Fire at Kula Lodge guts beloved Maui restaurant and puts Upcountry community ‘on edge’

Kula Lodge CEO Stephanie Mallek woke up early Monday morning on Oʻahu to her 9-year-old pounding on her bedroom door saying there had been an emergency.

The iconic restaurant that Mallek and her father own on the slopes of Haleakalā had caught fire, gutting the rustic dining room with a cozy fireplace where countless Maui families and visitors gathered for brunches and celebratory dinners. With its good food and sweeping views of the central valley, Kula Lodge also was a must stop for many people going to and from the national park. 

Mallek was in shock. Two years ago, the restaurant survived the harrowing Aug. 8, 2023 wildfires that burned 26 nearby Upcountry homes and became a hub for food, water and supplies. Now, Kula Lodge is decimated by a fire whose origin is not yet known. 

“It’s been a rollercoaster emotionally,” Mallek told the Hawai‘i Journalism Initiative on Monday. “This was very unexpected and the fact that it happened during the week of the two-year anniversary of the Aug. 8 fires is really hard.

“I was just in the last few days recalling what happened two years ago and being at Ground Zero for the Kula fire and what we went through back then, and to have this happen now, it’s hard to swallow.”

Neighbors say it’s another loss for the community and a reminder that they have to be vigilant after back-to-back summers of major blazes.

Maui Fire Department crews received the call at 3:18 a.m. Monday, arriving at the remote restaurant about 15 minutes later to find the restaurant “fully involved with fire,” the department said in a Facebook post. Firefighters extended hoselines to attack the fire and keep it from spreading to nearby structures. They brought it under control at 6:11 a.m.

The fire department said the cause of the blaze is under investigation. Estimated damage costs were not yet available.

“Because the fire department has not deemed it safe to go inside there yet, no one’s actually been inside,” said Mallek, who was on O‘ahu with her family when it burned. “But the pictures I received from our employees walking the perimeter, it seems like the entire restaurant itself is just a complete loss.”

But it was a “massive blessing” that nobody was harmed, Mallek said. The only people on the property at the time of the blaze were six guests staying in two of the lodges. They were safely evacuated.

There also may be some salvageable parts of the restaurant. Mallek said the pizza oven, downstairs wine cave and private dining room in what used to be the Curtis Wilson Cost Gallery appear to have survived. Some of the canopies on the outdoor seating were burned, but the circular benches looked like they were intact. 

The five lodges and the nearby Kula Marketplace, which sells gifts from over 200 local artists and artisans, were not damaged. 

Kula Lodge, which neighbors fondly remember for its waffles and pancakes as well as its hospitality after the 2023 fires, has been around since 1948. It was built as a private home by Frank James, who hosted the likes of singer Frank Sinatra and award-winning actors Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn.

In the early 1950s, the home at 3,200 feet elevation was converted to a lodge and restaurant, according to its website. 

Fred Romanchak bought the property in 1984, adding the terrace with outdoor seating, the artisanal pizza oven and floral gardens.  

“It’s like the best-kept secret in Hawai‘i,” Mallek said. “You feel like you’re in this fairyland when you’re there and sitting in the garden terrace.”

In 2022, Mallek and her father Simon Vojdani, the owners of the 5 Palms restaurant that was located at the Mana Kai Resort in Kīhei for 27 years, acquired Kula Lodge for $11 million.

Mallek said Romanchak, who was “a piece of that place,” had received many generous offers from potential Mainland buyers but wanted to sell to a local owner who “understood the property and wasn’t going to come tear down the whole thing. He wanted someone to perpetuate the history and the stories.” 

“We were just so excited for that,” said Mallek, a 2000 Seabury Hall graduate. “We had the right team and the right chef and the right heart. And I’m just hoping we’ll get that chance again in the near future to serve everyone.” 

Serving the community is what got Mallek through the tragedy of the wildfires in 2023. Kula Lodge, which didn’t have potable water for three months, became a hub for critical resources. They turned the lodges into shelters for people who lost homes, fired up the pizza oven to turn out fresh pies for residents and firefighters, and offered free groceries at the marketplace.

With the help of Kyle Ellison of Mālama Kula, they set up water tanks and bottled water to pass out to residents who were left without potable water due to the fire-damaged water lines.

Everything they gave was on their own dime, with no help from federal agencies, Mallek said. 

Since the fires, things had been looking up. Business hadn’t returned to pre-fire levels, but they’d had a decent July, much better than last year when a fire near Crater Road “devastated business.” 

