I was very sorry to read the announcement that The Willows restaurant will close at the end of the year. Apparently it isn’t that the restaurant isn’t making any money. The landowner, the Weinberg Estate, is selling the land under the restaurant, packaging it with other properties in the area.

The announcement brought to mind a blog post from December 2002, which I’m reprinting below.

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We had dinner at the Willows in Moiliili last night to celebrate my father’s 89th birthday. We had the buffet, and it was an incredible spread! We managed several passes through the buffet line for different courses, and felt like we needed to be wheeled out when finally sated.

Unknown to me when making the reservation (which was apparently lost, although with a little luck we were able to get seated anyway), my father installed the kitchen in the original Willows restaurant while working for Dohrmann Hotel Supply Co. back in 1944. They did the kitchen, while architect Val Ossipoff designed the restaurant, right down to selecting furniture that exuded the right tropical feeling. He vividly recalled the McGuire sisters. Kathleen McGuire ran the house, while her sister ran the kitchen.

My mother remembered meeting a brother, Walter “Buster” McGuire, at singles dances held at Ewa Plantation a decade before, and several years before my parents were married. McGuire was a few years older and played football for a university on the mainland.

In any case, the memories were an added bonus for the evening.

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