After the week in the Big Island we flew to O'ahu to spend a few days in Honolulu. Zach and I had the chance to visit last year and pretty much everything we wanted to do on our return trip had to do with food and revisiting our favorite spots. On the first night we walked down Kuhio St. (the skyscrapers were really a shock after the laid back small town vibe of even the biggest towns on the Big Island) to Keo's. Zach and I had the best Thai food ever there (even now that Zach's been to Thailand he still says that) and we had talked it up to everyone else so I was a bit nervous that it would disappoint. Luckily for us not that much had changed. The restaurant was still filled with a somewhat eclectic mix of European and Thai artwork and enormous urns overflowing with tropical flowers my evil jungle prince (that does sound rather funny- I do mean my dish of curried tofu and veggies not a rogue Thai warrior) had the perfect balance of spice and heat with richness provided by coconut milk. For dessert we couldn't resist the mango and sticky rice, as the note told us the mangoes came from Keo's own farm. It was so good it was gone before I realized I hadn't even taken a photo.
The next morning we woke up early and trekked over to Leonard's for malasadas. Zach and I had been to this family run bakery before for their homemade Portuguese doughnuts, always freshly fried and rolled in sugar and sometimes filled with custard. Personally, I prefer the unfilled kind as the warm, slightly chewy doughnut really doesn't need any embellishments. For lunch Zach and I went to Rainbow's, an old fashioned drive-in, for plate lunch. By now we had gotten smart to the portion sizes and shared one plate (which had mahi-mahi, barbecue beef and fried chicken along with the requisite 2 scoops of rice and 1 of mac salad) and then walked to Waiola's for a shave ice.
For our very last meal we all went to Ono Hawaiian Food (ono meaning delicious in Hawaiian language). The staff here are all Hawiian and will take the time to explain what each dish is and how you should eat it (especially helpful with poi). Everyone got the plates that came with a seemingly endless array of little dishes. First off was lomi salmon, a mixture of chopped tomatoes and cooked salmon that even those who didn't like tomatoes (me included) thought was good, then the pipikaula, homemade beef jerky. This may have been the best thing that I ate in Hawai'i. It had the perfect mix of pepper and spices that balanced the intense beefy flavor. Then I had kalua pig, a kind of roasted and shredded pork with a thin sauce. The flavorings took a back seat at the kalua pig really just tasted like the most tender, juicy pork every. For dessert we had a little square of coconut custard pudding, the perfect end to the meal. Then, sadly, it was time for Zach and I to grab our bags and head to the airport for the trip home, but at least we traveled with full stomachs.
It seems hard to believe that just a few days ago I was hiking up Diamond Head trail thinking about what to eat for lunch now that I’m back in the lovely summer heat of D.C. and the office air conditioner is broken. But that’s the way it is with vacation, no matter how wonderful it may be, you have to return to real life in the end.We left for Hawai’i on the morning of July 4th, pretty early in the morning. The food choices during out fourteen hour trip weren’t the greatest (I could write an entire post on the lack of anything remotely healthy in the Phoenix airport so I think it’s better I not say anything at all) so I was really glad that I had packed some chocolate and zucchini muffin cakes (post to come) to help us get through the trip. After seemingly endless hours squished into economy class we touched down on runway at Kona International Airport at Keahole in the middle of a craggy, black lava field and we stepped out into a blast of heat convecting off the blacktop that made me wonder why we left DC. My sentiments quickly changed as less than an hour later we were in the water though and the memories of being scrunched into an airplane seat were fading fast.After a unremarkable dinner and breakfast the next morning we got in the car (a crème colored PT Cruiser, yes really) and headed for the other side of the island, stopping at Waipio Valley to take a look from the top of a cliff down on a black sand beach and making another stop to pick up some home-made fudge (dark chocolate macadamia for me and chocolate-coconut for Zach) before getting in to Hilo. For lunch we headed to Ocean Sushi downtown, which gave off a grade school cafeteria vibe with its linoleum and white walls but had some very fresh sushi (it was the first time Zach’s dad had ever had it--). That night we headed to Kalapana to see lava flowing into the ocean. At first I was sort of annoyed with Zach for making us drive down after an entire day spent in the car as all we could see was a huge plume of steam coming off the ocean but after the sun set we could see the orange reflection of the lava flow in the plume and occasional explosions that sent fiery lava into the air. For a late dinner that night we ate at Ken’s- a local diner with a really great keiki (kids’ menu).
