OFF THE MENU

SWEET AND SAVORY

(From left) A slice of pound cake from Maya’s Bakes is a great way to end a meal; the Spam musubi from Kealoha’s Kitchen; the exterior of Kealoha’s Kitchen’s Latonia location.

childhood, so he started making it himself. “My recipes are all my favorites from the islands,” he says. Pineapple teriyaki meats are on the menu, of course, and so are Spam musubi (fried Spam wrapped between two beds of rice in nori) and loco moco, a beef patty over a bed of rice topped with brown gravy and an over-easy egg. Abafo met his wife, Amy, an English teacher, in South Korea at a Memorial Day cookout. The two started hanging out and fell in love. “I said, ‘If you hang out with me for five more years, when I retire, I will follow you for the rest of your life,’ ” he recalls. That led the couple back to Cincinnati, Amy’s hometown. They settled in Northern Kentucky with their four children and Val picked up a second career as a scale technician while Amy continued to work in academic settings. Through it all, they were constantly throwing parties and serving Val’s food.

“Everyone was always saying, ‘You should open a restaurant,’ ” Abafo says. “And I was like, ‘No way, too much work.’ ”

It was the sudden death of his older brother, Rudy Kealoha Abafo—who died of a heart attack at age 52—that ultimately resulted in the opening of Kealoha’s Kitchen. Kealoha means “the love” and it describes his brother, but also the feeling Abafo gets when someone tries, and subsequently falls in love with, his food.

Aparna “Appy” Thukrel Kad gets a similar joy serving Indian dishes at her lunch bistro, My Kolorful Kitchen, in Mason.

“I thrive on it,” says Kad, who opened her 15-seat café back in June after months of selling her dishes at the coffee shop Adesso across the street. “Seeing people pick that last grain of rice off the plate—and knowing it turned out good—there’s nothing like it. An empty plate is my biggest reward.”

Kad was born in Bombay, India, (now Mumbai) and began cooking young. The joke in her family—well, sort of a joke—was that her mother was afraid to leave 7-year-old Appy home alone with her older brother because she liked to make fried food and her brother liked to eat it, so he didn’t stop her.

When she was 12, her family moved to southern India and Kad began to understand the vast differences in Indian food from state to state. Her inspiration for cooking came from sitting around with the women in her family, talking about food and sharing cooking tips. The science of cooking always fascinated Kad, like how an onion tastes different in a recipe whether it is sliced or chopped.

When her husband’s work brought them to the United States, where they are currently raising two boys, Kad made friends who also liked to cook.

During the early months of the pandemic, her friends were always asking her to make them Indian dishes, including her butter chicken. She watched MasterChef India and got inspired. She began posting pictures and descriptions of her dishes on social media and blogging about them.

People told her, too, she should open a restaurant. It was her husband who encouraged her most and gave her the financial backing.

“He was like, ‘You can do it,’ ” Kad says. “He travels an awful, awful lot. He said, ‘I’ve eaten all over the country and trust me, nothing is more soul food for all of us than your food.’ ”

Kad creates a new menu each week, serving two lunch options, one vegetarian and one meat. The options are always changing, pulling from her knowledge of curries, Indo-Chinese dishes, dals, biryanis, and much more. My Kolorful Kitchen also has a dinner and catering menu that can be ordered for pick up.

In fact, all these home chefs have catering menus.

Molden can whip up one of her MB Originals for a special occasion, like a Strawberry Crunch Cheesecake Cake, Red Velvet Cheesecake Cake, or a Fudge Round.

“When I started down this path, it wasn’t about making a bunch of money,” says Molden, who is taking business classes and looking at hiring her first employee. “I love baking so much, and I want to share that love with my customers.”