Most of Hawaii’s historic hotels are grand and luxurious: Halekulani, Moana Surfrider, Mauna Kea Beach Hotel. Manago Hotel, which turns 106 this year, is insistently neither. What began as a small, roadside cafe in Kawaaloa (Captain Cook) on Hawaii Island, with a futon thrown on the floor for salesmen shuttling between Hilo and Kona, remains a humble place to rest your head. And to eat. The dining room, fronted by a porcelain sink where coffee farmers once washed the red dirt off their hands, resembles a mess hall. Its succinct, decades-old menu offers sauteed mahimahi, liver and onions, and its famous pork chops, fried in a cast-iron pan that’s rumored to be as old as the hotel and forged in the defunct Hilo Iron Works. The restaurant is Hawaii’s oldest continually operating restaurant, and it recently received the James Beard America’s Classics award, given to places that the James Beard Foundation deems to “have timeless appeal and are beloved regionally for quality food that reflects the character of its community.”
Change has come slowly to the Manago Hotel on Hawaii Island over the 106 years since it opened—there’s still no television or air-conditioning in the rooms, and the restaurant recently won the James Beard America’s Classics Award for preserving local cuisine.
In 1917, Osame and Kinzo Manago, a picture bride and her husband, borrowed $100 to buy a small house, where they sold udon, bread, jam and coffee. Eventually, the udon and futons in their two-room home gave way to a twenty-two-room building with a dining room in 1929, and in the 1960s a second, three-story wing was built, taking advantage of the hotel’s perch on Mauna Loa’s slopes, with views to Kealakekua Bay. The third generation, Dwight Manago, who had worked at the ritzy Kahala Hilton and Maunalani Bay Hotel, tried to update things: He wanted TVs in every room, but his guests told him if he changed anything, they wouldn’t come back.
Now run by Dwight’s daughters Britney and Taryn, they keep Manago’s spirit the same: no TVs or AC in the rooms, handwritten room ledgers and reservation book (but now, WiFi). One of the hotel’s regular guests is writer Kiana Davenport, who comes to Manago Hotel to begin work on her novels. “Late at night I gaze out at the sea and contemplate one hundred years of history that this hotel has been part of,” she says. “All that has transpired. As I begin each novel here, I feel the breath of the past whispering, ‘Write with good conscience. Be true. Haina ia mai ana ka puana! Let the story be told!’”
managohotel.com