Food portions on the Big Island really reflected the island’s name and were enormous so I was really happy to see a menu of smaller things at Ken’s that wasn’t just mac and cheese or a hot dog. I got grilled mahi-mahi with a tossed salad and brown rice and managed to clear my plate for the first time on the trip. After a few days hiking at Volcanoes National Park we headed back to the Kona side where I had a bit of a food rebellion.
When I am on vacation I get to eat whatever I want. Not that I’m restrictive about food at home, but on vacation I can eat ice cream every day and really think I should. The only thing that was a bit disappointing on the first half of the trip was that the lunch portions were so big I never had room for an afternoon ice cream. The first day back in Kona was no different as I got a bowl of saimin that was sized for a sumo wrestler. Though the name ‘Big Island Grill’ probably should have tipped me off, I was still surprised to get a massive bowl of steaming pork based broth chock full of soft noodles, pork filled dumplings, cooked egg, Chinese style pork and scallions. As if that wasn’t enough, our server also set down a little bowl with two batter dipped fried shrimp. I kid you not- I ate as much as I could for lunch and still had soup left over after filling a quart-sized take out container. It was delicious, but I could barely eat dinner that night, which led to my epiphany the next day.
After a morning snorkel at Honaunau Bay, where we spent a few hours in the peace of coral covered mountains (they were only 30-50 feet tall but seemed mountainous to me) watching the fish go about their daily lives and sharing the water with Honu, endangered Hawaiian sea turtles, we went to the Coffee Shack for lunch. Recommended in our guidebook, the Coffee Shack is an unassuming building perched on the side of the mountain hugging the edge of the highway. We stepped into a tiny room with a counter and dessert case and the pies immediately caught my attention. French silk, key lime, macadamia nut, not to mention the tall carrot cake with its cream cheese frosting or the dark chocolate layer cake next to it. As we picked a table outside on the veranda and momentarily forgot out hunger looking out over the view of the ocean worthy of a Michelin 3-Star restaurant the epiphany came- I was going to eat pie for lunch.
Now some of you might be laughing at this point at the silly nature of this revelation but for me it really was a revolutionary idea- skip the nutritious stuff and go straight for dessert but I am honestly not sure I’d ever done it before in my life. My plan did backfire a bit though, as the smell of Zach’s pizza reminded me of how hungry I actually was from the morning swimming so we made a trade- I got a quarter of Zach’s pizza and he got half my pie (he really was the winner on that one- though at the time he was quite huffy about it). The pizza wasn’t really what I would consider a pizza- more like thick bread with a sauce and cheese topping, though it was delicious. The pie filling, Kona lime not Key Lime, had the perfect balance of tart and sweet and the real whip cream topping balanced it out with a creamy finish. The crust was actually not the greatest but in the interest of full disclosure I will say that Zach’s mom makes an amazing flaky-crispy piecrust so I’m a bit spoiled.
We liked the Coffee Shack so much we drove down again for our last meal on the Big Island before heading to Honolulu.
To be continued….
I finally turned in my last paper and so glad to be done with the summer semester (well I do have this pesky independent study to do but I won't think about that now) and Zach and I are getting ready to leave for Hawaii! I am so excited and really looking forward to not having to do anything besides enjoy myself and eat Hawaiian food for a few days. We're gone for two weeks so there won't be much activity on the blog but you might want to check out these websites in the meantime...
Food Porn Daily despite the name this is totally work appropriate and the pictures will really make you drool.
