skchai
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Posts posted by skchai
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Uhh, Ryan - I'm not organized enough to have anything like a blog.
Where's your food blog BTW?
Maybe, if we can be charitable to ourselves, maybe our posts on the KauKau Korner on Hawaiithreads.com and here can count as our foodblogs. . .?
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Larry, there's some strange karma going on. I almost simultaneously posted a link to your site, as well as Okonomi Cuisine Kai, in a new thread on foodblogs !
Thanks for the nice comments. I do wonder about what's going to happen to the Keeaumoku neighborhood. Ala Moana Ctr itself has always been a strange hybrid . . . Gucci, Chanel, Neiman-Marcus, etc. just down the corrider from Sears and Longs Drugs, and the whole thing surrounded by small ethnic shops, restaurants, and bars. Now Walmart right next door . . .
Back to Taishoken - I hadn't tried the curry ramen, but it's something I'll definitely try next time I go there!
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I'm a member of Burt Lum's ``Bytemarks'' Hawai`i technology and society mailing list. One of the participants is Larry Geller, who in addition to his many other activities has started his own food-related blog, named Free Range Gourmet. The theme is "Where to find the best Saturday breakfast/brunch in Honolulu", which you do find out, but the content goes well beyond this to include his research and well-informed musings about ingredient sourcing, local agriculture, and even legislator's opening-day food.
This got me interested in locating the universe of food-related blogs located in and / or about Hawai`i. Turns out that the universe (at least what's visible to me) is very small. Here are a couple of "daily eating" blogs:
Ono Kine Grindz does a nice job of chronicling one local person's adventures eating out on Oahu, complete with photographs of each dish before it's consumed!
She Who Eats is more home-cooking oriented, focusing in particular on baking experiences, including Japanese-style patisserie, and some very tempting extreme close-up photos.
And a couple of food-establishment related blogs:
Our very own Emily Hunt has a blog where she chronicles her adventures with Chris Sy as they open Hawai`i's very first wood-fired artisan bakery, The Little Blue House.
The owners of Okonomi Cuisine Kai, the new okonomiyaki restaurant near Ala Moana, have a blog (in Japanese) chronicling their experiences with the construction and opening.
All very much worth checking out. Did I miss any? Probably.
Please post and talk about your experiences reading and / or writing food-related blogs here in Hawai`i!
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Andrea,
Thanks so much for your extremely informative post - it puts us all in a position to appreciate the food much better! Interesting to hear about the fact that some of Bắc Nam's dishes, while basically Northern, have unusual personal touches, such as the frying of the chả after it has been sliced. It was also interesting to learn that the, crisp-fried onions are actually a common household garnish.
. . .The squid is a new invention of theirs. Normally, squid is stuffed and then shallow fried. It's sliced before serving. It looks like they conveniently stuffed theirs and perhaps steamed it first before slicing it and deep frying it? That's why it may have been too chewy. Is that panko on the outside?
I couldn't tell really if the squid had been steamed before frying - I'm assuming that it was not, but the filling seems to have been stir-fried separately before being put into the squid. It does seem like panko on the outside - a particularly sharp, jagged kind.
I like the lamb a lot. Lamb is not an indigenous meat to Vietnam. (It's too hot for them.) However, goat and various other 4-legged animals are eaten. The gaminess of lamb is similar to that of goat so the chops are a great idea. How ironic, about 6 weeks ago the New York Times had a recipe of Charles Phan (Slanted Door in SF) for lamb chops served with tamarind sauce. I like the sound of Bắc Nam's better. Their marinade is a pretty classic/standard Viet combination.So lamb is a substitute for goat - interesting. I didn't see the Phan recipe in the NY Times. Interesting how Slanted Door started out as more of a home-cooking restaurant and has moved more and more into the high-end fusion direction.
The beef short ribs are definitely inspired by Korean kalbi. Nowadays, there's lots of mingling between Korean and Vietnamese folks. For example, both ethnic groups have enclaves and communities near each other in the north Orange County area in Southern California. So just as Koreans love pho, Viet people love kalbi. Maybe it's all for the love of beef? Anyway, there's lots of cultural borrowing going on and that dish is a good result of it!On those times I've had a chance to visit Orange County, my family and I have always dropped by Garden Grove Blvd. Koreatown, then driven the couple of long blocks down to Bolsa Ave. in Westminster. It's like getting immersed in two ongoing cultural festivals, right next to each other. Perhaps that really is the birthplace of the recent boom in Korean-Vietnamese culinary interchange. . .
