Honolulu Weekly

Hale Macrobiotic / I’m an unabashed meat eater. So how do I find myself at Hale Macrobiotic, a mostly vegan restaurant? Not for a need to jump on the health food, veggie bandwagon or for a sudden desire to curtail my soaring cholesterol levels. I’m at Hale because, quite simply, I hear it’s good. I’m an equal-opportunity omnivore, so my curiosity about Hale and its vegetarian offerings is equivalent to a curiosity in a whole hog dinner.

Hale’s in an unexpected place, in a narrow side street behind Walmart, sandwiched between two storefronts that have all the charm of convenience stores. Inside, it’s a beautiful space. Wooden slats arch from the side wall to the high ceiling, giving some welcome curves to what might otherwise be an overly angular space. It’s airy and bright during the day, and at night, warmly lit with spotlights that place the food in center stage. It’s intimate without feeling crowded, and even when every seat is taken, the noise is never too loud (maybe it’s the acoustics, maybe it’s the soft-spoken vegetarians). I’m here for the food, but I’ve fallen in love with the space. It’s not so surprising, given that chef Motoko Kubota is also part of the team behind Kaiwa in Waikiki, where the décor includes a shimmery waterfall room divider.

In the back, there’s a bar alongside the open kitchen. While usually an open kitchen feels frenetic and industrial, with formidable, sweaty chefs, stainless steel surfaces and flourescent lights, this one looks more like a Food Network demo kitchen–or a rich friend’s house–with soothing lighting, stacked plates displayed like sculptures, and two slight female chefs (Yuka Akahane and Motoko Kubota) who work calmly and communicate quietly in Japanese to each other.

Getting started

As I do in most restaurants, I find all my favorite dishes on the appetizer menu. It’s partially because of the variety offered in an assortment of small plates but also because I find starters tend to waken the palate. The cremini mushroom soup is creamy and utterly satisfying in taste, if not in volume; the Maui onion mochi soup–ordered because of an undying love for all things mochi–is sweet with caramelized onions. The mochi, a seeming non sequitur, takes the place of melted cheese, making this onion soup one that my cheese-hating husband loves (he does, fortunately, have other redeeming qualities).

A study in textures unfolds in a series of starters. Favorites are: crunchy grilled lotus roots with wasabi mayonnaise; a kale and strawberry salad tossed with a creamy tofu dressing; a buttery avocado topped with ogo, myoga ginger (a type of ginger that has an herby bite rather than spicy sting of regular ginger) and wasabi soy sauce. And then there are the fries. These are some of the best fries in town, macrobiotic or not. They’re fried in sesame oil (the cooking oil of choice at Hale), for a delicately thin crisp shell, and accompanied by a homemade ketchup that’s more like a chunky tomato marmalade.

What is it?

So that’s the thing about macrobiotics; the appearance of fries on the menu doesn’t fall within my pre-conceived notions of a macrobiotic diet. But macrobiotics isn’t a strict regimen of what one can and cannot eat. Rather, it refers to a lifestyle that emphasizes balance. A macrobiotic diet doesn’t necessarily prohibit any particular food, including meat; different foods simply have different energies, and achieving harmony in the body via food means understanding and balancing these energies. In the most reductive macrobiotic diet guidelines, there’s an emphasis on whole grains, plants (which are inherently more energetically balanced), and an avoidance of processed foods.

The idea of balance in the macrobiotic kitchen, then, isn’t so very different from the principles in a higher-end professional kitchen. In the latter, cooking is also about balance: in flavors (sweet, salty, sour and bitter) and in textures (crunchy to soft). The best of restaurants already avoid processed ingredients, making everything from scratch with whole ingredients. Macrobiotic chefs may just choose their ingredients with a little more scrutiny, emphasizing organically and locally grown and in season, something that all chefs can learn from.

So no, fried food does not ostracize Hale from the macrobiotic diehards. But having said that, there does appear to be an over-reliance on fried foods at Hale, from the sweet potato chips that accompany the island fish burger to the kuruma-fu (a spongy gluten cake) cutlet that’s fried to an almost jaw-breaking crisp. It’s as if the chefs aren’t confident enough that vegetarian fare can stand up on its own.

My other least favorite component of Hale’s menu (and a lot of macrobiotic and vegetarian cooking) is the meat substitutes, like seitan (spongy wheat gluten) and tempeh. Their somewhat bland, oddly textured existence doesn’t vibe with my own personal veggie philosophy–in which vegetarian fare isn’t treated as an alternative to meat, where you “don’t miss the meat,” but where vegetables and legumes and grains are treated on their own terms: delicious in their own right, in their own uniqueness of flavors and textures (and pretty colors).

My favorite dishes and sides and condiments at Hale are the non-fake meats. Along with the aforementioned starters, the numerous sides that come on the entree plate are addictively good–the edamame salad, pickled ogo salad topped with vinegared miso, brown rice sprinkled with gomashio (roasted sesame seeds with salt) accompanied with a savory kale miso. All the sauces and condiments are vibrant: from the sweet and savory apple miso on the kuruma-fu cutlet, the creamy basil sauce on the fish burger and tangy sauerkraut on the tempeh reuben.

For dessert, I love the mochi waffle (again, that addiction to mochi). A waffle made with brown rice mochi yields a crisp exterior and soft and chewy interior. Topped with blueberries and soy ice cream, it makes for a sweet and light ending to a beautiful meal. As macrobiotics applies to a way of life, not just diet, I suspect my sense of pleasure after a meal at Hale is due as much to the friendliness of the chefs and staff, comforting décor and food artistry as the food itself.