Geoffrey Arakawa "The Seafood General"

Geoffrey Arakawa "The Seafood General" was part of the famous Arakawa Family in Waipahu. His grandfather, also quite famous, was Zenpan Arakawa, founder of the famous Arakawa Store. In this part of time there was rich plantation culture and skilled cooks that started their careers in the area. He is one of the most respected chefs where old time customers will trek to the places he has been featured for some of Hawaii’s best seafood dishes and has been called Master Chef Geoffrey Arakawa. He has been known to be a master of seafood and a legendary chef that has rigorously worked to refine his taste to make dishes that spoke to the customers. He grew up with an ocean that had plentiful sandy beaches and in the deeper parts was teeming with an abundance of seafood to be caught that would make it to the market at the ports. 

There is one man who knows all there is to know of that world from spending time enjoying the water to creating dishes with the seafood in water and is known for his seafood cuisine. When the fish comes in he scrutinizes the catch, bedeviling even the most skilled fisherman, but much of that goes away when he deals with commercial fishermen Bruce Johnson who had some of the best seafood to offer from his company “Fresh Island Fish”. Even if he were to take a closer look it would be rare for something first scrutinized by the company to even make it as far as to be judged by Geoffreys skilled eye for seafood. Armed with his arsenal of skills and knowledge from Hawaii Local Cuisine, French Cuisine, Pacific Cuisine, and Continental cuisine, he always gives it all he’s got when making dishes for a table spread to make sure it becomes a customer favorite with his gourmet creations.

Geoffrey went to Waipahu High School and graduated in 1961 and was always driving cars in highschool. 

Seafood Distribution

Geoffrey worked as a seafood distributor at Ward Farmers Market for Tropic Fish & Vegetables. 

Tropic Fish these days in Hawaii is part of CMU & Associates (largest state seafood distributor). He would later work at a Restaurant next to Tropics.

Columbia Inn

In the day he would be a hard working cook in the kitchen of a popular sit-down restaurant Columbia Inn where orders would come in by waitresses yelling out their orders all at the same time and no matter how hard it got the orders went out. 

"I remember the days before the ticket system was implemented at Columbia Inn. When there were a little over half a dozen burners and single orders were done on heated pans that had to be flipped one after another." -Geoffrey Arakawa

Apprenticeship with James Sueyoshi

He honed his craft under the watchful eyes of a laid back Hawaii Pioneer of Culinary Education James “Jimmy” Sueyoshi himself. Geoffrey was the great master's pride as he left a deep impression and influence in going through his mentorship. Geoffrey Arakawa kept the most discerning palette satisfied from Hawaii, Japan, or the Mainland, and beyond. He would grow into learning the secret world of flavor enhancing sauces to give variety to a dish and that depended on what the dish called for, sometimes it was heavy, sometimes light, and these would pass on to the next cooking generation. 

He also advocated for his cooks to be able to learn about fish varieties with the distributor and he asked for wider access to information about costs and quality, a position that made it so the kitchen would not make waste and minimize what was thrown away.

A Kitchen of Merit and not Gender

After James Sueyoshi left Yacht Harbor Geoffrey Arakawa was in charge of the kitchen. A very unassuming guy, serious in attitude, and has moments of being laid back, but is a very excellent chef. He focused on respect, aloha, and many of the values from the company to his employees and kept good food costs, cost control with specials, and challenging his cooks in the kitchen. Geoffrey being the head of the kitchen he had the idea of equal opportunities to pursue their culinary career in working from the bottom to the top and “show what they got”, which was deemed radical back then. It was controversial because he included everyone in that belief, including women who could potentially be placed in positions to learn, practice, and perfect their skills to rival those of men. Geoffrey had recognized the enormous limits placed on women compared to men in the fine-dining space and from investors and authorized women in the kitchen to show actions of equality at personal growth costs and professional costs. For instance while men had broad educational choices women could be educated and still be socially disdained as preparation for kitchen cleaning, dish washing, or salad making. 

Geoffrey and his management peers agreed that women should have the same choices as men in the kitchen, which is largely taken for granted now, but was incredibly unpopular at the time. Although this trend wouldn’t catch on, it laid the groundwork and a place for the eventual extension of local culinary figures for women in Hawaii like the eventual and radical appointment of “The Sauce Captain” Faith Ogawa where the actions spoke to the others that he was advocating for a women chef to be able to run a kitchen brigade. Linda Yamada, and others. He would go off to be recruited into an Spencecliff Elite Team of selected members hand picked by the revolutionary Operations Manager Gordon Yoshida and would start working with all the kitchens in the company and no longer just Yacht Harbor. 

French Cuisine from Michel’s

At Michel’s Colony Surf  he would go on to train with the very best cooks and chefs at the top high class restaurant at the time where he would learn the classical French Brigade system and Classical French Cuisine with many local ingredients. It was about keeping the ingredients tasting great while making sure the cooking was an art in the Hawaii Kitchen with a presentation as desirable as the dish. 

Third Floor

Geoffrey would be the Chef at the Hawaiian Regent Hotel’s high-class restaurant “Third Floor”.

Uncle's Fish Market & Grill 

Moving on to work with Bruce Johnson he would be the Executive Chef for Uncle's Fish Market & Grill.