Fogcutter

The Fogcutter was built by Steve Raish who was involved in building several similar rustic bars in Waikiki one of them was Pieces of Eight and had a few projects in Lahaina. The guy had a hard time looking at ugly bars in his friends place as he would say that the room would scream for it to be better. He would go out and look for scraps to see if there would be a way to build the bar in an affordable manner with broken telephone poles, electric section of the scrap yard, and what was laying around as trash to be discarded. He was always good with that sort of thing and would help people with refurbishing and knew a bit about how to rebuild plantation style homes.

It all started when the owners broke ground and they met a few people around which a few seemed interested in working there.

Fogcutter was a place that people would be going for seafood and giant ice cream sundaes with fudge pouring over the glass. When you would enter there would be a sight to see, because you would have to go through a netted walkway to get inside. A few regulars would have their spots and sit at the bar to drink and then walk over to play the jukebox until the sun came up. The Jukebox would have a lot of easy listening songs like: Johnny Mathis, Tom Jones, Anita Baker, Elvis, Engelbert Humperdinck, Dylan, Ray Charles, Temptations, Platters, Sam Cook, Aretha Franklin, and Roberta Flack. There was a lot of country and slow jams at the time and not much rock during that period. After people left the bar no one would really know where they were headed as people would be walking by and see some of them hitting the beach while others seemingly went home to sleep. There weren’t many good restaurants in the Makaha during that period so plenty people were going and eating and drinking. Not much money to get a good meal back then and the pupu's were free for many years it was open. They would have ways that people could also get some collectible Fogcutter mugs.

The Salad Bar

They served Caviar, Escargot,

“I was chef/kitchen manager, and actually THE Cook, for a short time until when I showed up for work the Feds were blocking the door and had shut them down. Payment was somewhat intermittent even before that. During the 70s recession.” -Tom Bruton

Andy Bumatai was one of the dishwashers there

The Second owners were the Wong Ohana and they were known as Papa Wong and Mama Wong (Junius Wong).

In the 1980s, there was a Hula Halau called “Halau O Kupa” that was downstairs and Arnold Kidder entertained on guitar and vocals on Thursday through Saturday evenings. Hawaii music scene was happening, so there were live bands that would come in like: Blue Sky, Makaha Sons of Niihau played there once in long awhile: Skippy, Iz, Louis Kauakahi, and Jerome Koko.

Steve McCormickI “worked there in 1976-1978 as a waiter”.

Fogcutters were already starting to look to close the books and close down, but it was up in the air at the time and leaning on closure, but what sealed the deal was what would happen next. The Wong Ohana would reside to move to the Big Island in 1990 and the building was still there and people would speculate who would take over Fogcutters. Two years later, Hurricane Iniki hit Fogcutters pretty hard in 1992 and it never reopened and leveled, so it became a dirt lot. See less