Earlier this summer, Kula Lodge added a new division for weddings and events, and this week it planned to launch a new brunch menu, with dishes like smoked salmon eggs benedict. Mallek said some old favorites from their 5 Palms menu, including their popular ribs, and more vegan and gluten-free options were going to be added. 

The Kula Lodge employs about 50 people, including 45 at the restaurant. For now, they’ll have to be on unemployment, said Mallek, who is working on “creative ways to keep some employed, at least for the interim, and to keep some more business running.” She hopes they can salvage some of the historic structure and that insurance will cover enough for the rebuild. 

“I don’t know how this is all going to play out,” she said. “But all I know is, we are survivors and we will rebuild.”

The fire and loss of another business rattled a community that’s still recovering from the 2023 wildfires. 

Tony Barwick, who lives on Ainakula Road just down the street from Kula Lodge, said he heard “crackling, almost like fireworks going off,” early Monday morning. He threw on his steel-toed boots and gloves, ran to his truck and hustled down to the lodge, where he and a few other folks kept an eye on the blaze and the gulch below the lodge. 

Barwick said that’s one of the major impacts of the 2023 fire — it brought the community together. He later went to check on a couple of his neighbors who had been affected by the August 2023 wildfires and found one in tears. Another neighbor came home from work early because she was worried about the fire.

“I was like ‘listen, it’s OK, the fire’s under control.’ She was like, ‘I can’t risk it. I have to be home.’ … People are just on edge,” said Barwick, who started a tree-trimming business, ‘Iwa Maui, to help people control vegetation in the wake of the 2023 wildfires. 

Barwick’s wife is from Tennessee and grew up visiting Kula Lodge on family vacations to Maui. After the fire, the family group chat was filled with reminiscing over the lodge’s Belgian waffles.  

Karen Mawae-Spence, who lives across the street from Kula Lodge, woke up to the sounds of shouting from the parking lot and went out to see flames “higher than the trees.” She watched in shock as smoke billowed from the restaurant and then went to wake up her three tenants to prepare for potential evacuations. 

“A lot of us on Maui, we’re still so stunned that Lahaina was obliterated, and we lost all these homes up here in Kula, and it’s such a shocking thing to go through,” Mawae-Spence said. “So for another iconic-type place to go up in flames, it’s really unsettling.” 

Mawae-Spence, who had to evacuate during the 2023 wildfires, said she’s thankful there was no wind on Monday morning. If there had been, “it would have been a whole different ballgame, just like two years ago.”

“It’s an overwhelming sense of sadness, you know?” Mawae-Spence said. “And a little bit of fear mixed in, because here we are … barely midway through August. We still need to get through September, which is another extremely dry month.” 

In the early 1990s, Mawae-Spence’s friends held their wedding reception at Kula Lodge. She remembers the cozy setting of the old wooden lodge and the backdrop of the rolling fire. The same people who built the lodge built her home with a tongue-and-groove cedar interior and a lava rock fireplace. 

“I love that kind of feel, and that’s what I think a lot of people that go there (want), besides the view, is that lodge feeling,” she said. “So I hope that when they rebuild, that they kind of follow what was there to keep that same feeling.”

Ellison said the timing of the fire was tough, “because it’s at a time when everyone’s reflective and already on edge.”

“I had so many neighbors calling me, writing me, saying they smell smoke, wondering what’s going on, and people are just kind of triggered just by the smell of smoke, and rightfully so, especially in the middle of the night,” he said. 

Ellison is also grateful the winds weren’t blowing like they were on Aug. 8, 2023, though he said, “it’s just another reminder of how quickly things can get out of hand. … It’s why we need to be doing all this work in between.”

Mālama Kula was set to work on the gulch next to the lodge on Monday morning, and they were still able to clear out a whole wood pile after the fire. If an ember from Kula Lodge had gotten into the pile, “it would have not been good.” 

Ellison was raised Upcountry, and he remembers checking out the art at the Curtis Wilson gallery and going to the lodge as a kid for a cup of hot chocolate when Kula’s cold, misty weather set in. He and his wife have three kids now, and they rarely get the chance to go out to eat, but they live within walking distance of the lodge and sometimes make it out for breakfast or dinner. 

“Not only is it a huge loss for Kula, just all the history of Kula Lodge, and we only got so many restaurants up there and everything, but on top of that, they were so unbelievably generous in the time after the 2023 Kula fire,” Ellison said. “They’re just a pillar of our community.” 

Ellison’s organization planned to have a big fundraising gala at Kula Lodge on Nov. 7. Now, they’ll have to search for another venue. 

“It’s absolutely heartbreaking for the lodge,” Ellison said.