Wiki Wiki's world tour

While the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered many restaurants and businesses, Keith Allard, the owner of Wiki Wiki Poke, felt ready for the transition to a takeout business model – as ready as someone can be in the face of a global pandemic, at least. 

“I was built for carry-out. I knew how to do it. So March 2020 hits, and we’re as busy as ever. We went just carry-out, and we killed it,” Allard recalled, saying Wiki Wiki was ready for what he calls “the convenience revolution.”

In 2022, when many other local restaurants were finding their footing in the new normal of the restaurant business and reopening to dine-in diners, Allard decided to close his doors and take his restaurant on the road.

“My relationship with my food started changing,” Allard said. “I watched it become a commodity. I’m taking this beautiful food; I’m throwing a lid on it. I’m not seeing the customer.”

Despite the steady flow of business throughout the pandemic, Allard found it difficult to keep up with the rising prices of ingredients.

“I had to explain to my customers that the food that was the exact same was now 75% [more expensive]. It wasn’t a change in my product. It was a change in [the economy]. It felt so weird,” he said.

By 2022, Allard felt like he “never wanted to cook again,” and in May of that year, he let the lease of his restaurant on Wealthy Street expire. 

He took time to focus on himself and reconsider his motivations. 

Without a restaurant of his own to keep up with, Allard started going out to eat again. However, he noticed a decline in the dining experience with reduced hours and most restaurants only opening five days a week.

“I began to see the world through structures instead of individual agency. I saw the structures that were holding me down. I kept breathing. I cooked for myself,” Allard said. 

Then Allard traveled to Japan in April 2024, where he studied Japanese approaches to farm-to-table cuisine. 

He noticed most Japanese restaurants were best suited to serve small crowds, enabling the chefs to pay closer attention to their diners. 

“I met some fantastic chefs. They gave me the primary source documents and helped me translate them into English. They’ve been sending me ingredient lists via email. It’s become this beautiful international energy. I’m but a conduit,” Allard said. 

Allard’s time in Japan inspired him to return to Grand Rapids and craft each of his pop-up menus for small, specific crowds.

While scrolling through Instagram, Allard noticed a former customer wearing a Wiki Wiki Poke shirt. This customer was the newest chef at Terra, a popular farm-to-table restaurant located in Eastown. Allard reached out to send his congratulations, and when he was asked if he wanted to collaborate with Terra, Allard surprised himself by saying yes.

Throughout the spring and summer, Allard has been working with bars and restaurants around Grand Rapids to provide extraordinary dining experiences alongside an “Avengers-style” team of chefs and friends.

Allard collaborated with Chateau Grand Rapids, a new coffee and wine bar on Cherry Street, for his most recent pop-up on July 31 – a one-night-only raw bar. Tickets for the event sold out within 20 minutes and over 200 guests registered. Since the space in each restaurant varies, tickets for a Wiki Wiki pop-up dinner usually go on sale a month in advance.

“We typically serve cheese, charcuterie, and other heavy snacks at Chateau, but we thought this would be a fun way to occasionally offer more food and give our wine guests a new experience,” said Chateau owner Allaire Swart in an email interview.

Chateaus owners Allaire and Chris Swart collaborated with Allard on the menu. 

“It was awesome working together. Keith handled the food, and we selected the wines to feature that night based on his menu! We wanted to pick by-the-glass wines for the evening that were perfect pairings for each of his dishes. We also selected some special wines by the bottle from our cellar that paired with the menu that evening,” Allaire Swart said.

The most remarkable part of the evening is the fact that Chateau doesn’t have a kitchen or a walk-in refrigerator. 

“We definitely have limited food prep and cooking space, but all of our pop-up chefs have gotten creative and worked really well in the space! We also dedicated a lot of time to planning the logistics with our team, so everything flowed as smoothly as possible,” said Allaire Swart. 

When planning for a pop-up, Allard usually preps eight to ten savory items. He estimates that around 50% of the tables order the whole menu, averaging three plates per person.

“I want it to be a real creative experience. I want people to pick their poison. These have become events that sort of self-select for the most culinary-motivated people, so I want to give them the best experience,” Allard said.

Unlike grabbing a sandwich from a food truck or a treat from the farmer’s market, these pop-up dinners are centered around the experience. 

The atmosphere that night at Chateau was the perfect antidote to a dining culture built on convenience and isolation. With a novel-length wine list and gentle lighting, I could easily see how Chateau would usually be a great place to unwind. But that night, the atmosphere was electric. Every table was packed, and waiters rushed to and from the kitchen carrying plates piled high with lobster banh mi and blue crab gyoza. Dessert for the night was a chocolate and salted peanut crepe cake served with miso caramel.

Each dish was plated beautifully. I ordered the seafood boil: a combination of mussels, clams and crawfish doused in a lobster broth infused with gojuchang and cilantro, along with a fingerling potato and tourkashi bread from local bakery Field & Fire.

The crawfish were light and supple, and the oysters and clams melted in my mouth. My favorite part was the small, salty hunk of andouille sausage, which flaked off in tender morsels. It was a dish that was impossible to consume passively. As I beheaded crawfish, my fingers dripping with broth, I had no choice but to be fully present.

To make maximum use of the tight space, especially on a night where temperatures neared 90 F, Allard and his fellow chefs prepared the seafood boil on the back patio.

“One of the craziest parts for me is the wild engineering challenge of walking into each space, basically living in it for two weeks, and finding out, ‘How do we rearrange this?’” Allard said. “If I was sitting in my brick-and-mortar, I would be thinking about efficiency. Now I’m thinking about growth.”