skchai

I checked the web site for the revived Willows Restaurant, and there's no mention of the Willows Coconut Cream Pie on their ala carte menu! So Sad. Here's what they have: MOLTEN CHOCOLATE CAKE TRIPLE CHOCOLATE MOUSSE SWIRL LAVA FLOW - "Vanilla bean ice cream with a warm haupia sauce and drizzled with a tangy raspberry sauce. Garnished with fresh berries and a mint sprig." VANILLA BEAN CRÈME BRULEE SEASONAL SORBET CHEESECAKE WITH STRAWBERRY/MANGO COMPOTE Boring . . . Maybe the coconut cream pie is still on the buffet menu. . . Maybe they thought it wasn't "nouvelle" enough for their carte. . . Fortunately, McCully Chop Suey is still there. Though I haven't checked, I'm pretty sure the Ginger Chicken is still on the menu. . . SweetWillie started a thread about Leonard's a while back. Nowadays li hing mui has become so dominant, and they "li hing" everything. Li hing gummy worms, etc.

Sorry! I think it's because they're so many places that serve chicken that it's hard to think of one that "specializes". . . In fact one thing I noticed was that the new items that have become popular on plate lunch menus in the last 10 years or so have all been based on chicken - Garlic chicken. Mitsu-Ken's in Kalihi has the best by consensus - try it on top of spam fried rice with fried eggs and bacon for breakfast so you can sleep for the rest of the day. "Korean" chicken. I've only tried Zippy's - it's O.K. Never knew why they called it Korean chicken, except that it has chili in it. It's kind of like a dish that's popular in Chinese restaurants in Korea called kkangpunggi, but kkangpunggi has (a few) vegetables in it so that's kind of a stretch. Speaking of which - moving away from plate lunches - the Chinese "Hot Garlic Chicken" at Maple Garden on Isenberg is great. Mochiko chicken . So many places, I can't single one out. The kiosks around Webster and Kuykendall at UH campus both sell mochiko chicken bentos that are O.K. - usually the best thing they carry. Pretty greasy and cooked until it turns dark brown. On Fridays they carry shoyu chicken and steak bentos under a special tent near Webster - I better go now before the lines get too long.

I knew I had neglected a lot of stuff from the big island! Atebara and Maebo rank with Kitch'n Cook'd and Yick Lung Nibbits as big "chips" in Hawai`i. Sadly, I haven't been able to find One Ton chips in Honolulu anymore ever since the Maebo factory burnt down. I keep on checking their web site but it doesn't even mention the fire, much less when they are going back in production.

Might that be from Ani's Bakeshop in Aiea? Ani's goods are widely distributed around the island.

I think the question is harder to answer now than it was 20 years ago, in part because improved transportation methods and more sophisticated marketing mean that regionally popular goods very quickly become available elsewhere (and eventually are even made elsewhere, like aloha shirts). That being said there are still specialties that are associated with each island as omiyage, both general categories of food that may be produced at a number of places or specific products of one shop or another. Here is a short list - sorry, don't have time right now to go into more detail, but will try to add descriptions of each later. . . Maui seems to be dominant somehow in the omiyage field: Kobayashi Family's Maui Kitch'n Cook'd Potato Chips (counter to globalization - these are increasingly difficult to find outside of Maui) Shishido Manju (unfortunately now closed) Crispy Manju from Home Maid Bakery Azuki Pie from T. Komoda Store Tasaka Guri-guri Azeka's Kalbi Ribs Dry Mein from Sam Sato's; Noodles for it from Iwamoto Natto Factory Maui Hot Dogs (long gone - but various copies live on - e.g. Redondo's Hot Dogs in Waipahu) Big Island: O.K. the most obvious things are Hamakua Macadamia Nuts and Kona Coffee, but you can get those anywhere. Loco Moco from Cafe 100 (O.K. forget about carrying it home unless you're really loco) Mochi from Two Ladies kitchen What else is distinctive? Kauai: Hamura Saimin - you can disassemble and carry back the ingredients. . . Kauai Kookies (though you can even get that at Long's Drugs in Honolulu) Molokai: Filled Breads from Kanemitsu Bakery Anything else I missed?

Arbi is Hindi, and Patra is Gujarati, for what is called Colocasia, Taro, or Cocoyam in English.

Wasn't the traditional test of a "properly made" biryani the presence of at least one finger-joint of ghee remaining at the bottom of the pot?

