Chiu on This

The path of the locust, 2011-2012 edition

I spent the last two weeks of December hanging out in Honolulu with my parents, grandma, aunt and uncle from Australia, my sister, and Lani, my parent's adopted 11-year old miniature beagle. Folks ask me if I had a good time; maybe they imagine that I'd be hanging out at the beach or what not. Nope. Mostly what I do is eat with my folks, because that's our M.O., and because food in Hawaii is just so much danged fun. Here's an index to some of the places I went to. But my mom's home cooking is what I'll always crave the most!

• Kapiolani Community College Saturday Farmers Market. You definitely need to go to this market if you're in Honolulu. My next post will go into a bit more detail about what I ate, bought, saw, and sampled there on two visits.

• Bubbies Ice Cream. Multiple locations; I went to the one in Koko Marina. Mochi ice cream makes a perfect little snack. Traditional azuki bean tasted very nice, but the chocolate eggnog was odd. I couldn't get my hands on the li hing mango flavored version, unfortunately. Try the chocolate banana flavored ice cream.

• Ramen-Ya. Multiple locations; I went to Hawaii Kai Towne Center spot. Very good chicken katsu and a hearty curry ramen. Tasty and a good value, which means an assortment of family members wound up eating there three days in a row.

• Uncle Clay's House of Pure Aloha in the Aina Haina Shopping Center. Shave ice with a story and a smile. I'll describe the flavors and the philosophy in a subsequent post.

• Kamehameha Bakery. My mom says the malasadas here are excellent and stay yummy for days, but they were all sold out by the time we got there (around 2 or 3pm). The poi doughnuts are also supposed to be really good. We managed to leave with some interesting (in a good way) haupia filled taro rolls. Need to go back to investigate the other goodies.

• Morning Glass Coffee and Cafe in Manoa. I went with my folks and Lani, as the cafe is just a few blocks away from the vet's office. An open-air eatery, Morning Glass prepares each cuppa joe individually and offers a Hawaiian coffee of the day. On our visit, we had Rusty’s Ka’u Red Cattura (which I found out by asking them via Twitter). They have pastries and heartier fare, including burgers, which smelled super ono! Another place I need to go back to for more "research."

• Harbor Village in the Koko Marina Shopping Center. Good Chinese fare including beef with asparagus in black bean sauce, Peking duck, shrimp with walnuts, and pork with pickled mustard greens. We went twice while I was there, and I think the family went a third time after I left. On our first visit, Danny Kaleikini greeted my parents as if they were neighbors; I guess he's not called the Ambassador of Aloha for nothing.

• Koa Pancake House in the Hawaii Kai Towne Center; multiple locations. Big portions, and I mean big. I got a breakfast special - a Portugese sausage omelette with a "side" of pancakes - that could have fed three people. Whew.

• Gyotaku in the Niu Valley Shopping Center; multiple locations. Good bento options, and even though I'm not a huge sweets person, I really liked the Okinawan sweet potato pie with haupia.

• Kua'aina Sandwich Shop near Ward Center. I referenced this in a previous blog. The fries, which I didn't previously mention as shoe-string style, are still addictive, but their teri-burger, while fine, still can't compete with my memory of the teri-burger from Burger Land. Thumbs up, though, for offering a heaping amount of pepperoncini as a side order.

• Royal Gardens on the third floor of the Ala Moana hotel for yum cha. An unusually upscale Chinese restaurant, I wind up going here at least once a year with my family. We arrived this year on New Year's Day right when the doors opened. The place was swarming with diners within minutes.

And now for something completely different

Lobster noodles from Happy Days in Kaimuki. My family likes to come here for group dinners; typical items we order include shrimp and walnuts, sizzling pork chops, and roast duck. It's not the most elegant place around, but the food's good.

This meal took place in December 2009. Pictured is my uncle Stefan, dad of my cousin Nick. My dad is serving up the noodles, and my mom can be heard asking, in Chinese, for a small portion. I was testing out the video on my [then] new iPhone.

Home cooking

My hometown friend Mark, who resides outside of Denver, is big on food and drink. He brews his own beer, a pasttime he appears to be forgoing with his new obsession for winemaking, and was a coffee connoisseur in the days when Starbucks hadn't ventured outside the Pacific Northwest. He makes fantastic goetta, sauerbraten, and spaghetti and meatballs from family recipes.

