Interview with David Paul Johnson

MJ: David, thank you for joining us today.

DPJ: My pleasure.

MJ: Tell us about this great place, your Lahaina Grill.

DPJ: Well, we're into our sixth year now as David Paul's Lahaina Grill. And

what you can see is the magnification of where we started out. Originally

we were a 48 seat restaurant, and you look over at that far wall, and you

can see that we've come a long way. We went from a 48 seat restaurant to a

90 seat restaurant to about 170 seat restaurant over a progression of six

years, and that was primarily because we felt that the demand was here for

a high end, gourmet restaurant. And through trial and error, and lots of

practice and failures along the way, I believe that David Paul's has become

a real focus on food and wine, specifically on Maui I've got a great staff

that does a fantastic job, so, you know, they deserve the credit for what

they've done, what they've accomplished.

MJ: When did you decide that you wanted to be a chef?

DPJ: When I was 14 years old my mother bailed me out of jail. I was a

juvenile delinquent. And I got a job at a pizza parlor called Mama

Roberta's working for this Italian guy with a lisp who was just hilarious,

he used to crack me up. So I worked for him for a couple years, and then I

really put my focus, my nose to the grindstone as they say and went to

work at a French restaurant, and continued to work for him for three years

in Salt Lake City Max Moussierres' La Presian a small, little French

restaurant. And I decided that I really wanted to be a chef, so I knew that

I had to put a lot more effort into it, so I traveled to Europe, and spent

time in Mexico, and spent time in Japan, studying the cultures so that I'd

know a little bit more about the diversities of cuisine. And I always

wanted to move to Hawaii, so when I was 19, I packed everything up and

moved to Honolulu with a one way ticket. I've been here since.

MJ: What did you learn from spending time in Europe, and Japan, for

instance, about the different cuisines?

DPJ: Well, every culture has their own continuity in food. The type of food

that I create, I call New American Cuisine. That's made up of your

ancestors, and my ancestors, what they brought to America. You know, my

wife is Japanese, and when I first started going out with her, she had a

whole different diet than I did. Mine was more Southwestern. I ate a lot of

chili's, you know, different types of meats and stuff, and she eats more

seafood and rice. Miso soup in the morning and fish for breakfast. It

wasn't my idea of a good breakfast, but to her, that was a way of life. But

it's all those ingredients that make up my food. New American Cuisine, is,

as I define it, it's a gathering of techniques and ingredients from around

the world, and I try to use local ingredients here on Maui, featuring

mostly Hawaiian indigenous, or things that have been transplanted here to

create new and exciting dishes.

MJ: What's an example of dish that maybe is combining a lot of the Orient

and Western influence?

DPJ: Well, miso salmon. Is an example. It's one of my... It's a takeoff of

miso butterfish, and I do a Chinese stir fry of vegetables underneath it. I

use a local salmon, Koho, grown on the big islands, farm raised, and then

we take miso and add jabaneros and scotch bonnet chili's to it. So we've

got a cross culture of the Chinese greens underneath it, miso, which has

been mixed with influences from the Southwest, and then salmon which is

grown locally, so that's an example of a real combination of the three

influences. Another one might be our Kona Coffee roast of rack of lamb. We

use an American large eye lamb, and Kona coffee beans, and then there's a

lot of Asian flavors in that dish with the simple fact that I use soy sauce

mirin and some other flavors to infuse these ingredients into this lamb so

that it takes on this unusual flavor of Kona coffee, but you'd never that

the soy sauce and the mirin are in the background. They just help promote

the dish. So those are the type of dishes that are really cross cultures,

taking all the ingredients that you have to work with to create all these

dishes.

MJ: What sort of people visit your restaurant.

DPJ: You. All different nationalities. Fortunately, we have a pretty good

staff of people who speak a variety of different languages. We have a good

cross culture of Japanese that come to our restaurant. It amazes me how

many different nationalities I see on this floor, and how many different

people we have that speak different languages to communicate. David Paul's

has finally gotten an international reputation, and from that we've

attracted a large variety of people, a large, you know, international, all

over the world. But I would say, people who have experience in fine dining,

people who know... I call it a travel palate. If you've been all over the

world, or if you've eaten in some of the higher end restaurants in the

United States, than you're going to appreciate some of the food I do, more

so than the person who walks in off the street, who's never eaten in a fine

dining restaurant, and sits down, and looks at our menu, and says, "This

all sounds too weird for me." You know, I've never heard of 'Tequilla

shrimp and Firecracker rice'." So, they're not willing to take a chance,

and so they end up getting up and leaving, and those are the customers that

you end up weeding out along the way.

