3 Lunches Under $10
Food doesn’t have to be fancy or expensive to be delicious. Here are two new Kitchens serving up affordable dishes and one oldie, known for its budget-friendly plates, that’s adjusting to a new location.
Restaurants
Sushi For Non-Purists
For my 21st birthday, when I was back home in Japan, my father took me to a sushi restaurant tucked away in Yokohama Station. As we ate glistening morsels of oh-toro (fatty tuna) and shared a hot bottle of sake, he asserted, “There are no good sushi restaurants in Hawaii.” He didn’t believe me when I said, “There are, there are!” But Dad’s a super sushi purist.
Casual & Contempo
A new chef at a museum cafe and a new Kakaako spot are two must-tries for Honolulu saveurs. What they provide in common are healthy, light seasonal fare and a welcome chance to eat and drink outdoors in the fresh spring air.
Three Cheers For Pastry
In Honolulu, locals can count on finding delicious pastries such as an pans, azuki bean breads, guava cakes and apple turnovers. But for pastry connoisseurs who want to nibble on the unique (at least to Hawaii) and the finger-licking luscious, these three bakeries take the cake.
Sustainable Taskmaster
There’s a new guy in town from Brooklyn, with a conviction about what nose-to-tail sustainability can mean for Hawaii. Meet Justin Yu, Robert McGee’s successor as The Whole Ox Butcher & Deli’s executive chef and owner.
Bene, Bene, Oishii
Fusion cuisine is not new, but it can still be difficult to understand. From Pacific Rim to Tex-Mex and beyond, navigating the sea of mixed cuisines can, at times, result in queasiness.
A Tasty Roll Call
College food gets a bad rep, and for good reason–think frozen pizza, ramen, Taco Bell. But beyond these inglorious options are a few Oahu campus vendors worthy of delicious redemption.
Quest For Fresh
Continuing our pilgrimage in search of restaurants offering fresh, healthy fare (“Beyond Just Salads,” Dec. 19), we found three quick-serve, affordable eateries whose healthful food left us satiated–but not heavy or lethargic, as is too often the case with burgers or plate lunch.
Coffee Balk
Date night at an upscale restaurant: You delight in the local produce, Big Island beef or Maui lamb, crème brûlée made from local eggs and lilikoi from the chef’s backyard. And then you order coffee, expecting Waialua Estate or 100 percent Kona, only to discover that Illy Café or Lavazza is served.
Pillar of SALT
Salt Bar & Kitchen started as the offshoot of 12th Ave Grill. Though calling itself a “bar with food,” it was our Weekly readership’s top pick as new restaurant in 2011 and is this year’s Honolulu Magazine restaurant of the year.
Some Like It Hot
Mexican food in Hawaii is notoriously hit-and-miss. We have our favorites: Serg’s in Manoa and Waimanalo, and Mexico in Kalihi (at least for the tequila selection), but anybody from the Southwest misses prodigality of Tex-Mex choices.
Oh, You Like Beef?
To be voraciously stuffed, I turn to yakiniku. This style of cooking is credited to Korean immigrants who brought yakiniku to Osaka, Japan prior to World War II.
A Crustacean Affair
Last year, more than a handful of crab shacks clawed their way to forge Honolulu’s take on one of the nation’s biggest food trends. Although the dining concept is consistent–pick a shellfish or seafood combo, choose a sauce, wear a bib, make a mess, repeat–each restaurant offers a unique spin on the familiar Cajun-inspired cuisine.
Take Me To Your Liquor
Foodie culture is reaching rampancy now that we fancy ourselves fine diners. But since the 1980s–that era of bad taste and cocaine–cocktails have mostly been used to get us from Point A to Drunk.
Live Long and Eat
Honolulu Weekly restaurant reviewers dine anonymously, editorial integrity being our first priority. Reviewers may visit the establishment more than once, and any interviews with restaurant staff are conducted after visits.
Wanted: Local Pork
There’s just something about pork that inspires salivation. Kalua pig, barbecue ribs, tonkatsu, lechon, pig’s feet.
Cafe Renewal
During the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Top Hat Bar in Wahiawa was hit. It closed for three days and reopened on Dec.
Taking it to the streets
Instead of resolutions that are made to be broken, why not cultivate a habit that’s easy and fun to follow? For me, that means adding more variety to my fast-food diet, as I replace guilty pleasures with tasty, fresh grub from local lunch wagons.
Variety Is The Spice
What we think we know about the traditional restaurant–as a place to go for one menu prepared by one chef–is challenged more frequently these days, and we’re not talking about pop-up events and trucks. Perhaps the most exciting idea is the actual modification of the restaurant archetype, like that taking shape at Taste.
Restaurants
Sweet and Savory Chews
Restaurants / Literally, mochi is a beaten rice cake. Culturally, it’s respectful fare, made fresh for the New Year.
Beyond Just Salads
Honolulu has recently seen a propitious rise in vegan-friendly restaurants. Take Downbeat Diner, where most menu items can be made sans animal product by request, or Yuzu, where the veggie sushi platter leaves diners content to forgo fish.
Fast Food for Gastronomes
At quick-bite (okay, fast food) restaurants, one often gives up fresh, healthy ingredients in exchange for ease and low cost. Thankfully for the time-pressed and hungry, the owners of these recently opened restaurants are prioritizing food quality while somehow finding a way to speed the time from order to plate.
Solid Kalo
In ancient times, the ahupuaa of Waiahole was known for the uniqueness of taro grown there: kii kalo paa o Waiahole, or “the hard taro of Waiahole.” At the mouth of this region sits the Waiahole Poi Factory, a place that is, in its own way, the modern spirit of this solid kalo. It is more than a place where you can get hand-pounded or machine-milled poi and a Hawaiian plate–it is a movement.
Ahi poke: What’s the big ‘gassed’ deal
As a lover of ahi, typically yellowfin tuna, I’ve enjoyed my fair share of ahi poke, bite-size pieces of the raw fish marinated in seasonings, limu, sesame seeds and soy sauce. What I’ve learned: Every seafood preparer in Hawaii who makes it believes he or she offers the finest ahi poke around.
Gourmet Dining Halls
Honolulu’s next generation of chefs–the culinary students at Leeward (LCC) and Kapiolani (KCC) Community Colleges–are at your service. The Pearl, LCC’s fine dining restaurant, is the polished output of the Culinary Arts Program, coordinated by Tommylynn Benavente.
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.
