Just after dawn in Dogpatch, on San Francisco’s east side, a golden light falls on parked Tesla Model S’s and on blooming mountain laurels and, at an hour when the air is still touched by a chill, on a crowd that forms most mornings on the corner of 22nd and Minnesota Streets. That is where Aina, a modern Hawaiian restaurant whose brunch has spawned a citywide mania, opened last year in April in a small light-flooded corner space.

Aina’s chef, a tall 30-year-old man with a broad smile named Jordan Keao, grew up in the rural hinterlands of the Big Island of Hawaii. After a stint at the celebrated Bay Area restaurant La Folie, Mr. Keao labored in Silicon Valley, running the Hangout Cafe at Google for a time. But he missed the heady mash-up of the food on which he was raised and bristled at the ignorance in which his ancient culture was held.

“The only thing anyone knew about Hawaiian culture out here,” he said, “was pineapple and ham on a pizza.”

Thus Aina was born. The name comes from a Hawaiian concept that conveys love of the land. Since the 38-seat restaurant is about 2,300 miles from the land he loves, for Mr. Keao that means a lot of air miles.