MJ: And they end up at fast food restaurants.

DPJ: Yeah, or they end up at a good restaurant like the Chart House.

Somewhere they know they can get a piece of broiled fish and a baked

potato, or a steak. And that's fine. That's safe for them. And they're

comfortable with that. I don't believe in playing it safe.

MJ: You were born in Montana? Reared in Utah. What was that like? Tell us

about your early years.

DPJ: I don't remember a whole lot about Montana, because we moved when I

was four. I know we lived on a farm, and I wouldn't go back to Montana,

except for probably to retire. It's very slow paced. Living in Salt Lake

City, I had a great childhood. I lived on, in the suburbs, on the poor side

of town, so to speak, but I really enjoyed it. I really had a good

childhood. A lot of fun. I played hard, and living in a Mormon community,

it was very protected. You know, they really try to keep the bad elements

out. So for me, I really enjoyed it, even though, you know, I think back to

some of the memories that I had as a kid, they may not have all been that

pleasant, they certainly weren't easy, but you don't know what you're

missing until you have it, so you wouldn't know that you don't have a nice

house, until you go to somebody else's house.

MJ: I read that you had a troubled childhood. What do they mean by that?

DPJ. Oh, I was in and out of a juvenile home a lot for being in trouble. I

guess I've always been real high spirited, and living in a sedate community

kind of drove me nuts. I did things that you probably shouldn't do when

you're young. I think I was expressing my creativity with graffiti on the

walls. You know, various things.

MJ: You were a graffiti artist.

DPJ: No, I wasn't, but I took a chance.

MJ: What kept you from, you know, going into that life? What brought you to

this?

DPJ: My mother, basically. I can honestly say that her influence in my

life, getting me a job in the restaurant industry. She gave me an option. I

could stay in jail, or I could get a job. She got me a job at that pizza

parlor, and I really liked it. I got to express my creativity. Cooking is

an art form, and I never realized how much so in the beginning, until I had

the chance to express myself to audiences with my food, and in that

expression, when you see people's reactions... See, the thing about food is

that it's a very short lived medium. Once you've eaten that plate, it's

gone. There's no trace. There's no history on that, except for the recipes

that I may have made, or a photograph that I may have taken. But some of

the greatest memories we have in our lives, and the fondest memories we

have, are of meals. It could by your Thanksgiving dinner, it could be the

first Japanese dinner you sat down and ate, it could be a meal at David

Paul's Lahaina Grill, or it could be cookies that your grandma used to bake

when you were a little kid. Those are all incredible memories that we

treasure, that we cherish. The smell of fresh baked bread in every house.

If you walk in my restaurant and in this bakery, you smell this fresh baked

bread, and it evokes fond memories of childhood usually for most of us. So

I've had an opportunity to express my creativity and along the way help a

lot of other people do the same. And now I've got these incredibly talented

people who get to do what I got to do in the very beginning, which is work

toward the common goal, to be one of the best restaurants in the United

States, and I give them the tools to do that with, which is not something

that I feel most restauranters would do for their staff, to say, "Whatever

you need. What's it going to get you to be the best you can possibly be?

What tools do you need to accomplish that?" And that's my goal, is to give

my employees those tools.

MJ: How many staff do you have?

DPJ: I have about 47 employees right now.

MJ: You're right off the ocean. How important is that location?

DPJ: You know, I don't think it's important at all. A lot of people do, a

lot of restaurants subscribe to the theory "location, location, location."