Recipe Muncher get inspired by what other people are cooking, find a new favorite blog, or subscribe your own...
For a taste of the Caribbean, check out Tastes Like Home
And if you want to plan your own trip to Hawaii, the blog can help you out.
See you all when we get back.
Well it has been a while. Taking the red eye back to DC on Monday night left me exhausted for the rest of the week and since I didn't have classes I took a bit of a mental vacation as well but now I am back and ready to talk about our trip. I was a bit skeptical that it would be worth flying across the country for just three days but we managed to do (and eat) so much that I really think it was. Granted, being in full on zombie mode Tuesday at work was an unfortunate consequense but oh well.
So- San Francisco. I think it's about as different a city as DC as possible. The hills, the victorian architecture, the independent spirit of the shops and restaurants and just the general aura of the San Franciscans give the city a mellow vibe but there is so much going on I wouldn't call it laid back. We got in very late Friday night and spent the night at a friend's house in Pacific Heights (it's really too bad this isn't an architecture blog and I can't go on and on about the 15 foot ceilings and moulding, but I wish I could). The next morning we began the great trek looking for a place for breakfast. We ended up at a crepe shop in Nob Hill where I got the breakfast crepe-- an omelette with ham, peppers and cheese folded into a crepe, with a salad and home fries. The crepe was delicious and when I went to grab my camera to take a picture I realized that I had forgotten it so no pictures of the first day.
We continued our trek up Russian Hill, down to North Beach and then back up to Pac Heights to grab out bags. We got on a Muni bus to get to our hotel in Union Square (which reminded me of Times Square with the throngs of tourists but had much less neon advertising) and headed down to the Embarcadero. We met up with our friend E-, who is from the Bay Area and happened to be in town and walked down to Pier 39 to see the sea lions (I could watch them for hours, they are so funny as they lug themselves out of the water onto the docks and then proceed to the throw themselves down to lay in the sun) then headed back to North Beach for a cappuccino refuel stop and had dinner in an Italian restaurant there, but sadly it wasn't anything special.
On Sunday we walked around the Haight and saw where Janis Joplin lived (but the pictures are other houses in the area) and peeked into the Japanese tea garden in Golden Gate Park. I would have like to go in to see the place where fortune cookies may have been invented, but the $4 entrance fee seemed a bit high (and didn't include any tea). So we headed to the Mission and saw some amazing urban public art and had lunch at El Farolito. Zach got a massive burrito that he said rivaled Chipotle in quality and I had tostadas. For dinner that night we had Thai at Osha, good but not spectacular though they did to a great job plating.
Monday was the big food day. I had seen a pastry shop the night before so we went there for breakfast. It had been so long since I've had a pain au chocolate- I forgot how good chocolate is for breakfast. For lunch it was bento boxes at the Japanese deli in the Ferry Building. They were as good as any I had in Japan. Mine had a crispy shrimp cake, chicken meatball in a sweet glaze, a potato, lettuce and edamame salad (I would never have though about combining those items with a wasabi mayonaise but it was delicious) and a purple rice salad. Walking around Berkley that afternoon I got a crepe avec Nutella from the same shop that I stopped in when we did spring break in California my senior year of college.
Our last meal in San Francisco was at the E&O Trading Company, which our friend described as serving 'food from the former British colonial areas in South East Asia'. It's sort of a strange description but it fit. We had naan stuffed with paneer served with sweet tamarind and tart tomato sauces, a light and crispy corn fritter with a soy dipping sauce, minced chicken lettuce wraps (definitely something to try at home) and eggplant, hakka style (eggplant is one of those items I always love out yet can never seen to make for myself). Dessert was so good I didn't even manage to get a picture of it-
But then dinner was done and it was time to head to the car and the airport and home to real life. I've made a little slide show to remind myself of our visit- you can take a look if you'd like to see some of the food that I've talked about. If you click on a picture it will take you to a larger view with captions.
