Honolulu Weekly

MAC 24-7 / In the style of Cafeteria in New York City and Fred 62 in Los Angeles, the awkwardly named MAC 24-7 Bar + Restaurant (the acronym stands for Modern American Cuisine) has arrived in Waikiki as an alternative to the 24-hour greasy spoon. The redone diner serves hip, all-day comfort food and the cocktails that will make you crave it.

They’ve updated the round-the-clock diner concept by changing the setting, the presentation, the medium and the nomenclature of the dishes, and while some of these updates succeed in elevating the dining experience, others lessen it.

First there’s the glossy dining room setting that leaves those stuck in Vinylville far behind: red booths, mod tables, multi-tiered white lanterns, black cloth napkins and oversized Oneida flatware. Everything from the water pitchers to the steak knives is sleek and stylish.

An oversized menu reads like a glossary and includes these food categories: eggs, fountains, salads, pastas, small plates, Mac Daddy Pancakes and Killer Cupcakes. The ubiquitous bread basket gets traded for a brown paper sack, which arrives rolled back at the rim and filled with warm dinner rolls with scoops of delicious honey butter alongside.

On offer are local style and old school dishes with modern ingredient tweaks (though, in the case of “griddled original Spam,” sometimes just updated names). Loco moco comes with Hamakua mushroom gravy ($13), Kalua pork is bedded on a baguette and a fully-loaded baked potato is reimagined as a soup ($7). The classic combo of tomato soup and grilled cheese goes luxe with heirloom tomatoes and white cheddar ($8 small, $10 large), and even basic French fries are sprinkled with Hawaiian sea salt. The mac and cheese ($12), perhaps the ultimate barometer of comfort food, comes as a large serving with not the faintest hint of cheese flavor in the creamy roux. The incorporated peas, crunchy breadcrumb topping and scattering of parsley were complementary touches; perhaps some crumbled bacon would have made up for the deficiency in flavor.

Among the large plates, the humble pot pie gets upgraded with lobster ($25). It arrives in an oblong ramekin of exceedingly flaky puff pastry sequestering langoustines, diced carrots and potatoes, peas and an overabundance of pearl onions in a creamy, herb-laced sauce. There is no way to avoid an avalanche of flaky crumbs when spooning into this. While the langoustines were very tender, they lacked lobster flavor. The lobster cream sauce was tasty but also not lobstery, and the potatoes and carrots could have been more prominent and the onions less so. (A member of the management team stopped by our table unsolicited at one point to note randomly that the kitchen was trying to work out a suitable alternative to pearl onions). The New York Steak came nicely grilled, though the accompanying Kona Lager tempura Maui onion rings were too heavily battered; on the whole it was not remarkable enough to merit the marked-up price ($28). There’s also a lineup of wee-hours standards: fried chicken and waffles with country gravy, an albacore tuna melt, eggs benedict, omelettes and more.

The plates score high marks on presentation: They come on a range of pretty white dishes, and slashes of ti leaf and sprigs of watercress appear as unexpected garnishes. Portions are huge: Even a basic order of chips and salsa ($8) that went sailing by was as large as a party serving. Tops on the size-notoriety list are the Mac Daddy Pancakes, as big as hubcaps and made in intriguing flavors like Chunky Monkey (banana-walnut-chocolate chunk), and the Elvis (peanut butter swirled with bacon), which might be the perfect omniscient food to satisfy the conflicting pull of protein-carb and sweet-salty drunken cravings. At $11 a plate, any way you stack it, these are a bargain when shared (one order would be plenty for 4 people).

The section of the menu that most intrigued me, Killer Cupcakes, is compelling on the page but disappointing on the plate. Classic flavors like carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, pineapple upside down cake updated with Malibu rum, and devil’s food peanut butter cup with shiny fudge frosting are on offer ($6 each). My carrot cake cupcake was dense and heavy and made more so by being served chilled. Stick with the warm chocolate lava cake, an ode to oozy sweetness.

The service at Mac 24-7 is excellent, but when you factor in the steep prices of the food and add a couple of drinks from the bar (lychee martinis are $9), in the end my palate and wallet might be better satisfied at a greasy spoon standby.

MAC 24-7 Hilton Waikiki Prince Kuhio Hotel 2500 Kuhio Ave. (921-5564)

Hours: 24/7 Recommended: Any pancakes, warm chocolate lava cake Price Range: Large plates $12-$28 Payment: AmEx, Disc, DC, JCB, MC, V