beverage lunch restaurants: hawaii kauai seafood soups
by Lindsey
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Hanalei Dolphin
A foodie friend of mine highly recommended the Hanalei Dolphin restaurant on the north shore of Kaua’i, so of course I had to go check them out! The drive up was scenic and lovely, though riddled with quite a few narrow roads and some one-way bridges that made me a little nervous at first. We spent most of the morning driving and stopping at various lookouts, and then stopped at the Hanalei for lunch. …And not a moment too soon! Half-way through the meal, it began pouring outside! Rain was coming down in sheets. Apparently this is pretty typical Kaua’i. (So, apparently, are the roosters that kept me up the night before with their infuriating cockadoodle doos!) The drive back to the airport after our lunch was pretty harrowing, but we made it back in one piece. Thankfully, we were able to make it back before some of those aforementioned one-way bridges were closed off from the flooding.
Pictured above is the poke – ahi with sesame. This was just okay. I don’t know, maybe I had heard too much hype about the poke, but it wasn’t as memorable as I expected.
The rest:
Caffe Coco
After our day-long boat ride to the Na Pali Coast, we headed to the hotel to get washed up and ready for dinner. (Actually, we had gone on the “sunset dinner” cruise, which sounds much more luxurious than it was. The “cruise” aspect of it was quite bumpy going and it took a long time to get to the coastline. The views were fabulous though, and on the way back we were joined by a pod of playful bottle nose dolphins! But I don’t have much in terms of “sea legs” and ended up feeling quite queasy near the end. Couldn’t even look at the food they prepared, which I think was kind of typical buffet style fare).
I felt so rejuvenated after washing up, but by then it was getting pretty late in the evening – by Kaua’i standards, anyway. All the restaurants close up around 9pm there, even on the weekends! The nice restaurant we’d made reservations at was a 40 minute drive away, and it was already well past 8. In the end, we decided to check out a quaint local restaurant (Caffe Coco) about 5 minutes up the street from the hotel.
Caffe Coco is one of those authentically Kauaiian local joints, kind of hippy and rustic, and run by the kind of proprietor who makes her liliquoi sauce from the trees she has on the premises. The dining area was outside under a tent, and there was a stage area where they had a live band and hula dancers. We ordered our food at the counter near the back, then found an open table where we sat down to enjoy the music and dancing. I loved the laid back atmosphere and outdoorsy feeling of the place!
Pictured above is the tofu potstickers, with gauva grilling sauce. I was surprised by how flavorful they were, considering they had no meat in them!
Toi’s Thai Kitchen
During my stay in Honolulu, my friend and I popped over to Kauai for a weekend trip. It’s just a quickie plane ride from Oahu. We arrived early and spent a good portion of the morning driving up the long and winding road to Waimea Canyon. The roads were very narrow and somewhat harrowing for an urban ninja like myself, but I managed to get us to the top in one piece! Unfortunately, many of the views were foggy, so we could barely see anything at all. (^__^);; But what we could see peeking through the mist was absolutely gorgeous!
After a morning of hard driving, we made our way down to the pier near Hanapepe for a quick bite before our boat tour to the Na Pali Coast. Our guidebook recommended a little place called Toi’s Thai Kitchen right near the docks. We ordered a pork pad thai to share (pictured above), and it was fabulous! The portion was enough to share, and the flavors were spot on.
They gave us a side of papaya salad as well:
Sushi Bistro Shun
Can’t go to Hawaii without checking out a sushi joint, and so we headed to Sushi Bistro Shun in the Moilili neighborhood after it came highly recommended by a friend. We sat at the bar (another recommendation) and I ordered up a bunch of things from the sushi menu a la carte. Of course, I had to try to the chutoro (pictured above), buttery and fresh as it should be.
The rest:
afternoon tea restaurants: chocolate hawaii oahu pastries sandwiches tea
by Lindsey
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Tea at Hawaii Prince Hotel
After a long day’s shopping at Ala Moana mall, my friend and I stopped in at Hawaii Prince Hotel in Waikiki for afternoon tea. This hotel is right by the water, and its afternoon tea is served in its airy foyer overlooking the yacht harbor. The foyer has an elevated seating area, and the waiter brings out the food from one of the restaurants that flank the atrium. The service was on the slow side (maybe because of its location), and I thought the furniture looked a bit retro (in a dated way, not in a hip way). It was a nice and sunny area though, and I did enjoy getting a breather.
The afternoon tea itself was just…okay. Nothing spectacular or unique about it. When a tea is done with little flair and no originality, I scrutinize it even more. If there’s nothing standout about the menu, then they should at least attempt to do a good version of the traditional tea. Not so here. I think they need to go back to the drawing board and study a real tea.