So then Wayne Hirabayashi's version should be called Loco Flema? I think there are two claims about the origin of the name: The first is that the dish was named in honor of the "crazy" person from the Lincoln Wreckers who first ordered it at the Lincoln Grill (this is the story related in the link provided by Jason earlier). The second is that the term was coined later at Cafe 100, for similar reasons. I don't know how well either claim is documented. Irwin, the loco moco has been downsized since your son's days on Sunset Beach. You now have to specifically order the "Loco Moco Plate Lunch" to get the mac salad. Just a "Loco Moco" (usually) comes in a bowl with no side dishes whatsoever. As far as the gravy is concerned, I have no idea why it's so thin - the campus budget crisis? Don't laugh, though. UH is definitely trying to upscale its food service - to the point of last year trying a "Chef's Special" featured everyday (at the Campus Center dining room, not Paradise Palms), which usually consists of something vaguely ethnic or fusion, e.g. seared ahi (a small piece), five-spice marinated pork loin, etc. However, it was usually anywhere from $6-8, so the students weren't buying. . . Gary - you're right that Loco Moco has probably been "invented" thousands of times and therefore shouldn't have a name attached to it. Or, if it has to have a name, the one you mentioned, "ECONOMIC MEAL" sounds really good. This would keep it out of the hands of those conspire to pollute it by using top-quality, fresh ingredients.

My complaint is not so much that the restaurants listed are bad or mediocre - in fact I'm not wealthy enough to have eaten at more than a few of them, so I have no way of directly judging how good they are. Certainly the national critics that have bestowed generous praises on some of these restaurants can't be totally wrong-headed. All of Hawai`i's James Beard winners are listed (for what that's worth): Roy, Alan Wong, and Mavro. Rather, my complaint is that there is a kind of stereotyped sameness to the list in terms of cuisine and the people involved. Most of those listed are following along very much the same path of East-West fusion Hawaiian-style, either as followers or contemporaries of the HRC folks. Of course, Hawaiian Regional / Hawaiian Fusion, or whatever you want to call it, was a great innovation that fundamentally changed the restaurant scene here in the late 80s and early 90s. And, whatever its faults, it generated a cooking mindset that was innovative, concerned with marking out Hawai`i's place in the culinary universe, and in turn ultimately generated commerical success for many people. Once this happened, however, it seems the restaurant community has been more or less happy to play out the string for the past decade. The high-end restauranters have a clear idea of Hawai`i's niche, and will continue to exploit this niche until the environment changes and the formula no longer works. I don't think this fixation with a single style is unusual for high-end restaurants in relatively small cities that depend a great deal on the tourist trade. For instance, in Arizona or New Mexico, it is hard to find a high-end restaurant that doesn't serve some version of "Southwestern" cuisine. Moreover, each of these restaurants tends to focus on the same types of dishes associated with Mark Miller, Dean Fearing, Janos Wilder, etc. in the early 1990s - many colorful fresh salsas, grilled meats rubbed with dry spices, burros and enchiladas with upscale fillings, etc. Often it has little to do with the traditional diet of people in the Southwest, but at least it's regionally distinctive in a way that visitors can go back home satisfied that they had "eaten" a sense of the other. The problem is that such cooking is excessively vulnerable to fashion trends. The East-West fusion idea is already considered passe' by many. This is not to say that chefs should no longer pursue integration of ingredients from different cultures, but the way in which they do so should be more closely tied to the way that people actually eat, and follows the process of integrations that occurs organically in popular cuisine. Typically, this means that the melding of cultures should be covert and informal rather than overt and formal - you shouldn't be able to pick out the "Eastern" parts of the dish and the "Western" parts, but rather get the feeling that the chef was trying to create something that would taste good given the pallete of ingredients available to him or her, which just happened to be ingredients that are traditional to more than one culture.

Tad, you truly have a transcendent understanding of the soul of Loco Moco. . . For those who have been reading this thread and have no idea what Loco Moco looks like, your frustrations will be greatly relieved by the picture I am about to bestow upon you. Paradise Palms Dining Room on the campus of the University of Hawai`i has its very own Loco Moco bar (though unfortunately much downsized from before) and makes a paradigmatic version of the Hilo classic. Here it is, with small puddles of shoyu and hot sauce on top the puddle of brown gravy, which in turn lies on top the puddle of the runny egg yolk - creating layers of color - all dusted with black pepper. Beautiful, no? The only heterodox step is the use of a plate rather than the traditional plastic bowl. This allows the perfect ice cream-scoop roundness of the rice balls to be displayed unfethered. The burger peeks out, almost bashfully, from beneath the puddles and metapuddles.