I personally don't. This restaurant used to be a seedy pool hall, and a

biker bar, and when you walked up the street, and they rented the rooms out

by the hour upstairs, and when you walked in front of this hotel, and what

was a pool hall, you'd be lucky if you didn't get hit with a beer bottle

flying out the door. So this was not a good location to open in. But I

believe that if you take everything as a challenge, you overcome the

obstacles of the location, and you make it what it is. So I really think

location isn't that important to me. I'm going to make the location. I'm

not going to let the location make me. If I have to be on the water to have

business, I'm in trouble, because I'm resting on my food, not on my

location. But being half a block off Front Street helps, you know.

MJ: You spent several years... Before you became a restaurant owner, you

spent several years working. What was that like? Was it on Oahu?

DPJ: Well, I've worked all over. This is my 25th year in the business. And

I spent 11 years on Oahu. I had a catering company over there. It was

fairly successful. I think Oahu's got the best of both worlds. It's a big

city, and yet a very small community, and so word gets around fast. And I

find that Maui is similar to that, although it's an international community

here. I thought that I could go from Oahu to Maui with my reputation in

business, and restaurants, that I would be successful overnight. There was

no such thing for me. I really had to work hard for the first three years

to develop the clientele. Because it's not the same customers that are on

Oahu and here.

MJ: Where did you work on Oahu?

DPJ: I started out at the Hyatt Regency, and I worked in all the

restaurant's outlets there, and then I went from the Hyatt Regency to Chez

Michel's and worked there for a while, and then I opened my catering

company. And ran my catering company for seven years. And when I gave up my

catering company, I went to work for Tom Selleck, and Larry Mineti, Pat

Bowen, and Randy Schock for a restaurant called The Black Orchid. And Randy

and Pat also owned Nick's Fish Market. So I spent a year developing ideas

for The Black Orchid, and unfortunately I never opened the restaurant. I

left prior to it's opening, and then started to develop this restaurant.

MJ: What is a day like, a typical day like here for you?

DPJ: I usually get in about ten o'clock and start answering calls and

making calls to get the day set up, and then by two o'clock I'm in meetings

with my staff, and then by four o'clock I'm in the kitchen tasting food,

five or six o'clock sometimes, and then by six o'clock I'm on the floor,

dealing with the floor staff and customers, and I try to get home by 11

o'clock, midnight. So that's a typical day, six days a week for me. There's

a lot of reward in that for me. I get to do what I want to do. I'm not

forced to do something I don't want to do. I don't have to be in that

kitchen cooking. I don't have to be on the floor talking to customers. When

I want to go home, I can. It's nice to have that option.

MJ: Your wife has also done some work here. What did she do?

DPJ: She was originally, she opened the restaurant with me as the floor

manager, and she did all the flower arrangements, and now she... She was a

fashion designer by trade, and that was how I actually met her. Because I

was looking for somebody to design our uniform. And she created our

uniform, and then came to work for me, and married me. So now she's home

with, she spends time mostly at home with the baby, and she works for

Chanel as an alterationist.

MJ: What do you guys eat at home, and who cooks?

DPJ: She does most of the cooking now. This was a woman who could burn

water when I first met her. And she spends time at home and in the kitchen.

She enjoys that aspect of it now. She's learned a lot. She does most of the

cooking at home. I cook maybe once a week. And at home, I prefer very

simple foods; miso soup, tofu, fish. It's amazing how my diet's gone 360.

MJ: So both of you changed quite a bit.

DPJ: Yeah, she eats more western and I eat more eastern now.

MJ: Some incredible smell is just wafting over now. What is that?

DPJ: You smell the focaccia with the garlic and the herbs and the olive

oil. That's what you're smelling right now. The deserts they're baking in

the bakery behind us.

MJ: What did you learn in your years on Oahu and other places that you've

applied since you opened your own restaurant?

DPJ: I tried to avoid the mistakes I saw in other restaurants. I think that

the most important lessons I've gotten out of life are what not to do.

