These kids can stand the heat. But for eight weeks, they’ll be staying out of the kitchen.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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 / 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.
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.
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.
Happy Cake Cafe has been making cakes since 1967 and just recently opened up shop in Honolulu. What exactly is a Happy Cake?
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 popular bread roll among the Filipino community acquired its name from historical conquests back in 1521. Thanks Spain, for the idea.
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.
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.
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).
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.
Liquor Collection / Looking for a cool local liquor store with a good vibe? Check out the Liquor Collection at Ward Warehouse.
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.
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.
J.J. Dolan's / For those who think nothing is more beautiful than the grease glistening around Adam Richman’s mouth as he wolfs down three manhole-sized pizzas on Man v. Food, this Friday is your chance to witness the unrestrained grace of competition eating at J.J.
Eating Alaska / Eating Alaska is a funny and sometimes serious film about the filmmaker’s own experiences as an urban vegetarian who moves to a small town in Alaska and is confronted with the question, “What is the ‘right’ thing to eat?” She goes on a quest, and along the way meets all types of every day Alaskans, from deer-hunting women to Eskimo kids in the Arctic, who talk about their favorite moose meat, to a vegan cooking class in Wasilla and even her own salmon fisherman husband. It’s a wry search for a meal that makes sense politically, socially, spiritually and tastefully.
A Haleiwa fresh fruit and produce stand is conveniently located behind Pizza Bob’s and designed for those who don’t want to mess with the frenzy of weekend farmers’ markets. Heirloom tomatoes sell for $1 a pound (which sell for around $8 a pound at Safeway), crates of local honey and preserves sell for under $10, and herbs and other leafy veggies are kept beautifully cool in a handy walk-in refrigerator.
Given the city’s crumbling infrastructure and rail controversy, it’s hard to believe anyone would want to be the next mayor of Honolulu. But a few do want the job, including the incumbent, Mayor Peter Carlisle, the former Honolulu Prosecuting Attorney who won a 2010 special election to fill the remainder of Mufi Hannemann’s term.
I’d never been to a Honolulu City Council meeting until a few weeks ago. Features, not politics, was my beat.
Victoria Holt Takamine is a kumu hula, a cultural activist and a teacher and has an impeccable pedigree to back up all these titles. Born of an alii family whose kuleana was in Moanalua, she graduated as a hula teacher under the legendary Auntie Maiki Aiu Lake and taught hundreds of students in her own halau (Pua Alii ‘Ilima) and at the University of Hawaii.
On April 25, a state judge dismissed trespassing charges against a Kauai man after finding that he had been exercising traditional native Hawaiian rights hunting wild pigs on private land. Kui Palama, 28, was arrested on Jan.
The city plans to dish out $3.5 million from its Affordable Housing Fund and either purchase or renovate a structure to provide transitional housing for Honolulu’s special needs homeless population. “Our community has invested considerable effort and resources in addressing homelessness,” Mayor Peter Carlisle said in a statement, “but there remains a population whose disabilities or chronic conditions make it difficult for them to participate in traditional shelter programs.” Carlisle is referring to those homeless with mental illnesses, addictions and physical disabilities.
Makaweli Poi faces an uncertain future after its owner, a corporate subsidiary of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) ordered the West Kauai mill to suspend operations May 23. Mona Bernardino, chief operating officer of the corporation, Hiipoi LLC, says the move to shut down Makaweli Poi was prompted mainly by financial concerns.
A resolution adopted by the City Council will solidify an agreement between the City and County of Honolulu and the University of Hawaii Water Resources Research Center (UH-WRRC) to conduct an analysis of impacts from ocean sewer outfalls on the marine environments off of Oahu. The city will pay UH-WRRC as much as $2.5 million for biological and sediment studies in portions between now and June 30, 2017 .
Along with the deep, verdant growth of spring sprouts an unyielding desire to spend more time in the open air. That’s why it should come as no surprise that National Bike Month falls in the sun-drenched time of May.
Of the many letters you publish against rail, how many offer an alternative that won’t send us into further economic demise? Billions of gallons of oil are imported for us from every oil-producing nation on this planet so that we can buy billions of gallons of gasoline.
TheBus is taking a back seat to rail. At the May 3 Downtown Neighborhood Board meeting, an audience member asked city Transportation Director Wayne Yoshioka when we could expect the bus route cancellations and changes to be reversed.
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