Pictured above is my Darjeeling, which was actually quite nice. Loved the china pattern. The rest:
Formaggio
For dinner, we headed to a local wine bar called Formaggio, located in some nondescript strip mall off to the corner. The restaurant itself didn’t look like much from the outside, but it had a nice atmosphere inside. The place was a bit narrow and cramped (and a bit dim, which made for difficult photographing), but I enjoyed it overall. The food was fabulous.
Above, we have the grilled vegetable napoleon, made with portabella mushroom, eggplant, zucchini, roasted peppers, caramelized onions, truffle oil and goat cheese. It was definitely as wonderful as it sounds. I loved grilled veggies – the smokey flavor really brings out the natural sweetness of the vegetables. The goat cheese added a nice pungent kick.
The rest:
L & L
Some time during the trip, we naturally had to stop at by the L&L Hawaiian Barbecue for a quick bite. L&L is a fast food joint that serves Japanese-esque comfort food. They do franchise their brand – mostly in the west, though they do have a branch or two in New York.
Pictured above is the pork katsu (breaded and fried pork), which came with a side of rice and macaroni salad. I’m not sure what was up with the macaroni salad, but that seemed to be the usual accompaniment to the meal. I thought the pork was really tasty, if a little bit overdone.
I had the beef teriyaki:
Tsukuneya
Okay, back to Hawaii!
One of the things I loved about Honolulu was how there were SO many Japanese restaurants. And not just your typical all-in-one joint where you can get sushi, tempura, teriyaki, ramen, whatever at the same place. They had more specialized places like you would find in Japan, and one such place we went to was a Nagoya cuisine-inspired izakaya (pub) that served chicken tsukune’ or meatballs. The restaurant, aptly named Tsukuneya, had a very extensive list of various tsukune to choose from, which they cooked up on their robata grill. They also made tofu in-house, which I definitely took advantage of as well. ♥
This was actually my first experience having tsukune. In all, I thought they were pretty good, though some were a little on the bland side. I think it’s definitely a satisfying meal to have with a glass of beer (if that’s your thing), and relatively inexpensive. You can order as many different flavor combinations you like, and you pay by the piece.
Pictured above is the bainiku (dried plum) topped with fresh shiso leaf, one of my favorites. The tartness of the plum provided a nice contrast to the tender meat.
Many more under the cut:
Wai’olu
Before dinner on Day 2, we stopped in at the Wai’olu lounge inside the Trump Hotel for cocktails. I felt elegant and sophisticated as we swept through the hotel lobby in our airy dresses and took the elevator up to the sleek lounge overlooking the sunset on Waikiki. It wasn’t quite next to the beach, but you could see the ocean in the distance before the sun went down completely. We’d heard that this place was known for its unique cocktails, so we each ordered one after much deliberation over the menu.
My friend got the Makai Mohito, pictured above, which had Bacardi gold rum, fresh lime juice, fresh basil and mango puree. She was very well pleased with it, and it was certainly a generous portion too.
The rest:
lunch restaurants: comfort food hawaii noodles oahu sandwiches
by Lindsey
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Victoria Inn
I really wanted to get a genuinely local experience of Honolulu, and my friend – who grew up there – was more than happy to oblige. On Day 2, she took me to lunch at the Victoria Inn, located in the neighborhood of Kaimuki. Its decor is really dated (or nostalgic, perhaps), and probably hasn’t changed for decades. My pictures here turned out with a sepia hue, which I suppose is rather appropriate. There were definitely no tourists to be seen here. It’s actually kind of a dive, but I can understand the nostalgic value of the place, and it serves up cheap local comfort food that people have probably been ordering for generations.
I decided to go full-on local and got the saimin, which my friend described as being like “Hawaiian ramen.” It wasn’t until after I ordered it that she also informed me that she doesn’t care for it much. She and I share a lot of the same taste in food, so I wasn’t surprised to find out that I didn’t care for it much either. In fact, I found it rather bland and unappetizing. The broth wasn’t like any kind of ramen broth I’d ever had before – and I suppose that’s fair enough, since it’s not technically ramen – but it was kind of this bizarre chicken broth-flavored thing that didn’t have much going for it. And then there was the egg! Too much egg. It overpowered the blandness of the noodles and broth until all I could taste was egg. I couldn’t finish it at all, and in fact it rather turned my stomach near the end.
I found out later from a saimin-liking friend that in fact, good saimin does exist…just not at Victoria Inn.