Because I don't believe there is a set rule of what to do. I do believe

that if you want to be successful, you should imitate success. So I try to

find somebody who is successful, and I try to imitate that. Roy Yamaguchi,

of Roy's Restaurant, I'm sure you know very well, he has restaurants all

over the world, including Tokyo, he said something to me a long time ago

that made a lot of sense; "Customers relate service, good service to

getting food quickly." and that's something he's a master at. You sit down

and you have food quickly. My restaurant's always been, "Well, let's get

you in order, and get you a cocktail, and get you a first course, and then

a second course at a leisurely pace." And unfortunately, that is not what

everybody wants to eat. Some people want to eat and run. So now our goal is

to get you the food as quickly as we can and then let you stay as long as

you want, based on your decision, not the fact that I'm making you wait

because I'm cooking and it's taking a while. So that's one thing I learned

from Roy, and I believe that, like I said, imitating success is the key to

being successful, and I've seen a lot of people make mistakes. They won't

listen to their employees. I think that is the biggest mistake that a

restaurantuer or businessman can make. What's your greatest resource in any

industry is your staff, unless you're a one man show, you're selling a

product. If you're in the service industry, you have to feed those people.

You have to give them the tools that they need to be successful. And you

have to encourage that success by catching them doing the right thing, not

the wrong thing.

MJ: An owner who is a chef is sort of in baseball like a manager who used

to be a player. How important is that?

DPJ: I couldn't imagine being an owner and not being a chef, to be honest

with you. And I know a lot of owners who are not chefs, and I see the limit

of their success, some of them are fantastically successful because they've

hired good chefs who have the same vision, but I think being a chef owner

has added a new dimension to this industry, and you've seen over the last

12 to 15 years a rebirth of chef owners, where in the past that's all it

was. If you go into Europe, all the restaurantuers were always chef owners.

That's what they'd gone to their business on, was their talent. And over

the last 12 years there's been a rebirth of that. A lot of young chefs,

who've become owners of restaurants, and I think it's because they

understand the heart of the operation. If you're a doctor, and you didn't

know anything about the heart, how much of a doctor would you be? And

that's what the kitchen is, it's the heart of the operation.

MJ: How many customers do you see here on average day?

DPJ: During peak season, up to 300 a day, off season we average 150 to 200.

MJ: There are a lot people in here at one time. Are there some people who

find that a little claustrophobic?

DPJ: I think there's a lot of people who want to be in here and want to be

in a crowded room. It's like, would you go to a ballet with only 20 people

sitting in the audience and think that it's a good ballet? I think that

people who come to the restaurant and see this crowd and hear the buzz

think, "Wow, this place must be hot." And that's, that's an attribute.

MJ: David, when you made your move over here from Oahu, that was a big

step. What was going through your mind at the time, starting your own

restaurant?

DPJ: Oh, I think everybody who starts their own restaurant has a certain

amount of fear, "Am I going to be successful, will the restaurant close

after one year?" And unfortunately, the death rate in this industry is only

one out of ten restaurants is still open after five years. So we're going

into our sixth year, and our phase three of the restaurant. I think that

we've at least proven to ourselves that we're successful at this point. I

would say, the most.. I didn't have the fear, I've never had doubt as to

whether or not I'd be successful, because I've all ready made and lost

businesses, so the potential of making it again or losing it again wasn't

really the issue. The issue was how well could I do what I had intended to

do here. And that's it. You know, I believe that if you start a business

with the intention of being profit driven, your chances of being successful

are going to be so much more diminished. If you develop a business with the

intention of giving the best service and the best value, and being

experience driven... So when you come to my restaurant, what kind of an

experience do you have, not how much does it cost, because that's going to

be the bottom line. If you have a great experience, there's a good chance

that you won't care what it's going to cost. But if you have a bad

experience, you'll care what it costs no matter how cheap or how expensive

it is.

MJ: How important was failure to your eventual success?

DPJ: I would say that it's made who I am, so it's the most important thing

in my eventual success. Because I've had failures. Without those failures,

how many successes would I have had? That I can't answer. I know one thing,

it hasn't come easy, and I never envisioned me being an overnight success

or being a multimillionaire. I've always envisioned me just trying to be

the best at what I can be, ever since I was a kid.

MJ: You describe food as a collage. What do you mean by that?

DPJ: The things that make up the food in my restaurant are... If you look

at my menu, you'll see something from Japan, you'll see something from the

Southwest, something from Europe, and various flavors that are combined in

that. When you go in most restaurants you see kind of a set standard or a

set style of food. It might be all California cuisine, or it might all be

French, or it might all be Italian. You look at my menu, we change our menu

almost every day. So it's whatever mood I'm in. That makes the collage. If

I just came back from Italy, you can guarantee there's going be a lot more

Italian food on my menu.

