Honolulu Harry's Coming Soon

My wahine and I ate at Joe's Crab Shack for dinner the other night and noticed a sign announcing the soon to be opened Honolulu Harry's. Anybody heard of this place before? Joe's is owned by Landry's restaurant chain. I went to their webpage and couldn't find anything about it.

*** * * The Polynesian Popster * * ***

[ Edited by: PolynesianPop on 2003-01-15 09:25 ]

On a somewhat unrelated note, in 1999 they opened an Aquarium themed restaurant. Sounds interesting. Anybody been there?

Guests enter from the first floor's Bamboo Bar and scale a circular staircase to the dining room. The steps wind around the world's largest fish tank, a 15,000 gallon, 35-foot cylindrical aquarium filled with a multitude of sea creatures and underwater vegetation. The second floor's circular, 200-seat dining space is surrounded by 36,000 gallons of water contained in floor-to-ceiling tanks. Here, more than 100 species of tropical fish from the Caribbean, South Pacific, Indian Ocean and Hawaiian water co-habitate. The dining room also features two additional tanks in the center of the room, home to a predatory lionfish and the small fish of the coral thicket and the living coral reef. Twice a day, guests stop in mid-meal to watch as marine biologists mingle and hand feed the fish, some of which are more than six feet long.
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Click here for the full article:

http://www.landrysseafood.com/corporate/ResHos.html

*** * * The Polynesian Popster * * ***

[ Edited by: PolynesianPop on 2003-01-15 09:21 ]

I wonder if this "Honolulu Harry's" relates at all to the real estate tycoon Harry Weinberg? Here's an abstract from a Baltimore article:

As businesses big and small withered, an intractable investor named Harry Weinberg was there to snatch up the properties.

Weinberg, a middle-school dropout who had come to Baltimore from Austria as a child, once sold newspapers along Howard Street. Following a lucrative career as an auto-tire recapper and transit mogul, he became the area's land baron. This obdurate, driven businessman eschewed social gatherings and personal luxury to concentrate on savvy business dealings based on the timeless principal of "buy low, sell high." After decamping to Hawaii in 1968, he gained the moniker "Honolulu Harry"--and a reputation as the quintessential absentee landlord, sitting on his properties rather than developing them.
"he owned so much land [in Hawaii] and had so much power he was able to get them established."

Another article about him here:

Harry Weinberg, Honolulu Star article

Here's a photo:

And here's a postcard of an old Polynesian restaurant in Chicago:

And Westmoore Investments listed "Honolulu Harry's Restaurants" as a partner.

There's a song named "Honolulu Harry" that Gonzo plays on the ukulele in "The Muppets Take Manhattan"

Other than that, found no specific info on a new restaurant coming.

:tiki:

The bill certainly fits for this guy. They already even said where some of the new locations would be. I got excited because 2 will be opening close to me - Chino and Corona.

I hope it is not a Landry's. The Joe's Crab shack here sucks. On the other hand, it would be nice to have someone compete with the annoying Darden resturant called Bahama Breeze. Bahma Breeze has a huge tropical drink menu and I swear every drink has the same four ingredients... rum, pinneapple juice and orange juice over lots of ice.