When Chris and Ayako Williams set their sights on San Luis Obispo County, they were living in Las Vegas and looking for a small town to move to where they could buy a winery and set themselves up for retirement.
Find your comfort
Kula Hawaiian Kitchen is located at 6200 El Camino Real in Atascadero. It’s open Tuesday through Sunday for lunch from noon to 2 p.m. and dinner from 4:30 to 9 p.m. Check out kulahawaiiankitchen.com for more information and the menu.
“I’m not sure this is the way that most people feel, but for retirement, I was not looking for a retirement where I would be sitting at home and maybe travel with my wife or something like that,” Chris Williams said. “I wanted a retirement where I could be active.”
About 12 years ago, they purchased a vineyard on Templeton’s east side in the El Pomar District with the aim of tending the vines and selling the grapes. But that dream has evolved over the last decade.
Now, they have a winery, tasting room, and most recently opened a restaurant in downtown Atascadero: Kula Hawaiian Kitchen, which has been dishing up “elevated Hawaiian comfort food” for a little more than year.
“We certainly had no idea that it would wind up with us owning a restaurant,” Williams said. “Right now, we’re having a great time doing what we’re doing.”
He comes from a military family, so when Williams was growing up, his family relocated to Oahu, Hawaii, where he graduated from high school and was exposed to the food for the first time.
“I would say the food is very simple, but it’s very flavorful. It’s not finnicky or difficult food,” he said.
He left Hawaii after high school, graduated from college, worked in the tech industry, and eventually met Ayako while visiting friends in Japan. After the couple got married, they moved back to Oahu.
Some of their favorite spots to eat were casual takeout places where you could walk up to a counter, order food, and eat at a picnic table—or better yet, the Williamses would take it to their favorite beach and eat it there.
That’s the kind of food that was missing from the Central Coast’s food scene, Williams said.
“When we came back to the mainland, we missed a lot of that,” he said. “So looking at this opportunity to move and have a larger space, we thought this would be the ideal opportunity to share our love of the Hawaiian food, the Hawaiian culture, and share it with San Luis Obispo County.”
Last August, the couple moved their tasting room from Entrada Avenue to just down the block, adjacent to their new restaurant space in the La Plaza building on El Camino Real. It wasn’t their first foray into serving food.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, they started offering to-go food through their tasting room with a $49 food and wine pairing, partnering with a local restaurant to create a dish that would pair with a bottle of Kula Vineyards & Winery wine. After the pandemic receded, the Williams continued offering it, but less frequently.
Starting in early 2024, the food situation morphed into Hawaiian meals paired with wine that customers could preorder through the tasting room. Williams said they would have the food cooked by a local commercial kitchen using their recipes. It was a way to introduce customers to what was yet to come.
As Hawaiian cuisine is influenced by Japanese culture, Kula Hawaiian Kitchen fuses Ayako’s experience cooking Japanese food with Hawaiian dishes. Williams said the kitchen primarily works off his wife’s recipes—such as the homemade teriyaki sauce, which is labor intensive.
Teriyaki chicken is marinated in that sauce for 24 hours before it gets grilled on an open flame, suffusing the meat with flavor. A lot of their food is like this, he said—simple ingredients prepared with care and time so they’re full of flavor.
“We have got feedback from people who say, ‘We love your rice so much.’ I think, ‘Rice. That’s odd; it’s so simple,’” he said. “My wife is Japanese, so she cares about rice to a very high degree.”
“We spend a lot of care and a lot of attention on even the simplest ingredients, the simplest items on the plate,” Williams added.
With Restaurant Month upon us, Kula is offering up a January special that could entice first-timers in for a taste, with a choice of one of four different appetizers and one of five different entrees for $30 through the end of January.
And sometimes, you can catch a food and wine pairing event such as the Hawaiian pairing dinner special, which offers up a three-course meal and a different Kula Vineyards wine paired with each course.
The restaurant is open daily for lunch and dinner, and staples like poke bowls are on both menus.
Poke bowls are one of Kula’s most popular items, Williams said. Ahi or salmon is tossed in house-made sauce and served with Hawaiian coleslaw, edamame, seaweed, cucumber sunomono, macadamia nuts, and rice. While items like that, teriyaki chicken, or spam musubi may be more commonly seen on Hawaiian restaurant menus, Williams said Kula does things a little differently.
Kula’s spam musubi comes with grilled spam, sweetened egg, and rice wrapped with nori, drizzled with that housemade teriyaki, and served with a small side salad. Kula also offers a smoked salmon musubi served with Sriracha aioli.
Something you may not find on a lot of menus is the mochiko chicken—dredged in mochi rice flour, the chicken thigh is deep fried, topped with gochujang aioli and a white miso glaze, and served with Hawaiian coleslaw and rice.
“We’ve gotten lots of people who have told us we’re their favorite restaurant in Atascadero,” Williams said. “Atascadero is a very local-centered community … really, you can’t be successful in Atascadero if you don’t build a really close relationship with the local community.” ∆
Editor Camillia Lanham is ready for a musubi pairing. Send suggestions to clanham@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Jan 1-8, 2026.