. . .Lá lôt resembles the betel leaf you described, but it's actually a wild betel leaf (Piper sarmentosum). Raw, it has an unusually cinnamon flavor that's a little medicinal. I've often been embarrassed to ask if a leaf is lá lôt and then get a response that the leaf is actually the betel for chewing.
Thanks for the correction on lá lôt - I suppose we should be happy that they don't use the kind for chewing!
. . .You are very fortunate to have such a spot.
I certainly agree. Honolulu was not, interestingly enough, a central destination for the immigrants during the 1970s, but has recently experienced a major rise in its ethnic Vietnamese population. In particular, the local Chinatown district now boasts of a very large number of Vietnamese shops, primarily catering to the immigrant population.
Thanks again, Andrea for your great work in keeping us informed about Vietnamese food, both here and on Vietworldkitchen!
Sun-Ki
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Tad - not sure why they would call lá lôt a Hawaiian leaf! I believe that it is what is more commonly referred to as the betel leaf (piper betel), which is used, along with the areca nut (sometimes called betelnut) and other seasonings, throughout SE and South Asia to make the chaw-like package (called "paan" in South Asia) that offers a mild buzz . . . It's not the leaf that provides the buzz, though, but the nut and other things like tobacco or even cannabis that might get added in. . .
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Bắc Nam
1117 South King St.
Honolulu HI 96814
808 597-8201
Thanks to a very nice review by Lesa in Honolulu Weekly, I tried out this new (two months-old) Vietnamese place a couple weeks go. Since then, I’ve been back two more times, and for what it’s worth, in my opinion, it deserves to be called Honolulu's best Vietnamese restaurant. While I can't say I'm in a position to definitively compare it to other Vietnamese places in the U.S., I have eaten at least several highly-touted places in San Jose and Westminster. I've can honestly say that food-wise, Bắc Nam really impressed me as much or more than any of them.
What makes it so special? It's both the breadth of the menu and the execution. About half of the items on would not be found on any of your standard Vietnamese-American restaurant menus. Nor is Bắc Nam a high-end, East-West, creative cuisine place like Slanted Door in San Francisco. Instead, it serves a wide range of Vietnamese home-style and mid-range restaurant cooking that generally isn't available elsewhere in this country, at fairly cheap price, in very plain surroundings. There are a plethora of lamb dishes, variations on hand-shaped filled rice flour dumplings, a fair number of simmered and braised dishes (how many of those would you see at your next-door Pho Peoria?), and Vietnamese curries with your choice of meat. Every unusual item that I've tried so far has been very good to excellent.
It's the kind of menu you want to eat your way through, dish by dish, over the course of several months. However, I'm not sure if I'll have the chance, since both times we visited there for dinner, there were no other customers present (the one time I went for lunch, there were about a half-dozen others there). So please go to this restaurant now, and as often as you can, so that they'll stay open and I can continue to eat there.
A short write-up for each dish, moving from appetizers, to meat dishes, to roll-ups, and finally to salads:
The "Bột Lọc delight'' consists of gooey rice-flour dumplings filled with boiled shrimp, raw yam, and bits of crisped onion and cilantro. Great texture contrast between the cover and filling, as well as between the mildness of the flavorings and the extremely spicy sauce served beside it.
The crisp onions seems to be a house trademark, since they comes on a lot of the dishes. I really like this, since it offers a texture contrast and a slight sweetness. If you don't agree, you can always ask them to leave it off.
This is deep fried “chả”, a pieces of finely-ground pork sausage seasoned with garlic and fish sauce.
Here are small cuttlefish (not calamari rings) that have been stuffed with a mixture of ground pork, long rice, onion, and cassava, breaded in coarse, jagged crumbs and deep fried. The squid are very chewy, so you end up partly sucking up the filling – but it’s very satisfying nonetheless.
Did I mention the lamb dishes? The grilled lamb ribs were the first thing we ordered (my son's choice), and they really strike you. It's not just the phenomenon of eating lamb at a Vietnamese restaurants - they are simply really good. You get several rib chops marinated in a garlicky, lemon-grassy marinade, and grilled until extremely crusty on the outside. You can see the crustiness from the picture, but not the way the marinade permeated throughout he meat. The meat is not ultra-tender prime, but it was tender enough, grilled medium rare (be clear how you want it cooked), and not dry at all. At $10.95, this is a dish you can eat all the time. . . The chops come with a ground-soybean based dipping sauce, which complements them well, but they chops are just as good eaten alone.