MJ: So what's the change from, like from yesterday to today? What's an

example of something you changed, or will be changing?

DPJ: Or will be changing.? Will be changing... You know what, I couldn't

tell you because I haven't gotten into the kitchen yet to see what's

available. What we do is we buy first, and then we change. So if... As an

example, I was hoping for some fresh moralles today, and I was looking for

these Molokai prawns that usually come in on Thursday. So if the moralles

and the Molokai prawns come in today, I'm going to make probably a really

nice fettucini. A Burgundy flavor fettucini that's got red wine in it, and

for that I'll probably add a reduced red wine sauce, and a little bit of a

cream sauce. And I'll add asparagus tips and moralles to the shrimp and

I'll have a great pasta dish. So if those things came in, as I'm sitting

there thinking about the ingredients, those are the dishes I create.

MJ: Talk a little bit about the charities you're involved in, and also

what is Fear of Cooking 101?

DPJ: That was developed to promote cooking. What I was doing at the time

was baby food. My daughter was just born, and I really wanted to feed her

healthy and nutritious food, so I did some study, and I found how easy it

was to cook baby food, and I wanted to share that with the rest of my

community, because everybody I knew was having kids, and I started teaching

The Fear of Cooking 101 - Gourmet Baby Food, and from that it spun out.

Every month I would do a demonstration at a shopping center or at a school,

or here in the restaurant, and consequently that developed a whole program,

which we then went on to videotape, and have made a record of it. Our

second cookbook that we're going to write is going to be about the fear of

cooking, and it's going to be a progressive series, so Volume 1 and Volume

2, and on and on. So that would be my life's work, I hope. It would be a

focus on what I've done in my career. The cooking demonstrations have been

really rewarding to me because I've seen people who couldn't cook learn to

cook, and come back to me and say, "Man, I learned so much from that

cooking class."

MJ: You're restaurant is smoke free. Why have you decided to do that? And

second of all, what changes have you seen in the past, say, 15 years in

people's attitudes toward that?

DPJ: I don't really know about the majority of the population and their

attitude about it. I know about my attitude, and that is, I believe that

smoking should be an outdoor thing, primarily because there's no way you

can separate a restaurant, or, unless you have completely enclosed rooms

that are different. And the person who's sitting at that table might be in

the non-smoking section, and we're in the smoking section, and I'm sitting

here smoking. I'm destroying their experience if they don't smoke and they

don't like cigarette smoke, and I believe that I should be more

conscientious of other people's experience. So rather than dealing with the

potentiality of having people complain because they're in the smoking

section or non-smoking section, we just eliminated it completely. And

you're going to find more and more restaurants across America are doing

that anyway. I believe in California, most restaurants now are smoke free.

We were the first restaurant in Hawaii to my knowledge to go completely

smoke free, and we've come a long way. That was three years ago. My wife

was pregnant. I did not want her exposed to cigarette smoke. I wanted a

healthy, happy baby. And now we sell cigars in our restaurant, and we have

a lanai that we've turned into a botanical garden, and it's part of the

experience. Cigars can be a finer thing in life, but if you were to smoke

it in a restaurant, you'd probably bother everybody in the restaurant. So

we try to create...the final experience at David Paul's is after having a

great meal, and if you'd like a cigar or a cigarette, we have a beautiful

lanai area where you can go out there and have coffee, cognac, port, smoke

a cigar or a cigarette, or if you can't finish a meal without having a

cigarette, which there are a lot of people who smoke heavily do that, then

we can seat you out on the lanai if you like. It only seats about 12

people. But it's a statement, I believe. And that's the whole experience.

Would you rather be smelling this wonderful smell of bread, or cigarettes,

in my restaurant? That's kind of the attitude I've developed.

MJ: You've won the Hale Aina Award. What does that mean, and how important

is that to chefs on the islands?

