Grant Kawasaki
Born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. Grant grew up always having a love for food. Grant's best memories are from seeing lots of different foods at family parties prepared by his both of his grandmothers' skillful hands. Even when Grant was very young, he had the benefit of going to many great restaurants. This early exposure to good food was what inclined Grant to become a chef. Grant started his culinary journey during college cooking healthy alternative dishes for one of his grandmothers that had an insulin dependant diabetic condition. She later became insulin free after her doctor remarked that her blood sugar levels had greatly improved due to the introduction of healthy and nutritious foods into her diet.
It was then that Grant became fascinated with the culinary arts while also being in UH Manoa's fine arts program with a focus on the ceramic arts. Grant then practiced to duplicate his grandmother's priceless family recipes to be able to consistently recreate them for his family in the future. This led to the idea of starting a small catering business for small exclusive private parties. Shortly after, Grant found the urge to get into retail food service. Ironically around that same timeline Grant would soon meet his two future business partners Shannon Akazawa and Norlan Horita.
Grant apprenticed with many top chefs and restaurants to develop his own signature style. With the experience of traditional sushi making, French, Japanese cuisine and new wave techniques, Grant influenced a food system that would be the backbone of his entire company. A unique hybrid sushi/world fusion cuisine offered as a catering and restaurant food service system. This system is what quickly identified his companies namesakes: Global Foods, Inc. / Sushi Supreme Hawaii / Gokujo Sushi.
Grant's companies offer an array of diversified services and products. Some of his companies specialties are: live sushi bar catering, retail take out, ultra exclusive private chef service, restaurant food service management, food product development and culinary consulting. Grant's future plans are to open a nationwide sushi take out franchise, full service restaurant locations and offer specialty food service merchandise.
Grant would like to continue diversifying his culinary and food service network into the media by writing informative and critical columns on Hawaii's culinary industry in his aroundhawaii.com Oceanic Time Warner website food column entitled "Let's Eat!" With many previous successful food service namesakes, Grant has been featured in many newspaper articles, news interviews and locally produced TV shows.
With his longtime friend and multi-media business partner Ikaika Kimura, Grant plans to be involved, strategically and continuously, in televised culinary media to help promote Hawaii as a culinary leader in food quality, talent, innovative regional cuisine and total food service standards.
Aside from many years of collegiate theatrical/film/musical arts experience, the highly anticipated and locally produced OC-16 TV show, Hawaiian Grown, will be Grant's first role as a TV show host and chef.