These “spicy grilled beef short ribs” are sort of like the Vietnamese version of kalbi. Not particularly spicy, just the usual fish sauce, garlic, and lemon grass marinade, but very well-prepared. Very crusty on the outside, but medium rare again on the inside.
This is called “Steamed Rice Flour Meat Rolls”, which gives you no clue at all. It consists of Bánh Cuốn, a kind of filled dumpling with ground pork, tree ear mushrooms, onions, mint, and other things, then topped with chả that has been steamed.
This is a rollup dish, so it comes with a rice-flour pads and a side salad consisting of romaine lettuce, mint, basil, sawtooth herb (ngò gai), and rau răm, as well as the additional salad of shredded lettuce, cucumbers, and bean sprouts you see in the picture. Another mark of their quality is that they go out of their way to provide the full range of Vietnamese side herbs, rather than just lettuce, mint, and basil. Ngò gai is a bitter, bracing herb, while rau răm is spicier, sort of like a cilantro / mint combination.
Grilled beef in lá lôt. This uses real lá lôt leaves (not grape leaves), and comes with rollup fixings similar to the ones that came with the bánh cuốn, as well as rice noodles and pickled carrot, daikon, and cucumbers. The grilling is perfect as usual – a nice char on the outside of the leaves, but not dry inside.
Young lotus root salad. Besides the roots (long, tender, stalks, not hole-filled slices that you get with the mature root), the salad comes with boiled shrimp and pork, cucumber, carrots, daikon, and mint.
By the way, just putting in the diacritical marks for Vietnamese (which I’m sure I did wrong anyway, since I’m totally ignorant) took up half the time of this review. I figured MS Word would allow you to input the symbols in Unicode but how wrong I was – not having much good sense I kept on going and finally discovered Vietpad - a fine Java bitcode application that I highly recommend.
Did I mention this place was unpretentious? It’s not exactly in the middle of a restaurant hotbed – it’s got a ceiling fan shop bordering it and one side and I’m not sure what on the other. Doesn’t matter go there – free parking in the back; great food.
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Joan, you can say that it's similar, but with the following substitutions:
Saag Paneer -> Squid Luau
spinach (usually) -> taro leaf
yoghurt or cream (sometimes) -> coconut milk
spices -> no spices
paneer -> squid (the paneer of the sea?)
So the bottom line is. . . you're crazy :)
BTW, glad that there's so much interest in the squid luau - it's one of the dishes in the luau cannon that's been somewhat forgotten in recent times (Wezsa and his family aside). You can often go to an otherwise great Hawaiian dinner and not be served any "luau" (the dish, not the meal) whatsoever. Another great thing about squid luau is that is part of a family of greens n' coconut dishes that span across Polynesia. . . So it helps in some small way to solidify the pan-Polynesian identity???
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Whenever any friend or acquaintance is returning from a visit to Honolulu my daughter contrives anyway reasonable to have them return to Seattle with a Gallon of the Squid Luau in exchange for 2 way airport drop off and pick up from Seattle.
A gallon of squid luau! Wesza, that should last a long time - of give you enough to put on your own luau. Hopefully the folks at airport security don't think that its some kind of WMD component and confiscate it.
Rlivings, I guess luau leaf (and squid) is an acquired taste, but I guarantee you that Helena's version will go down real easy. . .
Tryska, yes, the brown goop is poi. Anyone who expects it to taste like chocolate, however, will be in for a bit of a surprise. The usual description of the taste (by its enemies) is "library paste", but I don't think that's remotely accurate either (though I haven't eaten a lot of library paste recently easier). It plays the role of the starch component of the meal, but because it has that slight sourness, it's an excellent foil to the rich and often heavy meat dishes.
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Mandarin Restaurant
725 Kapiolani Blvd.
Honolulu HI 96813
808 593-1188
Mandarin is another popular Sino-Korean restaurant, with a menu that's pretty similar to Andong. We go to both places quite a bit, and so I thought I would included it in the same thread, not so much for comparison purposes, but to give you guys a glimpse of additional facets of Chinese cuisine as South Koreans know it.
The secret to knowing that it's a Sino-Korean restaurant, even before looking at the menu, is the fact they'll plop down plates of kimchi and raw onions in front of you as soon as you sit down. The black stuff on the right is pure, unadulterated fermented black bean paste for dipping the onions.
