When the Crouching Lion restaurant reopened last year, it marked the latest reincarnation of a business that began with my father’s conviction that it would be the perfect spot for a restaurant that would draw in customers who were driving around the island. He was right, in theory, but there just wasn’t enough traffic in the early 1950s to sustain the business.

My wife and I lived in Kaaawa from 1988 to 2015 and the Crouching Lion was still a landmark, although not always a functioning restaurant. But I was interested in my father’s part in its history, and he shared his recollections with me during a long conversation in 2005, when he was 91.

The story begin in 1950. My dad moved to Hawaii in 1939 after his employer, a San Francisco-based hotel and restaurant supply company, invited him to apply for an opening in its Honolulu office. He was a salesman, and visited restaurants, hotels, and military bases around Oahu and, occasionally, on other islands drumming up business. He sold everything from glassware to chef’s knives to furniture and kitchen equipment, and had assisted several former military chefs who went in to the restaurant business after WWII. He helped many restauranteurs, including Peter Canlis, design, plan, and equip their new restaurants in Honolulu.

At that time, our family would regularly pile into the car drive from our house in Kahala to Waipahu, where we would pick up my grandmother (my mom’s mother) and then make the long drive to Punaluu to spend time with two of my grandmother’s lifelong friends, Emma Dunn and Alice Lane. The three had been students at St. Andrew’s Priory in the 1890s and maintained their close friendship throughout their lives. We would spend a weekend, sometimes a vacation week.

My father was struck by the beauty of the coastline through Kaaawa, Makaua, and Kahana to Punaluu. He envisioned opening a restaurant, and thought he knew just the place. Being a salesman, he had no qualms about pitching his idea to someone he had never met.

I was with the Dohrmann Hotel Supply Company at the time, and I knew that Reg Faithful was the owner of a beautiful large home in Makaua that I believed would be ideal for a restaurant. Faithful was a prominent businessman, had been president of Dairyman’s, an association of local dairies that later was known as Meadow Gold, and was a founder and manager of Aloha Motors, a Honolulu landmark. Faithful was also on the board of directors of the Kemo’o Farm Restaurant, which had been a customer for years, so I dropped by his office, which was just around the corner from the Dohrmann Store on Bethel Street.

I told him I had been going around the island and noticed this beautiful building, and in my opinion it would make a beautiful spot for a ‘round the island stopover restaurant.

Reg Faithful

“Oh, I couldn’t even consider it,” he responded. “That’s my country home. And I wouldn’t want a restaurant there.”

I knew it was Mr. Faithful’s home, but I just couldn’t get over how beautiful it was and what a wonderful location it would be.

In my business, every potential spot is something to investigate. And here was a beautiful, empty building. It was pretty-well deserted, with nobody around.

The house sat on about 2.5 acres on Kamehameha Highway in Kaaawa, located directly below the crouching lion, a widely recognized rock formation that resembled the silhouette of a lion. It was easy to envision the Crouching Lion Lodge.

When I went by his office and talked to him about it, Faithful was very, very pleasant and a real nice man. I’d never met him before. But we parted with a feeling there was no hope for putting in a restaurant.

But a couple of weeks later, I got a telephone call. It was Mr. Faithful. He said, “I’ve been thinking about our conversation, and I’d like to give it a little deeper thought. He ended up suggesting that we open it as a restaurant. He would make the building available. I would pay the taxes while the restaurant was operating. There would be no rent and we would just have it as sort of a joint venture.

It was a handshake deal.

The building is constructed of blue rock. It took about two days to drill through the wall in order to install a plumbing line from the outside to the kitchen area. That was one of the pitfalls. But we set up a nice little kitchen. We put in tables and chairs for four people, total seating about 60 in the living room and dining room, which had a huge fireplace on one end. It made a very, very nice setting.

We arranged to get a chef who was originally from Ireland, Joe Sheridan, and we had menus set up. We had Aggie Kellett, one of the women from the Waikiki Surf Club, come in as hostess and manager.

So we had the chef in the kitchen, a gal in the dining room to greet the guests, and it was set up pretty much as a chafing dish type food service from the cart to the table with fancy chafing dishes, labels, and things of that nature.

It was outstanding, but not to the point where there were a lot of customers.

Ian and Bonnie Lind in front of the Crouching Lion c.1952

The restaurant opened in 1951, with its formal opening on the 4th of July. We were told we were about 10 years too soon because there wasn’t much ‘round the island travel at that time. We put up a big neon sign on the roadway, Crouching Lion Lodge, but it wasn’t too successful at getting cars to stop.

You could sit there for hours with no traffic on the road. I would enjoy Sunday breakfasts, which were very peaceful.

