Nine Hawaiʻi chefs and restaurants have made it to the semifinalist round for the 2026 James Beard Awards, also known as the "Oscars" of the restaurant industry.
HPR previously featured local James Beard semifinalists Bao Tran from Giovedì in Chinatown and Michele di Bari from Sale Pepe in Lahaina, Maui.
The Local General Store, a popular Kaimukī butcher and bakery, also made the list, receiving its second nomination for outstanding bakery. HPR met with owners Harley Tunac and Jason Chow to learn more about their path to the nomination.
Interview Highlights
On being nominated
JASON CHOW: We were definitely surprised, for sure. There's some things that we can, here in Hawaiʻi, it's, I guess, easier to shoot for. Or like, there's a goal that, ʻOh, maybe we can into Hawaiʻi Food & Wine Festival, get recognized by Honolulu Magazine or something.’ But, yeah, something national, and being like, one out of 20 bakeries in the entire U.S., like, how many bakeries are there in the entire U.S., right? To us, we felt like it was just so far out of reach.
On what drew them to food
HARLEY TUNAC: When I was younger, I used to pretend that I had my own cooking show. I would pretend to make grilled cheese and then tell everyone how to make grilled cheese, or even dried saimin, growing up — which were one of the two things that I was taught how to make first if I was hungry and I had to make something for myself. And then growing up, my mom baked a lot, and I would help her. She made a lot of Filipino pastries; puto, bibingka, tupig, and I felt really connected to that.
CHOW: My grandparents, on my paternal side, they owned a Chinese restaurant in Wahiawā. My maternal grandmother was a cook at BYU. She was the lead cafeteria cook for a very long time at BYU. So I grew up around food. I grew up eating a lot of food, and because of that, I felt drawn towards the kitchen.
On the history of The Local General Store
TUNAC: Initially, we always thought about opening a business separate, but, you know, as we got to know each other, our values aligned. It took us a really long time to figure out if we could do this together and figure out a name, but for some reason, we came up with The Local General Store.
CHOW: And to us, it's like, of course it's going to work. You're just gonna make pastries on that side, and I'm just gonna butcher on this side… and then the week after COVID hit Hawaiʻi, everything shut down… and then we decided to pivot, which is what everybody did during COVID, is pivot and trying to figure out what is going on. What are we going to do? Luckily, I was working at Kaimuki Superette at the time. Harley was working at Breadshop at the time, so we had reconnected with our Kaimukī roots and our Kaimukī family, I guess you'd say. And then Superette was closed on Sundays. And so we asked Ed if we could use Kaimuki Superette and do pop-ups there every Sunday. So that was like the very first start of the local general store. So we did pop-ups every Sunday at the old Kaimuki Superette, which is now our current location, which is really cool, that it kind of made a full circle there.
The James Beard finalists will be chosen at the end of March, and the winners will be announced in June.
This story aired on The Conversation on March 10, 2026. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Jinwook Lee adapted this story for the web.
