Local Boy, Local Cheesecakes
Cheesecake has been around since ancient Greece. When the Romans came along, they adapted the recipe, carrying it into greater Europe.
Food Box
Tiki Tock, You Don’t Stop
After leading the kitchen team at Roy’s for 10 years, executive chef Ronnie Nasuti received an offer he couldn’t refuse from Tiki’s Grill & Bar. Since then, Nasuti has updated the menu to include more locally sourced produce and meats.
Oodles of Noodles
Back home in Yokohama, I grew up eating ramen in authentic, hole-in-the-walls, with chefs tossing pigs’ bones for tonkotsu broths and making fresh noodles behind greasy, crowded counters. It’s an intimate, elbow-bumping affair of taxicab conversation with chefs and cigarette-smoking, hungry businessmen seated next to you until the food comes.
KCC Kine Grindz
These kids can stand the heat. But for eight weeks, they’ll be staying out of the kitchen.
Occupy Wine Stop
NOT BREAKING NEWS: There’s a lot of protesting going on. From Occupy Wall Street and anti-APEC to rioting Penn State students, it’s a pretty cacophonous news week featuring voices of all timbres.
Flocking to the Fairest Fowl
Because local poultry farms are in flux and supplies of sustainably produced fowl are limited at this high-demand time of year, search, call and order in advance before you assume you can not only score a drive-by bird, but, given the season, have the pick of the flock at your local market. Turkeys Heirloom, humanely raised, organic, antibiotic-free, free-range turkeys will, as usual, be found at specialty stores such as Whole Foods, Kokua Market and The Source at upwards of $2 per pound.
Pressing Matters
Hawaii boasts 11 of the 13 climatic zones (as defined in Ag circles by the USDA), and each offers opportunities to grow almost every imaginable fruit, spice and vegetable variety. All over the Islands one can see vestiges of farming experiments over the decades–Russian-planted olive trees in Waikii, apple orchards in Volcano, cashew groves in Maunawili and, of course, Vineyard Boulevard, home to our first grape vines back in the 1800s.
Oldie, but Goodie: A Honolulu Original
At nearly 78 years of operation, Smith Union’s Smittys (formerly Smith’s Union Bar) is the oldest bar in Honolulu. Some of their regulars have been patronizing the bar for over 30 years.
Humble Pie at V-Lounge
Before moving home from Manhattan, we stuffed ourselves silly at our neighborhood brick-oven pizzeria in order to stave off cravings until we could get back to the Big Apple. Were we nuts or what?
One Slice Closer to Good
One of the great things about European produce markets is the chance to find veggies on the verge of ready-to-eat–cooked (like potatoes), de-choked (as in artichoke) or prepared in some way that makes meal prep simpler. The home cook can cut out a few steps and make dinner more quickly without loss of quality.
Happy National Cooperative Month!
Maybe September’s Eat Local Challenge got you thinking about how to vote with your dollars. Maybe it left you sitting in the shade, eating an OnoPop.
High on Big Island Brews
At 2,764 feet above the sea, Big Island Brewhaus is Hawaii’s highest brewery, tucked away off Mamalahoa highway where the view of Mauna Kea is epic and the chilly winds reign. In otherwise quaint and quiet Kamuela, this joint is hoppin’.
Food & Drink
Sunnyside Up
Food & Drink / It’s easy to believe that Ka Lei Marketplace is a two-time champion of Kaimuki Business Association’s Holiday Window (ʻ06 and ʻ07). The little shop looks like Christmas, Easter and country store all rolled into one.
Into the Wild
Several weeks ago, Town put an ad in the Weekly looking for foragers of wild foods. “I had just gotten back from Northern California,” explains restaurant owner Ed Kenney.
Feed the Hunger
Sometimes all that’s needed to create a movement is someone to connect the pieces together…and a little bit of money. Denise Albano and Patti Chang are attempting to do just that with their nonprofit Feed the Hunger Foundation, a microfinance organization, in which they provide small loans to low income entrepreneurs interested in making local, accessible healthy food.
Lucky For Us
Happy Cake Cafe has been making cakes since 1967 and just recently opened up shop in Honolulu. What exactly is a Happy Cake?
El Bulli: Cooking in Progress
I never ate at El Bulli, and now I never will, since the most influential restaurant to modernist cuisine served its last dinner on July 30. But on the same day, the documentary El Bulli: Cooking in Progress opened, offering a glimpse into the hallowed restaurant for the 2 million of us who couldn’t get reservations (actually, I never tried).
Food Highlight
The Best Spanish Roll that really isn’t a Spanish Roll
Food Highlight / The popular bread roll among the Filipino community acquired its name from historical conquests back in 1521. Thanks Spain, for the idea.
The Pig and the Lady
Honolulu’s culinary scene isn’t tame, to say the least. Funky food trucks and lingerie coffee carts are pretty normal these days, and the Island’s newest addition to the food scene is an innovative pop-up restaurant called The Pig and The Lady (TP&TL) with Vietnamese influences.