It was fun. I had to go out on Friday nights usually. My wife, Helen, wasn’t interested in the area at all. Mr Faithful wanted me to buy it from him, the whole kit and kaboodle, house and property, for $85,000 at the time. I didn’t know enough about financing property at the time to get involved. I had other duties as manager of Dorhmann Hotel Supply Company, and with my other activities I just didn’t have the hours in the day to put full time into it.

We served luncheon and dinners. The dinners were all candle lit tables. It was all specialty food with a European flair.

We had two rooms upstairs that we rented out for family groups and people who wanted to come to the country.

These guest rooms were upstairs on a mezzanine overlooking the dining room. One room on the right, another on the left. The rooms rented for $7 single, and $10 double, but it wasn’t a popular place to stay. Aggie managed the guest rooms as well as the dining room.

There was never swimming in front, where the shoreline was all rocks and coral. But I had visualized it as an opportunity for the future, as a residence, you know.

We had a gas range, and the gas tanks had to be outside, and we had to pull the gas through the walls, and have drainage for water. But other than that, it wasn’t very difficult. We did put a hood in the kitchen and an exhaust, worktable and sinks. It wasn’t an easy installation, but it was a good fun installation.

We had a big, white baby grand piano alongside the fireplace. On special occasions, we had a piano player come in, and lots of singing and music, and the big fireplace going when the weather was nice, and it was a very cozy spot. The potential was tremendous.

The nearest other spots were Kaneohe on one side, small places.

I can’t remember too much going on at that time in the other direction, toward Kahuku and on to Haleiwa.

At the time, I was also president of the Commercial Club the long-established business club on the 4th and 5th floors of the McCandless Building, 925 Bethel Street in downtown Honolulu. The businesses that made up the Commercial Club included nearly every business in downtown Honolulu, realtors, attorneys, jewelers, doctors, druggists, retailers.

Carl Reber was manager of the Commercial Club and asked if there was any possible chance of him getting work in our new venture, but he wasn’t available immediately.

We already had Joe Sheridan as the first chef. He was quite colorful with his white coat and his high crown chef’s hat working the dining room as well as the kitchen.

But when Joe decided he was going to leave, Carl was given the job and he seemed to enjoy it.

Chasing a liquor license

We had a number of good parties, several luaus, business luncheons. But we didn’t have a license to serve liquor. After the first few months we applied for a liquor permit, but it was denied by the Liquor Commission on the strength of the complaints of the people in the neighborhood.

When the Liquor Commission canvassed the neighbors, they had already agreed they were all going to vote against it. The chairman of the Liquor Commission. O.W. Robinson was among the major complainants, and we were advised that our application would be disapproved.

Robinson had just been appointed to the commission in 1951 by Hawaii Gov. Oren E. Long. He had served as Hawaii’s deputy superintendent of education when Long was superintendent, and had also served as director of education for Guam. Earlier, he had served as deputy superintendent and supervising principal of rural Oahu schools, including those located along the coast near the Crouching Lion. His opinion carried a lot of clout.

The major complaint was that the neighbors didn’t want drunks near their homes, although the Crouching Lion was not conducive to that type of atmosphere. We felt that having beer, wine, and liquor available was something that would be appreciated by the guests going to this type of dining spot. Guests were allowed to bring their own bottles, but that didn’t help as far as return for the business was concerned.

I wasn’t actually too active in the business, which was primarily handled by others, except on weekends. I would pick up the groceries and things and take them out Friday night. I would usually spend Friday night, Saturday and Sunday, and get back home in time to get to work on Monday.

It was kind of a break-even thing although, for me, it was also another means of getting our equipment into the location. That was the general purpose of Dohrmann Hotel Supply Company, where I had worked since arriving in Hawaii in 1939, and had been manager since 1943.

The grounds were kind of extensive and needed maintenance and upkeep. Mr Faithful had a ittle cottage on the Kaneohe side to the left of the building. The grass had to be maintained and the yardwork was extensive, and a fellow by the name of Lorenzo had been Faithful’s caretaker and continued when the Crouching Lion opened. I believe he had a couple of boys who also assisted him. They lived in their own buildings on the property.

When we agreed to disband the business, they were all released. They understood because they had a good thing going, a real nice place to live and good meals.

Without the added income from liquor sales, and without more traffic passing on the highway, there was no margin to make the Crouching Lion financially worthwhile.

We operated for about a year and a half, I believe it was, and I finally decided it wasn’t worth my time as a business to maintain it. Mr. Faithful and I agreed it would probably be a good idea to close it down and he would try to see what he could do.

He ended up with the improvements that were all left for him. Several months passed and he made the place available to one of the larger restaurant operations. They operated it and again applied for a liquor license.

By that time, Mr. Faithful had subdivided his acreage, and created enough new residential lots to gain majority support from the people within the 500-foot radius. And as a result, they were able to overcome the previous objections and were finally able to get a liquor license.