If you live in Kailua-Kona, you already know the summer script. The parade rolls down Ali'i on the Fourth. Food Truck Friday sets up midday. The Sunday market opens at nine. What's different this year isn't the calendar. It's who's now running a stretch of the waterfront you've walked past a thousand times.
The single biggest shift on Ali'i Drive this summer is quiet, structural, and easy to miss unless you were watching the leases: three of Kona's longest-running kitchens have folded themselves into one local operator, and that operator now owns the front lawn of downtown.
The Kona Inn changeover, in plain terms
The century-old Kona Inn Restaurant reopened with a revamped menu and a refreshed dining room on June 18. The debut followed an acquisition earlier this spring by a new local group, and the general manager,
