too pretty to eat.

Just look to the rendang curry that arrives with an entire turmeric butter naan baked over the top. It’s one of six rotating entrées, and one to get on your table. Stab the bread’s shell to release the fragrant steam like it’s a pore-opening facial. The swordfish katsu is the other standout. It’s decorated with a Russian dressing drizzle, radishes, and gherkins, and stays crisp atop light caper butter. Smaller plates are as deserving of the spotlight. Beef tongue and miso aioli between soft steamed buns are saucy and umami-packed, gulf shrimp are leveled up with sweet longanisa stuffing, and the previously mentioned pig head salad is, quite simply, a masterpiece.

While the food is the main event, the space is where you want to be on nights that call for multiple rounds of wine, and pandan or li hing mui-infused cocktails. The open kitchen, smack dab in the middle of the airy, brick-lined dining room, is a hub of constant movement. Staff add the finishing touches on some katsu, light sparklers on top of a baked Hawaii, and move around so fast they blur. Get to this buzzy place for any celebration you can think of, including to experience a dinner that's unlike anything else in SF.

Food Rundown

Shaved Pig Head

Rendang Curry

Swordfish Katsu

Grassfed Ribeye

photo credit: Krescent Carasso

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Baked Hawaii

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Julia is a Bay Area native who has been eating and writing with Infatuation since 2020. Her quest to find SF's best dumplings is ongoing.

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Liholiho Yacht Club

• 871 Sutter St., San Francisco, 94109, USA
• $$$ · Asian, American

Reservations are not available for this restaurant on our site

There are no yachts to be found at its current Mission residence, but hordes of locals and enthusiasts remain quite eager to book passage on Liholiho's love boat. Fusing Californian technique with the flavors of Chef/owner Ravi Kapur’s native Hawaii, this earthy, bustling, and airy space is known for strong cocktails, shareable plates, and near-impossible reservations. Walk-ins are welcome, but make sure you arrive in time to beat the crowds. Pivoted around a large, open kitchen, the dining room hums with groups savoring the likes of short rib bao or whole fried fish marinated with coconut and turmeric. If you turn your nose up at Spam try the house-made version. It just might convert you.

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• Air conditioning
• Wheelchair access

Credit cards accepted

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