The rest of the meal was an improvement:
Paesano
I’ve been a bad, bad blogger! How is my last update from January? But I figured with time springing forward today and the weather warming up at last, I ought to push off the winter slump and get back into the swing of things. The problem with taking a hiatus from blogging is that you get stuck with all this backlog that you’re not sure what to do with, weeks (or months) later. However! I am determined to make my way through them. My Hawaii posts are still plenty acomin’, and there’s much more from before my trip that I still have to do. You’ll have to forgive me for my lack of memory for some of these posts, but at least I have pictures…!
Today I begin with dinner, still from Day 1 of my trip. For dinner, we headed to Paesano, a local Italian place that’s quite the favorite with my friend’s parents. (We actually took quite a bit of food to go for them). The maitre’d was a bit snobby, but the wait staff was decent, if a little slow. No one seemed to mind that too much anyway, as the place was hopping with business that night.
Pictured above is my entree – the veal marsala. The veal was cooked nicely with a great crust, and the sauce was good, though nothing particularly memorable. I like my marsala sauce to have that strong wine flavor to it, which this one didn’t seem to have so much.
The rest:
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beverage lunch restaurants: comfort food hawaii oahu seafood smoothies
by Lindsey
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Crouching Lion Inn
Continuing along with day 1…
We drove from Honolulu, heading east along the shores of Oahu, stopping at various lookout points to admire the view. Around lunch time, we took a lunch break at the Crouching Lion Inn Bar & Grill, so named after a rock formation located behind it. (I don’t think they’re actually an inn where you can stay…?) It’s located right by the water, which you can view from the restaurant’s patio seats. They also had an indoor seating area, and in retrospect, we probably should have sat there. The view was just as pretty from the inside if you got a window-side seat, and more importantly – there would’ve been no mosquitoes. It turned out that the day before I arrived, it had rained a lot on the island. It had cleared up in time for my round the island drive, but it also called out all the mosquitoes in the area, and they just had a holiday under the patio table. I took the brunt of it, as I was wearing a dress. I was probably bitten dozens of times. (;____o) (I also had an allergic reaction, which wasn’t very fun). The people at the restaurant were really nice and let us borrow some OFF spray, but it was too late by then.
Mosquito Hell put a damper on the meal, but the food was still pretty good. Nothing out of this world or anything, but I liked it! (^__^)
Pictured above are the drinks we got – a mango smoothie and the virgin “lava flow” with pineapple, coconut and strawberry. I thought the mango smoothie could’ve had more mango flavor. The lava flow was extremely sweet, which I suppose is good if you want dessert in a drink?
For the food, the three of us decided to get three pupus (appetizers) to share:
Tea at Morrison Clark
My friend hosts a Christmas Tea every December, and this year she had it at the historic Morrison Clark Hotel. Our party of about 18 people had a room all to ourselves near the back of the restaurant, and we had a lovely buffet set out for us in the main room, filled with tiers of sandwiches and pastries. Pots of hot water were brought to us at the table, alongside baskets filled with nice teabags from Harney & Sons. I had several different kinds of teas, from Earl Gray to Dragon Pearl Jasmine. My favorite was the Pomegranate Oolong, which had a wonderfully floral flavor to it.
Now without much ado, the spread:
Lupe
In the old space that used to be Sesto Senso is a Mexican Cantina called Lupe, and I stopped in there a little while ago to meet up some friends for a quick dinner. The interior is pretty nice, with the high ceilings that I remember from the old place, and warm, colorful decor that wasn’t too over the top. The chairs could’ve been more comfortable, but in all, the place was very pleasing.
I got the fish tacos (pictured above), which came with beans and rice. I thought it was okay, but rather underseasoned and in need of a good sprinkle of salt. I thought it lacked punch, as I expected a bright citrus flavor or spiciness from the salsa, neither of which were present.
I also had the corn on the cob:
Taste of Saigon
One night, a friend and I got a hankering for some pho, so we naturally headed out to Pho 75 in Rockville, which still has the best pho in the area, in my opinion. Except…they were in the process of closing, and weren’t accepting new customers. Devastated, we poked around on the iPhone to see if any other pho-serving establishments were still open. We chose Taste of Saigon in Rockville Town Center and promptly headed over for some late evening pho-ness.
We were ushered into a dining area by the bar, which I thought was somewhat awkwardly placed behind a partition screen. But we did get a nice view of the bar, where a man in a panda suit (no joke) was hanging out, pretending to be drunk. I’m not sure if he was supposed to be one of the establishment’s attractions or not…? Anyway, in the midst of this bizarre performance, we ordered the calamari dish to share, and two small sized pho each.
Pictured above is the calamari, which was decent, though nothing spectacular. I thought the sweet sauce was a bit cloying, but maybe I just prefer salt and pepper flavors with my calamari. Or something bright and citrusy.
The pho:
