The Maui Wildfires, A Year Later
The Restaurateurs
Qiana and Michele di Bari lost Sale Pepe, their soulful Italian restaurant on Front Street, and Pacific’O, which they managed. Now they’re rebuilding Sale Pepe in Lahaina. Read their original story here and our follow-up below.
Qiana di Bari: The good part is that right after the fire, our friends offered us the space that Alchemy Maui had just left. It’s up in Emerald Plaza, right on the edge of the fire zone. That was a blessing right from the beginning, but it took us a few months to get our bearings. On Jan. 1, we took the space over. I think it will be open sometime October.
We’re having a lot of fun with the redesign and the creation of the space, making it as beautiful as Lahaina deserves. But building out the kitchen has been challenging. We’re waiting on the grease trap permitting, and the cost of the grease trap alone is our entire GoFundMe fund. We’re cobbling together funds from insurance money, GoFundMe and SBA loans. But we believe in this project, and we just want to go back. It would be a lot easier to pick up and go to an existing space in Kihei or Wailea. But we really want to give back to Lahaina what it gave to us. And it’s not over.
