Expanding the Surface Area of Luck | with Dusty Grable
From Kailua kid to Hale ʻAina Restaurateur of the Year, Dusty’s journey isn’t about short-term wins, but about growth, service, and building a body of work that attracts opportunity. His path has been anything but conventional, from bypassing college to live in Chicago’s toughest neighborhood, to pioneering restaurants in a block of Chinatown that others considered a “no-man’s land,” to today leading his Lovers + Fighters group in Mānoa Marketplace. Through it all, one theme has guided him: what others call luck is often the byproduct of choosing growth over comfort, again and again.
Stepping into the unknown
When Dusty Grable graduated high school, college wasn’t next. Instead, he boarded a plane to Chicago, choosing a neighborhood with the nation’s highest teen homicide rate at the time.
“I grew up here in Hawaiʻi and felt very fortunate,” Dusty recalls. “If I was so lucky to be raised in Hawaiʻi, then what could I do? I thought, college isn’t next, so let’s go serve a community.”
He babysat, grocery-shopped for kūpuna, worked in an art studio for adults with developmental disabilities, and launched an afterschool art program for a school that had lost its funding. A year later, he moved home, but the experience shaped him as a person:
“I learned more valuable lessons in that one year than all my time in college combined in the sense of how to be human and how to care for other humans.”
Learning the craft of service
Back home, Dusty started working at The Old Spaghetti Factory to pay for school. What might have been “just a job” became a classroom. “They gave me my first opportunity, allowed me to be a server right out the gate,” he says. “I felt indebted to them and I learned a ton there.”
From there, Dusty climbed into Hawaiʻi’s finest dining rooms. First at Kāhala Mandarin (now known as The Kahala Hotel & Resort), then Indigo, and eventually Alan Wong’s, then ranked among the top five restaurants in the nation. The money was excellent, but Dusty wanted more responsibility and mentorship.
“Money was never a motivator. Learning, growing, and evolving was always the agenda.”
He left comfort for challenge, moving to San Francisco to work at Gary Danko and rising to beverage director at Michelin-starred Ame at the St. Regis Hotel.
Building a body of work
By his early 30s, Dusty returned to Hawaiʻi, partnering with chef Jesse Cruz to open Lucky Belly in Chinatown in 2012. At the time, the block was considered too rough for restaurants. “That block was a no-man’s land for restaurants,” recalls fellow restaurateur Danny Kaʻaialiʻi. “Dusty and Jesse broke that barrier.”
“The success with Lucky Belly with the combination of our landlord wanting to give us another prime corner spot and a bank wanting to give us a loan, allowed us to say yes to the opportunity to open up Livestock Tavern,” explains Dusty. "It was about a year later that the landlord introduced the idea of us taking over their 39 hotel, and that's when we built the Tchin Tchin! bar.”
Their gamble paid off. Together, Dusty and Jesse owned and operated three of Chinatown’s most recognizable dining spots: Lucky Belly, Livestock Tavern, and the rooftop Tchin Tchin! Bar. The trio of businesses didn’t just succeed, they shifted the entire dining scene.
Each concept was distinct—ramen bowls and craft cocktails at Lucky Belly, modern American fare at Livestock, and a stylish wine-and-spirits lounge at Tchin Tchin—but all carried the same DNA of thoughtful design, approachable menus, and service rooted in genuine hospitality.
By creating credibility and trust, Dusty learned that opportunities rarely appear out of nowhere. They’re drawn to the body of work you’ve built. What some might call luck was really the natural result of doing things the right way, consistently, until doors began to open on their own.
Opportunities started coming to him. Landlords who could have leased to anyone asked him to expand his vision. Years later, Larissa Nordyke from Alexander & Baldwin personally called to invite him into Mānoa Marketplace, where he launched Little Plum and other concepts under Lovers + Fighters, his restaurant group.
“Lovers + Fighters are people who believe in the idea of fighting for love, fighting to get to do what you love, the way you love to do it with and for people you love. And back to that infinite game idea for as long as you can…from an outsider looking in, it looks like a hospitality and restaurant group, which it is in a lot of ways, but really what we hope to be is a human development company.”
Today, Lovers + Fighters isn’t just a collection of restaurants, it’s a team built on loyalty, mentorship, and shared values, with many of Dusty’s former Chinatown staff still forming the backbone of his new ventures.
Full circle
Looking back, Dusty’s path hasn’t been linear. It’s been a series of deliberate choices to step into discomfort, pursue growth, and treat hospitality as a craft worth devoting a life to. From Humboldt Park in Chicago to Chinatown in Honolulu, from fine dining in San Francisco to neighborhood restaurants in Mānoa, Dusty has built a body of work rooted in service and trust.
That commitment hasn’t gone unnoticed. In 2024, he was named Hale ʻAina Restaurateur of the Year, a recognition not just of his accomplishments, but of the way he’s redefined what it means to be a restaurateur in Hawaiʻi: someone who creates opportunity by taking care of people first.
For Dusty, the award isn’t the finish line, it’s a reminder that the real work is in continuing to grow, to mentor, and to keep expanding the “surface area of luck” so that future opportunities, both for himself and those he mentors, can keep finding their way to him.
what we can Take
Dusty Grable’s story shows that success isn’t just luck. It’s about expanding your opportunities by consistently choosing growth over comfort, building trust, and centering people, he created the conditions where opportunities could find him.
It comes from:
Choosing growth over comfort
Building credibility through consistency
Centering people and community
That’s how Dusty created his own surface area of luck and why he continues to shape Hawaiʻi’s dining scene today.
As Dusty puts it: “Money was never a target. Money was never a why. Learning, growing, evolving were always the agenda.”
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