My New Year's Resolution for this thread is to be more selective in picking articles that have a unique local focus, and in providing more commentary / annotation - for my own good if not anyone else's! Here goes: Good luck duek: Celebrate the seasons through the colors and flavors of Korean mochi, by Betty Shimabukuro Focus on KoHyang DuekJip, one of the two big Korean ricecake producers on Oahu. Describes how tteok / deuk / duek, the speciality famous for its many different romanized spellings, is made, and some of the major varieties such as injeormi, tteokbokki tteok, baram tteok, etc. Stuffs: Skinny TV chefs Chai Chaowasaree of Chai's Island Bistro and Singha Thai and Beth-Ann Nishijima of Nori's Saimin have started their own local cooking show, "Two Skinny Chefs". Chai is one of the big movers in the East-West fusion scene here, even though he was nearly deported a few years ago for visa problems. Don't know about title, however, coming on the tails of recent death of one of the "Two Fat Ladies", it seems a bit morbid. Key Ingredient: Dried lily buds, by Eleanor Nakama-Mitsunaga Latest installment in a useful and underappreciated weekly column on (mostly) Asian food ingredients. Did you know that lily buds are included in the essential New Year's "Jai" dish because they represent wealth? The secret to making toong mai is in the proper puffing of the rice, by Betty Shimabukuro One of my favorite food articles for a long time. Unveils the mystery of "toong mai" - a puffed rice sweet that is found all over the islands but no one seems to know how to make. Turns out "toong mai" is not a name known in China, but the corruption of a Hakka or Mandarin term. Also, most recipes call for heating coarse sand until it's red hot or using an industrial pressure gun - but somehow Betty finds a way to make it at home. Key Ingredient: Black fungus, by Eleanor Nakama-Mitsunaga Did you know it grows on "rotting oak, mulberry, elm and willow trees"? Called ha mok yi in Mandarin and kikurage in Japanese (mok i in Korean). QUICK BITES: Island chefs, eateries win notice in print, by Wanda A. Adams This is what "notice in print means": D.K. Kodama in Taste of the NFL Restaurant Guide 2004, Sam Choy in the January/February edition of Safeway Select magazine. Wow what exposure. Though the Select article is about plate lunch, so I'm going to pick it up. FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Maui's Roselani ice cream in stores statewide, by Wanda A. Adams Four flavors: Haupia, Macadamia Nut, Kona Mud Pie, and Mango 'n Cream. QUICK BITES: 'Two Skinny Chefs' take to small screen, by Wanda A. Adams More about Chai and Beth-Ann.

The Hale `Aina Awards were passed out this month by Honolulu Magazine. They're based on a reader's poll that has been repeated for 20 years now. The magazine generally doesn't post stories on the web, but here's a recap: This year's grand winner was Roy's Restaurant Hawai`i Kai, the third time that Roy Yamaguchi's flagship has won the award (the others were 1995 and 2002). Still doesn't approach the five times Alan Wong has won it. The other "Gold Awards" for best restaurants went to the following: Oahu Alan Wong's Restaurant Bali by the Sea Chai's Island Bistro Chef Mavro Compadres Donato's Hoku's Indigo Eurasian Cuisine La Mer L'Uraku Mariposa Michel's at the Colony Surf Orchids Ruth's Chris Steak House Sansei Seafood Restaurant and Sushi Bar 3660 on the Rise Maui David Paul's Lahaina Grill Hali`imaile General Store Longhi's Mama's Fish House Roy's Kahana Bar and Grill Sansei Seafood Restaurant and Sushi Bar Big Island Brown's Beach House Cafe Pesto Hugoo's Kilauea Lodge Merriman's Restaurant Roy's Waikaloa Bar and Grill Kauai`i A Pacific Cafe Kaua`i The Beach House Restaurant Roy's Po`ipu Bar and Grill Best New Restaurant The Bistro Longhi's Ala Moana Best Wine List Padovani's Roy's Restaurant Hawai`i Kai Best Waiter / Waitress Rona Reed, Bali by the Sea Rob St. Onge, Roy's Restaurant Best Bar Murphy's Bar and Grill Mai Tai Bar Best Bartender Jonathan Schwalbenitz, Murphy's Bar and Grill Well, ho hum. . . It seems that there is little change in the status quo, with all the same HRC, HIC, etc. stalwarts dominating the awards, including one on each major island (for a total of four) for Roy Yamaguchi, as well as two from D.K. Kodama at Sansei. In addition, one of the winners for "best new restaurant" category is simply the Oahu branch of Longhi's, a popular Maui restaurant. Is this kind of attachment to the status quo a characteristic of all readers' polls, does it reflect the Honolulu Magazine audience in particular, or does it simply reflect a lack of major activity in the local restaurant scene in the last year? Virtually all the restaurants listed as "gold" winners serve some version of East-West Fusion / HRC cuisine, and are at the higher end of price scale. The most conspicuous exception is the middle-of-the-road Tex-Mex Compadres, but even the exception make you wonder. . . Comments? Any bizarre inclusions / exclusions that you'd care to mention?

Inspired by Kristin . . . here's what we have in our closet. The left is ogapi (五加皮, acanthopanax spp.) honey that one of my grad students gave me, and the right is yujacha from South Jeolla province that we bought at the Korean Festival the other day. One of my favorites is the omija (五味子, maximowiczia chinensis) lit. "five flavor fruit" that Jason mentioned earlier. It has a kind of elusive scent that is floral but not perfumy - hard to explain. Omija is also a popular flavoring agent for syrups that are used in traditional mixed-fruit dishes. I don't particularly like sweet teas so I use tea syrups on pancakes, bread, toast, etc. - works just fine. . .

