For nearly two decades, Kyle Yoshimura’s father, Bruce, operated The Mikado Restaurant, a high-end traditional Japanese restaurant in Seattle’s International District. The Seattle native and scion of the Mutual Fish Company family took pride in the traditional Japanese cuisine and tatami room atmosphere he cultivated in his business. But by the close of the ‘80s he had tired of effort. Before retiring to Molokai, Hawaii with his new wife, he gave his son one piece of advice:

“He told me, ‘Son, do not open a restaurant,’” Yoshimura recalled on a recent afternoon. “‘And, if for some crazy reason you do open a restaurant, don’t do it high-end. Do it mom-and-pop style.’”

No one can ever accuse Yoshimura of being a perfect listener. After spending three years “bumming around the island with long hair on [his] motorcycle” and subsequent years back in Seattle working for businesses like the Hard Rock Cafe, Rock Candy and Axis, he opened his own Hawaiian/Japanese restaurant and sushi bar, Ohana, in Belltown in the late ‘90s.

Now, more than 16 years later, Yoshimura has rebranded Ohana as Ohana Belltown and opened a second location, Ohana Eastside, in Issaquah’s Gilman Station.

“If [Ohana] were a child, it would be able to drive me home,” he said. “Last year, I was staring down my 16th anniversary and I thought, I’ve gotta try. I had to see if I could make it happen and turn my pipe dream into a mini empire.”

Opening a second location also gave Yoshimura the option to beat a strategic retreat if Belltown’s pattern of sweeping redevelopment hit his building, he said.

At the urging of John Dotson and Ken Hughes — the Issaquah restaurateurs and Yoshimura’s friends from his days as a student at the University of Washington — Yoshimura picked Issaquah for his second location, noting that the city had several fast food eateries and upscale restaurants geared toward adult patrons, but scant options in-between.

He picked the spot in Gilman Station for its large space — about a third larger than Ohana Belltown, at a capacity of 93 people — and its large skylight windows. What Yoshimura hoped would be a turnkey purchase turned into a nine-month renovation, but he used that time to decorate the restaurant to his exact tastes, including tiki decorations and pieces of Seattle history, like the old sign from the Bamboo Bar & Grill in Alki. Most of the items are odds and ends collected over the years and stored at home, “driving my wife crazy,” he said.

“I want people to come in here and immediately feel like they’re on vacation,” Yoshimura said.

In most ways, Ohana Eastside has directly adopted the culture of its older sibling in Belltown. That includes Ohana’s unusual rewards program, where customers can earn free meals at lower point tiers or keep racking them up to redeem a 3,500 point stay in Yoshimura’s Maui condo.

But it also includes the business’s philosophy of employee loyalty. During a tour of the restaurant floor, Yoshimura introduced Marcos Martinez an Ohana Belltown employee who followed his boss to the second location and was the first person Yoshimura hired.

It all comes down to the restaurant’s name, Yoshimura said. “Ohana” is the Hawaiian word for family — both the family a person is born into and the extended family they choose.

“I’ve got to take care of my family,” Yoshimura said. “That’s the most important thing. And my employees are my family.”

Ohana Eastside is located at 240 N.W. Gilman Blvd.