restaurantMystery Diners · Season 8, Episode 13 · Aired January 7, 2015
Chef Chai
Honolulu, Hawaii
Yes. This one is still open.
On the show
Season 8, Episode 13 · January 7, 2015 · restaurant
credit/billing-fraud sting
What happened after
Upscale Pacific Rim/fusion restaurant still operating with regular hours.
What happened on the show
Chai Chaowasaree was seeing a run of voided checks at his upscale Honolulu restaurant. Charles Stiles sent mystery diners Jordan and David in as a waitress and a customer. As aired, a manager had been pressuring a waitress friend to void bills for her own gain and lying to the staff that the card system was down so guests would pay cash she could pocket, the two badmouthing each other all the while. The confrontation has Chai firing both and ordering them out before he calls the police, the waitress rueing that she ever trusted the manager. Because Mystery Diners was later accused of scripting these reveals, this voided-check sting is best read as broadcast rather than as independently confirmed.
After the cameras left
Chef Chai is still open, a going upscale room that never needed the show. The Pacific Rim and fusion restaurant at 1009 Kapiolani Boulevard keeps regular hours, with review activity dated to July 2026 across OpenTable and Yelp in our pass. An established, well-regarded operation was never the fragile business a sting implies. It kept running on its own reputation rather than on anything a camera crew did in one night, which is the quiet truth behind this survivor.
Sources
Confidence: high. Last checked 2026-07-19.
What is there now
Street imagery via Google Maps. Location approximate.