For what it's worth - here are some Hindi-English conversions for various members of the gourd family, from various sources. Don't know their names in Bengali. . lauki = bottle gourd torai = ridge gourd chichinda = snake gourd petha = ash gourd karela = bitter gourd / melon

Yes, in the U.S., it is usually easier to find Mexican piloncillo / panela / panocha than it is to find jaggery from India. Both are unrefined sugar products usually sold in a cone shape wrapped in paper (the way, incidentally, sugar used to be sold in Europe and North America as well). Vikram, while the use of jaggery may be declining in India, there is reason to be optimistic in the long run. Like many unprocessed agricultural products, demand for it ought to follow a historical U-shaped curve - first declining as people embrace the uniformity and "cleanness" of refined products, then increasing again as further economic development causes individuals to look for a distinct taste and regional identity in their foods. In the U.S. the demand for raw / turbinado sugar has increasing at a steady rate for several years, though IMHO the potential has not been tapped to the extent possible. In Hawai`i the refined sugar industry is pretty much dead due to high labor costs, but in its place there is the beginning of a raw sugar industry exemplified by companies like Sugar in the Raw, owned by the local conglomerate Alexander and Baldwin. However, even with these changes, there is little appreciation in Hawai`i or the West for the ways in which variety of cane, climate, and processing can generate raw sugars with very distinct taste characteristics. In this respect, it seems that India has perhaps the most sophisticated culture of sugar appreciation in the world. And to see how this "jaggery culture" is to be perpetuated and enhanced, one should look past the household management manuals and to the emerging codification of regional and community-based cuisines that people like Appadurai have analyzed. By the way, are there specific terms in Hindi to distinguish between sugars made from cane, palm, date, etc? Does jaggery only apply to cane sugar or to any of them? The same for gur?

Thanks so much for the info, Brooks! It's a pity in a way, since he seemed to be the one member of the family who was 100% committed to making Antoine's into something more than a great culinary museum.

Rachel, I haven't seen the jugs of blood recently. Maybe the health inspector has really cracked down! Lots of other things, however, that people unused to it might find disconcerting - live frogs (though not on the last occasion) as well as all sorts of live seafood. Michael - is it getting pretty frigid now? Was on the East Coast a few weeks ago with the kids, and now that they're back they're complaining about the lack of snow!

Thanks. Not certain, but I believe he would be somewhere in his 50s. He was the proprietor of Antoine's from 1975 to 1984, when he turned it over to Randy Guste in order to start the ill-fated Guste's.

Some more images - from the Chinatown markets: the amazing Maunakea food court - the cuisine of about a dozen countries packed into a tiny space reef fish at Malasig 7 Sisters in the Maunakea market ube (filipino yam) at the Maunakea market togan (winter melon) at the Maunakea market catfish at the Kehaulike market vegetables at the Kehaulike market

Hmm. . . never have seen the show, but it sounds interesting. Seems from the program web page that it is associated with the Tsuji cooking school - so the food must really be well-made unlike some other food shows!

This is getting interesting. What makes Arthur Bryant's such a destination for presidents? I know it's become something of a national icon since Calvin Trillin annointed it some time back, but is there some specific political symbolism attached to visiting Bryant's that wouldn't attach to other famous neighborhood establishments around the country? I assume the barbecue is still great, but that can't be the reason!

Thanks, Gary. Very glad to have you here, and hope to hear from your friends as well. . .

Whazzat? Manju is a kind of Japanese pastry - sort of a like rounded edge hockey puck-shaped pie, usually filled with azuki bean paste.

This is in the what-are-they-doing-now category. 20 years ago (!), as I'm sure many of you know, he was the chosen one who was supposed to take the Alciatore / Guste family of Antoine's fame into the next century. This is before he crashed out with his hugely ambitious but ultimately doomed nouvelle-Creole-before-its-time Guste's Restaraunt, which closed after only several months. Since then, it doesn't seems like he's been directly involved with Antoine's, though I've noticed that he's written a number of cookbooks. Always seemed like a fascinating character. Has he had any involvement in the restaurant business any more? And what is going on with Antoine's nowadays, anyway?

Welcome to egullet, Gary. Good to have you here. I don't know for sure when it got popular on Oahu, but it was probably sometime during the late 1980s or later. I lived in Kona for a short while in the late 1980s. Pretty much all the Big Island plate lunch places had loco moco, but I had never heard of it before. When I asked my friends in Honolulu about it, none of them knew what it was either . . . I started noticing it on Honolulu plate lunch menus during the early 1990s, though since I was living on the mainland by then I might have missed when it first migrated over . . .