Sweet Treats
This month, pastry chef Kanjiro Mochizuki from Imperial Hotel Tokyo brings Japanese-style sweets to the Halekulani. There’s a bamboo shoot verrine (a layered dessert in a glass vessel) that combines rice sponge cake with bamboo shoot Bavarian cream; cakes made to look like Japanese schoolbags, which pair chocolate mousse with jasmine cream and mango mousse with kiwi, strawberry with pear; and peach lavender cream rolled with a green tea sponge cake.
Outside In
There’s good eating everywhere in Tokyo, and some of the most fun epicurean adventures take place in the department store food halls. Shirokiya’s top floor has always offered a glimpse into this facet of Japanese food culture with takoyaki stations, tonkatsu sandwiches and taiyaki (fish-shaped waffles stuffed with fillings such as red bean and custard).
Gryl-ling Up Green
Grylt, located in Manoa Marketplace, serves up fresh, local ingredients for a quick, wholesome meal. Steering away from not-so-healthy island staples like mac-salad and gravy-smothered meats, the eatery is a lean, mean healthy plate lunch machine.
Collecting Booze
Liquor Collection / Looking for a cool local liquor store with a good vibe? Check out the Liquor Collection at Ward Warehouse.
Not Just Desserts
Not Just Desserts / After opening numerous restaurants in Florida, New York and Hawaii, chef Kate Wagner has now opened a small shop in the heart of Chinatown. With a background in French cooking, she’s decided to bring her talent back home, and in her small café–Not Just Desserts–she carries chocolate cake, handmade chocolates and homemade cheesecakes.
You Spin Me Right Round, Baby
Kuru Kuru Sushi, Kahala Mall / Fans of Hawaii’s conveyor belt culture can now get their cheap sushi fix at Kuru Kuru Sushi in Kahala Mall. The popular kaiten sushi restaurant opened a second branch on June 11th near the mall’s theater.
This week
Derelict Downtown
For as long as we can remember, Chinatown has been notorious for drugs, homelessness and filthy streets. Some claim nothing has changed–and that it never will.
Sweet Ride
Bicyclists have long been overlooked by four-wheel riders on Honolulu’s congested streets. In the gleaming, armored pecking order of the road, cyclists are too often dismissed as lane hogs, hand-signaling nuisances and unfortunates who can’t afford cars.
Hoopili miss
The fate of some 1,525 acres of land at Hoopili in ‘Ewa may have been decided last Wednesday in Hawaii’s First Circuit Court. The decision might have gone differently, but the appellant attorneys’ strategy seemed to collapse as Judge Rhonda Nishimura picked it apart based on technical errors.
Housing First $
Last Thursday, May 9, the Caldwell administration revealed its action plan for solving Honolulu’s homeless problem. But at the City Council’s budget meeting the same day, Budget chair Ann Kobayashi wanted to know where the money for “Housing First” (see Cover Story, pg.
Do it Wright
The Mayor Wright Housing project has been slated for major redevelopment by the Hawaii State Housing Authority (HSHA); requests for qualifications will be going out to developers in three to six months. Nonprofit group Faith Action for Community Equity (FACE) wants to make sure the project’s tenants have a say in the redevelopment process, which could include major renovations or a total rebuild.
Street Disconnect
The Honolulu City Council held a special Committee on Transportation meeting on Tuesday, May 7, to go over its Complete Streets initiative with input from the department directors of Design and Construction (DDC), Planning and Permitting (DPP) and Transportation Services (DTS). At prior meetings, including the Moiliili workshop, community members pressed the idea of combining Complete Streets with Caldwell’s repaving projects, which Dan Burden of the Walkable and Livable Communities Institute and some councilmembers have said makes sense.
Stopping Growth
Not much to agree with my friend Doc Berry (“Limits of Growth,” April 17). None of the scenarios he posits will ever materialize.
Get it together
In your Diary of May 8 (“End of the 27th)” you reported on SB 1214, passed by the Legislature. In their nimble way, the Legislature tacked the wheel boot prohibition on a bill that was intended to abolish the Commission on Transportation.
Look both ways
On Friday, May 3, at 3:45 p.m., I was driving town bound through the Wilson tunnel on the Likelike. I was parallel to another car, and there were several other cars following closely behind me.
Thank you!
Congratulations Honolulu Weekly on the recent Pai award for investigative reporting (“Boss GMO,” Jan. 4, 2012).
Truth be told
When the biofuel guys say that costs are “confidential” (“Big-foot Biofuel,” May 8), I reply that since I am the one who is going to end up paying the cost, I have a right to know. Frankly, when everybody tries to hide the costs, I smell rat …
Nature’s beauty
The Foster Botanical Garden never ceases to inspire for an urban setting it is like a step back in time (“See the Flora,” May 8). If Koko Crater Botanical Garden contains the world’s largest plumeria collection as suggested, it may be thanks in part to the Prussian born Dr.
