Old ʻEwa, New Again: Revived Local Favorites and What's On This Fall
October 22, 2026
October 22, 2026
In the 1970s, kids on Ewa Beach Road could turn in empty Coke bottles at the corner store for a dime each, or a quarter for the big ones. One woman who grew up nearby told Hawaii News Now that the trade-in money "could buy half the store." That store sat closed for several years. Since late August it has been open again.
Most of what's new in ʻEwa this year happened inside rooms that were already there. Several of the places with fresh signs on them are old spaces reopened by people with a history in them, and the busiest dates on the fall calendar run on a plantation-era railroad. The new things to do on the ʻEwa Plain this fall are mostly old ʻEwa.
Joseph Silva founded Silva's Grocery & Liquor on Ewa Beach Road in 1946. It began as a liquor store, served the neighborhood for close to eighty years, and then closed a few years ago.
Jim "Jimbo" Lloyd, a private investigator who grew up going to the shop, leased it from the Silva family in June. The family still owns the land. He renamed it Lloyd's Silva Store and held the grand opening on Aug. 28, his 53rd birthday. He told Hawaii News Now that as a kid he saved food stamps and pennies to buy Hostess apple pies there with his friends. He wants the shop to be a community hub again, a place where kids can come in to laugh, play and hang out.
The shelves are still filling. For now the store sells ice, dollar shave ice, coffee and kendamas. That's a short list, and it's also the list you'd want from a corner store on a hot leeward afternoon: something cold, something cheap, and a toy that keeps kids busy out front. The store posts updates on its Facebook page.
The Silva store is one room brought back by someone who remembered it. Fairway Tavern is the same story at a public golf course.
The restaurant space at ʻEwa Villages Golf Course, 91-1760 Park Row, sat vacant from 2019 until this year. Chef Adam Gilbert told Aloha State Daily that "everybody in ʻEwa knows The Ville," the name the space went by for years. He and business partner Chris Natale won the city's concession bid about two years ago, after a project he had started in 2019 stalled during the pandemic.
Gilbert knows West Oʻahu diners. He ran Plantation Tavern in Kapolei for about six years before selling it in 2020, then opened Monarch Poke at Pearl Kai Shopping Center in 2021. Fairway Tavern serves local-style dishes at moderate prices, with poke nachos as the signature, and has a grab-and-go section for golfers.
You don't need a tee time. The course is city-owned, and the restaurant is open to the public. Fairway Tavern opened this spring. The City and County of Honolulu's golf division made its official announcement in June, calling it the return of a restaurant to the course. For anyone in Ewa Villages, it's a sit-down lunch spot without a drive out to Fort Weaver Road. You'll find more on the Fairway Tavern website.
A smaller version of the same thing happened at ʻEwa Beach Shopping Center. In July, Miss Kimchi Korean Barbecue opened at 91-919 Fort Weaver Road, No. 102-A, in the space Elim Korean Barbeque used to occupy. Aloha State Daily reported that it's open daily from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Regulars of the old Korean barbecue counter will find the same category of food in the same spot under a new name.
Here are this year's three openings side by side:
| Place | What the space was before | Back open |
|---|---|---|
| Lloyd's Silva Store, Ewa Beach Road | Silva's Grocery & Liquor, founded 1946 | Grand opening Aug. 28, 2026 |
| Fairway Tavern, ʻEwa Villages Golf Course | "The Ville," vacant since 2019 | Spring 2026 |
| Miss Kimchi Korean Barbecue, ʻEwa Beach Shopping Center | Elim Korean Barbeque | July 2026 |
None of the three needed new construction. All three are in familiar spaces with a new name on the door.
The Hawaiian Railway Society's yard at 91-1001 Renton Road gives the season its biggest outings, and it fits the pattern too. Sugar-era track that once served the plantation now carries families on Friday and Saturday nights.
This post goes up the day before the haunted train runs. The Hawaiian Railway Society's Spookapalooza 2026 flyer has the details:
Bring cash. Card readers won't help you at the gate.
The Hawaiʻi Lions District 50 calendar lists an Ewa Beach Halloween Bash at ʻEwa Beach Shopping Center, 91-902 Fort Weaver Road, from 5 to 8 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 24. It's a community calendar listing, so check with the Lions contact listed there before you go. If it's on, a family could start with costumes and an early dinner on Fort Weaver Road, then make one of the later train departures at Renton Road that same night.
The railroad's 2026 Holiday Express runs a train decorated with hundreds of lights. Pajamas are welcome, and a special guest meets riders at the station when the train comes back. Rides run on these nights:
Check-in starts at 6 p.m., boarding at 6:50 p.m., and the train leaves at 7 p.m. Booking opens Nov. 2, 2026. Mark that date now if you want a December weekend near the holidays.
The seasonal rides are the headliners, but the regular schedule runs year-round. The Hawaiian Railway Society offers public rides on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays, with pickup at Ewa Beach or Ko Olina. The standard ride is a two-hour round trip. On the second Sunday of each month, the society also runs its premium ride in Parlor Car 64. When relatives visit and the beach plan falls through, the train is the outing that's uniquely ʻEwa, and it's right on Renton Road.
The Lions calendar lists the Ewa Beach Christmas Parade for Saturday, Dec. 12, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., with the Ewa Beach Lions as the contact. The listing doesn't give a route or staging area yet, so check with the club as the date gets closer. That Saturday also has a Holiday Express ride, which makes Dec. 12 an easy day to plan: the parade in the morning, the lighted train at night. The last Holiday Express rides follow the next weekend, on Dec. 18 and 19.
At Ronda Ching Day, we like watching familiar ʻEwa places come back to life, and we pay attention to how a neighborhood's old spaces get put to new use. If you're thinking about what's next for your own ʻEwa home, from small updates to getting ready to sell, we're happy to talk it through over shave ice. Contact Us.
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