Feeding the Seawolves, Strengthening the Community
When Pasifika Grill & Bar officially opened its doors in Bellevue, there was no marketing push, no press release, just a blessing. For restaurant founders Angela Mose, Ed Muna, Ray and RJ Ogo, and Santos May, that moment meant more than any grand opening promotion.
Angela is a first-generation Tongan American, and in Pacific Island culture, you bless a new space before you expect anything to grow from it. Whether it's a business, a church, or a home, you lay the foundation spiritually and communally first.
The soft opening had been quiet. Angela was out of town at her son's football game when her partner called; turnout was light. She told him to wait, flew home, gathered the community, and organized a proper ribbon cutting, complete with a blessing over the building.
The following week, a young man walked in, ordered generously, took photos, and asked to interview her. He turned out to be Seattle Foodie, one of the most-followed food influencers in the state. "He told me that after he posts about a restaurant, it often struggles to handle the traffic," said Angela. That weekend, there was a line out the door and into the parking lot.
What started as a restaurant became something bigger. A gathering place for Pacific Island families, athletes, artists – and eventually, the Seattle Seawolves.
Angela was born in Seattle to a Tongan mother and an American father. Growing up first-generation, she was shaped early by a culture built on generosity and showing up for your people.
She didn't plan on a career in hospitality. She took a front desk job at a hotel to pay her way through college, and quickly realized she was good at it. Pacific Islanders, she'll tell you, are naturally hospitable. The work felt like an extension of who she already was. She moved up fast, eventually running a hotel before she was old enough to legally serve alcohol, then went into national association sales for major hotel brands. Her approach was simple: she didn't push products, she built relationships.
Eventually she moved into operations; she wanted to make sure what she promised clients actually got delivered. That shift would shape how she eventually built Pasifika Grill & Bar. In 2020, while managing a hotel in Renton, Angela leased its restaurant space to a catering company called Cater 4 You. When the pandemic hit, those relationships held. Years later, those same partners came back with a bigger idea.
By then, Angela had nine children and a husband she'd known since elementary school. His job with the City of Seattle provided the stable foundation they needed. Together, they decided to take the risk.
They'd build Pasifika Grill & Bar on their own terms. Great food. Strong service. Community first. And from there, everything expanded.
Rugby has always been part of Angela's story. Her stepfather and uncles played when they came to the United States in the 1970s-80s, back when the sport was barely a blip on the American radar. Games meant long drives and teams were scattered, but the community was tight.
Decades later, that same thread runs through her own family. Her daughter Anna earned a full rugby scholarship to Central Washington University before the program was cut. Her sons have played with the Liberty Rugby Clubs and currently play for the Eastside Lions. She's watched the sport transform in the Pacific Northwest; what once meant driving across counties now shows up in local high schools, with the Seattle Seawolves pushing hard on youth development and community pathways.
Rugby, she'll tell you, offers something unique. In football, certain players can go a whole game without touching the ball. In rugby, everyone does. Everyone runs, passes, supports. It creates a different kind of team, and a different kind of person.
She sees that in her daughters, who do both wrestling and rugby without hesitation. They embrace the physicality and have found real confidence in their own strength. When Angela was in high school, she didn't even know women's rugby existed (though she certainly would have played if she had).
Rugby makes room for all body types, backgrounds, and personalities. If you're willing and you can move, there's a place for you. As Angela puts it: "It does not matter where someone comes from. If they can tackle, run, pass, and support the team, they belong." For Pacific Island families, where sport and community have always gone hand in hand, that kind of welcome feels like home.
Angela's connection to the Seattle Seawolves started even before Pasifika opened its doors. Through youth football with the Rainier Ravens, she met families who would later become part of the Seawolves ownership group, and those relationships deepened steadily over the years. Eventually she reconnected with now-CFO Drew Dambreville, someone she'd crossed paths with years earlier in the events world. When Pasifika launched, a partnership felt like the obvious next step.
The restaurant began catering VIP and field-level spaces at Seawolves matches, and supporting Pacific Island cultural programming on game days. Pasifika also supported Pacific Island dance performances and cultural programming tied to game days. Pretty quickly, it became something more than food – a genuine cultural exchange, with each side showing up for the other in ways that went beyond any contract.
Angela also co-produces Polyfest, a Pacific Island festival that draws between 6,000 and 9,000 people each year. The Seawolves come with marketing, booths, autograph sessions, and ticket sales. Pasifika shows up for the Seawolves community in return.
That partnership recently got a lot closer – literally. The restaurant's newest location, Pasifika Northwest, opened less than a mile from Seawolves home stadium Starfire Sports. Fans have already started treating it like home base.
The new space also includes dedicated event areas, something guests had been asking for since day one. At the original Bellevue location, people would host full celebrations regardless of the seating situation, because they wanted to be inside that atmosphere. Now there's room to do it right.
Angela sees the through line clearly. The Seawolves are building something real in the Pacific Northwest, and so is Pasifika. Both are rooted in culture, powered by community, and running on relationships built slowly over time. In a lot of ways, both are family.
When Angela talks about Pasifika, she leads with the people. The vision was always bigger than a menu. The name itself, Pasifika, spans Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia: Tonga, Samoa, Fiji, Guam, Hawaii, Tahiti. A shared identity carried across islands and generations. Angela wanted to build a space where Pacific Islanders felt genuine pride and ownership. Somewhere guests could walk in and see themselves reflected in food, music, art, and the faces behind the counter.
Much of the staff is from the local community; people who work hard together, then stay to sing karaoke after closing. Angela doesn't script every greeting or force personality into a mold. She figured out a long time ago that when you let people operate in their strengths, everything else improves.
"What feels most meaningful is creating a space for our employees, many of whom are our children or their friends. We watch them grow. We work alongside them. As parents and owners, that carries weight."
Guests feel the authenticity and warmth as soon as they walk in. In the first year, the restaurant didn't lose money, but didn't turn a large profit either. What it earned was something harder to manufacture: loyalty. Bellevue embraced it. Guests started saying, "This is our restaurant." Well-known artists performed on the stage. Athletes stopped by. Seattle Seahawks players came through. Word spread.
Expansion followed, not because it was forced, but because people kept asking to be part of it.
For Angela, leadership looks a lot like service.
She's a first-generation daughter. Rugby mom of nine. Cultural producer. Business owner. Partner to the Seattle Seawolves. And each role feeds the others in ways that are hard to separate.
Rugby gives people an outlet, she says. It welcomes all who have the passion, demands teamwork and trust, and rewards the people who show up ready to give everything. Pasifika works the same way. Walk through the door ready to be part of something, and there's a place for you.
Angela’s personal favorite dish on the menu is Tinaktak. It’s a Chamorro comfort dish: beef and gravy over rice, finished with coconut milk and fresh green beans. Rich, warm, and familiar in the way that only certain foods can be.
"If I had to eat one dish for the rest of my life," she says, "it would be tinaktak."
In a lot of ways, that dish is a pretty good mirror for what she's built. Comfort with depth, strength with softness, and culture carried forward one plate at a time.
