The restaurant Mo' Bettahs is a ballad to beach life. Surfing movies play on TV screens in a continuous loop. Paddles and surfboards that have all touched Hawaiian waters adorn the walls. Reggae music by the Hawaiian band Natural Vibrations pulses through the speakers.
It's nearly enough to make you forget you're in a dry, landlocked city where the sights include snow-capped mountains and the occasional blizzard.
That this restaurant exists at all is improbable. The brothers Kalani and Kimo Mack, who hail from Kaneohe on the coast of Oahu, opened the Hawaiian-style fast-casual place in 2008, in the depths of the Great Recession, with no experience, no business plan and only the money they had saved from driving buses in Honolulu.
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