DPJ: I think it's more important to the general public than it is to the

chefs. The chefs have their own level of awards and ceremonies. You know,

there's a whole market out there to give chefs recognition. And it's all

profit driven, I think, for the most part. The Hale Aina Awards is the

people's choice, and we've won it three years in a row, and surprisingly

enough, it came from the people, I would say the majority of the people are

from Oahu, because it's Honolulu magazine, and the heaviest subscription is

in Honolulu. Now those are the people who I thought would be my customers

when I moved to Maui, and ultimately those are the people who are my

customers, and I have a huge following from Oahu.

So, the Hale Aina is a real honor for me to win, because those are the

people who helped me build my business.

MJ: We're here to talk to you about your life and what you do, but there

are a lot of people who come to town to review your restaurant, let's say,

for a magazine, and so on. What's that like, dealing with people? Do you

know they're there, or do you prepare for them specially, or what goes on

in your mind?

DPJ: When you know they're here, it's a lot easier to control the

environment and circumstances. When you get somebody like Mimi Sheraton,

who writes for a lot of major magazines, comes in, and you don't know she's

here, hopefully she has a good experience. Those are the people who you are

generally more concerned with, versus the people who come in and say, "Hi,

I'm a food writer, and I'm here to write about you." Those are the people

I'm probably the least concerned with, because I'm going to give them the

same experience that I'm going to give anybody anyway, but they're letting

me know they're here, so I can kind of control the environment that they're

in. So, like I said, those are the people I'm least worried about, because

I can control their experience.

MJ: So, do you prefer it when they let you know they're here, or when they

just come in?

DPJ: I don't know, that's a tough question. It's great when you read an

article that somebody reviewed you on, and they didn't tell you they even

came into the restaurant. They just showed up and did their thing. To me,

when you see the results of that, that's really the ultimate reward,

because you didn't control it. You gave them the same experience you gave

everybody.

MJ: You know, there are a lot of us who come to Hawaii, and just stay on

Oahu or Waikiki. Why do you think people should come to Maui and visit?

DPJ: Well, I think that, like myself, when I first came to Hawaii in 1978,

I didn't know there was more than one island. I actually asked the airline

reservationist, I said, "I want to go to Honolulu." Or actually, I said, "I

want to go to Hawaii." And he said, "Which island?" I said, "What do you

mean? There's more than one island?" I thought Honolulu and Waikiki were

Hawaii. I didn't know what was here, to be honest with you. I'd never been

here, and I got my fair share of Waikiki and Honolulu, and the big city

lights, and I think that that's an important part of Hawaii, but I think

that people who come to Hawaii should look for what Hawaii was, and what

Hawaii still is, outside of that. I know as an example, the Japanese love

to shop, and Honolulu certainly is a shopping mecca. But now, people who

appreciate the finer things in life come to Maui. Maui has better

restaurants, better hotels. And it's got the Chanel boutique, and the

Versace and Gucci. Maui really is becoming a world class resort, and it's a

whole island, not just a little one mile stretch. We've got things like

Hali'akala and Hana the beautiful beaches of Wailea, and Kana'Pali and

David Paul's Lahaina Grill. You got to throw that in.

MJ: What are your future plans and goals, dreams?

DPJ: I would like to build an international cooking school. I would like to

take the Hana Hotel, and do that, build an international cooking school,

and bring chefs in from all over the world. Either in Waimea on the big

island, or in Hana on Maui, or perhaps Princeville on Kawaii. A rural area

where there's agriculture, cattle, and more of the old Hawaii that I'm

talking about. The old Hawaii is undeveloped. You don't see over two or

three story buildings. You see a lot of the local people still living in

those areas. And it's the local people that kept me here, in Hawaii. The

beauty of their land, and the beauty of their souls. I think that the local

people are some of the most special people on Hawaii, and they're the Poi,

what we call the Poi, the melting pot of the world, the Poi Bowl, we say.

My wife is an example. She's, you know, fourth generation Japanese, so I'm

French-American Indian, and now we have this child who's a blend of Hawaii.

And that's what most of the people here are made up of. They're cross

cultures, cross breeding. And they're some of the most beautiful people in

the world, and I think that the climate here in Hawaii, which is so

abundantly fresh, the air is pure, the water is pure, it keeps people in

good moods. And that "Aloha" is extended beyond the service industry. It's

the people who live here that made that what it is.

MJ: Thanks for joining us David.

DPJ: My pleasure