Mark recently recounted that his roommate Mike and neighbor Judy have become a culinary trio after being influenced by The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food. They're planning on buying into some locally raised grass fed cattle (i.e., putting dibs on a cow or part of a cow), which sounds both awesome and tasty, and Mark and Judy have also moved into classic cocktail making, perfecting the Sazerac.

Being a cantakerous contrarian, however, I was much more impressed by the trio's production of a classic Hawaiian snack of Portugese origin, the malasadas. Anyone's who lived in Hawaii knows about these little bits of heaven - fried yeasted dough dusted with granulated sugar (think of an ethereal version of zeppole, e.g., malasadas is to zeppole as Krispy Kreme is to Dunkin Donuts)  - and, like Zippy's chili, the thought of a malasadas can produce a deep sense of nostalgia and longing for the islands and "local" culture, akin to a madeleine-inspired reverie. Leonard's used to be the place to get awesome malasadas, but on my last visit home I found their version both different and disappointing; folks have told me that they've changed their basic recipe and have also created malasadas with fillings, which just sounds bizarre. I don't know if some crazy marketing type filled their head with these weird lilikoi-flavored ideas, but I'm pretty unhappy that the "you can't go home again" adage had to play out this way.

Oops, back from my digression...so Mike found the Punahou (howzit, Uncle Barry!) carnival recipe and made the dough, Mark deep fried them, and Judy put them in a paper bag to coat them with sugar. I really wish someone had been around to film or photograph them doing this (because then you'd be seeing pictures of the process here). I wonder if they were drinking homemade Sazeracs, beer, and/or wine while they were on the factory line, or whether the thought of a hot vat of oil within spattering distance kept them sober. I like the family feel of this production - it reminds me of when my parents would make dumplings, a half-day long exercise that produced trays and trays of dumplings and their byproduct, scallion pancakes, and when the only things I could do to "help" were (1) make crazy looking, misshapen, and poorly crimped dumplings and (2) act as "quality control" by sampling as many of the finished goodies as possible.

In any case, I'm looking forward to hearing more from the trio and can probably be of help to them in the quality control/inspection process as well. Why Mark doesn't have his own food/drink blog is beyond me, since he pays attention to both in much greater detail than I do. Apparently Mike has suggested that he start one called "The absinthe-minded professor"; I say "ditto" to that.

Note: I'm still trying to figure out where I can get malasadas in Newark, which has a large Portugese population in the Ironbound neighborhood. The last time I looked for signs of them (admittedly in a very feeble, tapping into Google, way, versus walking around Newark), I couldn't figure out where to go. Any hints would be greatly appreciated.

Puka Dog

"Puka" in Hawaiian means hole, and Puka Dog improves on the pig-in-a-blanket concept by digging a hole almost all the way through the bun to accomodate a Polish sausage while leaving room for sauces and condiments to accumulate.

This makes a Puka Dog nearly perfect for mess-free one-handed eating (hint: hold the dog vertically, as if you were eating a popsicle, rather than perpendicular to your mouth as with a traditional hot dog), not that I tested it out by doing anything extreme like surfing or skateboarding, but I did walk around the International Marketplace in Honolulu with my folks with the Puka Dog in one hand and one of their touted lemonades (only so-so) in another without spilling or leaking any condiments, which would have produced a bright yellow nightmare of stains.  (Wow, gotta love that run-on sentence.)

Apart from the convenience and ingenuity of the Puka Dog, the Polish sausage was tasty and meaty, but the bun and sauces could have used...something.  The bun was sturdy enough not to disintegrate from the generous dose of condiments, and it was nicely toasted, using a special contraption to heat in the inside of the puka, but the flavor and texture were unremarkable.

As for the sauces, I picked their specialty condiments, including the spicy garlic lemon sauce, the mango relish, and the lilikoi (passion fruit) mustard.  I couldn't detect any mango or lemon whatsoever; what I mostly got was spiciness, a lot of garlic, and a sweet honey mustard flavor.  So while I liked the taste of the combined condiments, I didn't quite feel like I was getting a distinctive tropical flavor; and if I'd gone for the traditional mustard-ketchup-pickle relish combo, I would have had little to comment on other than the clever delivery mechanism.  I would certainly like to try some of the other relishes, probably on their own without the other add-ons, although the coconut and banana options strike me offhand as baffling flavor options to go with a grilled sausage.

If you're in the Waikiki area and like hot dogs, I'd say give it a try.  But on a short trip, I would save time and space for plate lunch instead.

Prawn-o-rama

Okay, the title's inaccurate. A few weeks ago, when I was visiting my folks in Hawaii, we drove up to the North Shore to get some shrimp from a truck.  I could have sworn I had written about Giovanni's Shrimp Truck a few years ago, but I guess my intention didn't get much further. Anyhow, my mom and dad had come across a better shrimp truck, Romy's, which also serves prawns on the weekend. Like many shrimp trucks  in the Kahuku area, Romy's sits by the side of the road, although technically I  suppose it's a shack and not a truck.  In any case, it's also adjacent to a pond where folks can fish for their own prawns and have them cooked. My sister and I were trying to figure out how you fish for prawns - I figured the preferred method would be to use a net, but my sister and her boyfriend walked over to the pond while we waited for our order of shrimp to arrive, and they observed people waiting for the prawns to nibble on whatever bait they'd used, so I guess it actually was like fishing. Apparently this is an activity that some tourists from Japan enjoy replicating while vacationing in Hawaii.

The four of us (mom, sis, and sis' boyfriend) shared a plate of shrimp in a garlic butter sauce, served with rice. The only reason we shared a plate is because we were having lunch about two hours after we'd eaten breakfast at Zippy's.  Hey, our time on the islands was limited - we couldn't waste precious hours that could be spent eating by waiting for our stomachs to fully digest our last meal. Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. The shrimp tasted great, and it wasn't just because they were drenched in garlic and butter, although the sauce was indeed very good.  Unlike Giovanni's, the shrimp here were tender and flavorful, and the sauce avoided the bitterness of burnt garlic. There was also an extra sauce, provided on the side, that tasted a bit like soy sauce with vinegar and chilis, that helped to cut the oiliness of the scampi sauce.  I would definitely like an entire order for myself at some point.

As an added treat, Romy's offered pineapple topped with li hing mui powder.  I still don't really know what exactly li hing mui powder is; some definitions I've seen online come across as circular.  Dried salted plums are sometimes called li hing mui, but it's the red powder that goes on top of them plums that make them something different from, say, a prune. Li hing mui's got an intense salty and somewhat tangy flavor that creates a strong puckering sensation and lots of saliva just by thinking about it, and the powder has been added to all sorts of disparate, unlikely foods (like gummi bears and popcorn; I just saw a link to a shortbread recipe that uses it) and drinks as a flavor enhancer or complement.  With pineapple, it highlights and brightness the sweetness of the fruit. I should spend some more time looking into what the heck is in this powder that makes it so danged addictive.

So if you're in Hawaii, don't neglect Oahu.  Drive along the Kamehameha Highway towards the North Shore and get some shrimp.  In the next post, I'll add another recommendation on this road trip.

Can I give you some feedback?

This is a quick post to thank Mike Auzenne and Mark Horstman, the great minds and hearts behind Manager Tools. I was at their training in Chicago last week and learned a huge amount.* I highly recommend their free (yes, free!) podcasts and super-cheap Premium Membership to anyone who wants or needs help with management, or wants to learn about it. The training is also fantastic not only b/c you're forced to practice, practice, practice and not only b/c you get to interact with (or be acted upon by) Mike and Mark but also b/c you get to meet some pretty cool folks.

I received several friendly inquiries into Chiu on This after I referenced it in my introduction, and a couple of people passed on suggestions that I definitely want to follow up on.  John from NYC recommended getting Italian beef sandwiches delivered from Portillos.  Stacey and Randy from Vancouver gave two thumbs up to Mala on Maui, but I'm hoping that I hear from them about where in Chicago I can get the Bucket o' Bacon.  The CEO and his successor who attended the training together highly recommended a Wicker Park restaurant, Schwa, recently featured in the New York Times - the restaurant only serves 32 people a night, so I suppose I better put in a reservation now for 2009.  I was tipped off to RUB BBQ in Chelsea after complaining to the Champaign-Urbana manager who travels frequently to NYC about my city's lack of good Texas BBQ.  And thanks to Sue from Toronto for commenting on my blog and giving me even more reasons to visit Pittsburgh.  Lastly, the food - at the sit-down meals and during the breaks - at the Westin O'Hare was quite good, so I'm now thinking of starting a new category for hotel food (catering and restaurants).

Anyhow, thanks again to Mark and Mike and the MT team for putting together a great training and providing the opportunities for participants to get to know one another.

* And put my training into practice right away - four instances of positive feedback on Thursday; five on Friday. Total elapsed time: 2 minutes! To bring in a food-related aphorism to training, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

A burger a day

While waiting for a post from Don and/or Nicole regarding Milwaukee's fabled Butter Burger, I thought I'd devote the next few days to writing about burgers I've encountered recently, and those that have lingered in my mind.

If you're ever in Honolulu, here are a couple of recommendations.  Teddy's Bigger Burgers is a good choice.  It seems to be touted as the islands' version of the much beloved In-n-Out burger.  There are lots of - maybe too many - burger varieties.  Going against instinct, I ordered their Cajun burger, which was generally yummy but not really spicy in either sense of heat or flavor, i.e., not what I'd expected.  Their thin-cut fries are particularly tasty.  Check out the branch in the Koko Marina shopping center if you're heading out towards Hanauma Bay (close to where I grew up).

Another Honolulu favorite among locals and tourists is the Kua 'Aina Sandwich Shop in Ward Village (formerly Ward Center).  I think the burgers are appealing and certainly ample but maybe a little too hyped up.  The fries, however, are addictive.  (Maybe I'm really writing a post about fries?)

Sadly, my favorite burger from childhood - a wonderfully drippy teri-burger with lots of mayo (sounds gross but it was absolutely delectable) - no longer exists.  The Kaimuki drive-in that cooked it up has been long gone, replaced by an eatery that looks definitely more upscale.  But the next time I'm home I ought to take a peek and see if the teri-burger has somehow been transferred to the new menu.

Now it's time for dinner.

Better than donuts

(One in a series of notes from my trip back home to Hawaii in mid-February.)

While having lunch with my mom - Thai food from Malee Kitchen at Maunakea Marketplace, a food court in Honolulu's Chinatown - I spied with my little eye some unidentifiable foodstuffs at a neary Filipino vendor's stall.  I imagined that a tray stacked with balls-on-a-skewer held some kind of fried chicken meatball snack.  My mom noticed that the woman running the stall, Millennium Express, was quite the salesperson, dispensing samples to inquisitive passersby, who invariably left with bags full of food.  So naturally, once we'd finished eating, we headed over to aks her about the "meatballs."

So long, li'l buddy

Bob Denver, the Gilligan of Gillgan's Island, died last week.  Given the current state of affairs, I feel ridiculous admitting that this made me feel bad.  But as a kid I had a weird affinity to this hapless character who was stuck on an island with people who had little in common with him.

What does this have to do with food?  Uhh, islands, that's the segue. Although I hardly ever feel nostalgic for the Hawaiian Islands, where I grew up, I do pine for local food.  The Mainland's idea of lunch - sandwiches - has always seemed blah to me.  Last year, my sister alerted me that a local chain, L & L, was opening in Manhattan.  Luckily, one location turned up at 64 Fulton St., relatively near the office. Finally, I could get a plate lunch - two scoops of rice, macaroni salad, and a choice of meats like Korean BBQ, chicken or pork katsu, or even Spam, glorious Spam.  The L & L options taste just like what you'd get in Hawaii, and the prices are hard to beat - $8 will get you enough for two full meals.  The chicken katsu (a cutlet with a supercrisp coating of Japanese panko) and the mixed BBQ combos are great for beginners; get the shortrib with onions special if you see it on the signboard.  I have yet to try the musubi and saimin; will report back when I do.  Now if only Zippy's would open a branch here...

Continuing with the island theme, Nancy S. asked that I put in a good word for Cookie Island, which is just three blocks south of the office at 189 Broadway.  I think the way she put it was "these are the best cookies ever."  I think they're a little pricey (a buck a cookie), but I don't have the biggest sweet tooth, so that probably affects my judgment.  The best indication of how good these cookies are was the greater-than-usual stampede generated when Nancy S. sent out the cookie e-mail alert - gone in 60 seconds.