The cchajangmyeon and cchamppong are in the standard format, in fact, they are so similar to the On Dong versions that I won't bother to include pictures here. Indeed, Sino-Korean restaurants everywhere are remarkable in the precise uniformity that you find in the cchajangmyeon and cchamppong - it's like they're all working off the same recipe. When I was housesitting with the kids in Seoul a couple years ago, we ordered cchajangmyeon takeout or delivery three times over the course of about 10 days (not my idea, exactly) from three different places, and it was really hard to tell the difference. I suppose it's because Korean customers view these two dishes as standard representatives of the Chinese restaurant experience, have very precise expectations of what they're supposed to get, and won't accept the slightest deviation. Chefs might experiment with the meat dishes, and they don't even have to offer vegetable dishes, but tamper with the noodle dishes and they'll go out of business. By the way, cchajangmyeon and cchamppong are the two most frequent foods that you find delivered to homes in urban South Korea - they're like the Korean version of delivery pizza, challenged nowadays only by pizza itself. If you've seen the cult comedy classic "Attack on the Gas Station", you'll know what I'm talking about.
PPC, (perhaps) you'd be happy to know that cchamppong is listed as "sou ma men" in English (and Chinese characters) on the Mandarin menu.
Anyway, I will show you some of the meat dishes that you can get at Mandarin - with very short descriptions.
Kkamppunggi - spicy fried chicken in garlic sauce. It's the more commonly-eaten variation of the kkamppung squid that we had at Andong.
Tangsuyuk - the Korean version of sweet and sour pork. Note that while the sauce here is almost as gloppy, it's not the same fuschia color that you find in American sweet n' sour. In Korea, sweet and sour beef is also very popular, since some people look down on pork as a "low class" meat. The Mandarin's version is very crisp (perhaps they do the water chestnut flour thing?) and, refreshingly, actually has some sourness to it - and the kids still gobble it up.
Nanjawanseu, on the other hand, is something not remotely like anything you'll find in a Sino-American restaurant. It's a made from giant pork meatballs (sort of like those you find in Lion's Head) that have been deep-fried until crisp, then put in a not-so spicy, but somewhat garlicky, soy-based sauce.
Cheon'yubyeong (pan-fried green onion cake) is actually more of a pure Northern Chinese dish than a Sino-Korean adaptation, but you do frequently find it on Sino-Korean menus. This one is filled with huge amounts of green onions mixed, interestingly enough, with some scrambled egg.
It's on the ground floor of the futuristic-looking 40-story Imperial Plaza on the corner of Kapiolani and Cooke Streets. The customers are not so much the residents but the workers at the nearby office buildings. There's validated parking in the Plaza garage if you come through the business parking entrance around the corner, or you can look in vain for metered spots on the Cooke Street side facing the restaurant. The mirrored glass is great for seeing your own dorkiness before you walk through the doors.
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Too bad. Maybe we can meet some other time, here or whenever I have a chance to be in NYC. . .
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Just wanted to post pics of another dish that Yuchun does very well (you see, we go there all the time - my daughter would go every day if she could).
Gamasot bibimbab is a version of bibimbab (garnished rice for mixing up) that is cooked an served in a carbon steel post. Bibimbap is rice that has been topped with an arrangement of meat and vegetables, usually including raw or cooked beef, egg, soy bean sprouts, and shredded kim chi, as well as various additional vegetables. The whole thing is mixed with gochujang (chili-fermented soybean paste) and sesame oil. There are numerous versions, depending on the family or restaurant, as well as specific types associated with regions of the country. Cheonju (in north Jeolla province) is famous for its bibimbab made with raw beef and lots of soy bean sprouts. "Bibinba" has recently also become very popular Japan as part of the decade-long boom in Korean cookery, and ready-made versions can be found on the shelves of many convenience stores.
The Yuchun version contains a topping of shredded cooked beef, shredded egg (most places give you a fried or even raw egg), carrots, zucchini, shiitake mushrooms, spinach, fiddlehead ferns, shredded radish kim chi, and soy bean sprouts. The gamasot retains head from the cooking and creates a nice rice crust (nurungji) that may people find the best part of eatin it. Gamasot bibimbab is closely related to dolsot bibimbab, which is served in a igneous stone bowl to similar effect. Dol is the korean word for rock, and sot for the kind of small pot used for cooking. Gama is actually derived from the Japanese word kama, which means pot, and (in Korean) stands for a Japanese-style pot made from cast iron or carbon steel, having either wooden lides or metal ones with a small round bulb for grasping on top. So a gamasot literally means "pot pot". Similar to "mochi tteok", which literally means "rice cake rice cake", but refers in Korea to Japanese-style rice cake, but that's a digression. . .
Another dish that we like is yukkejang, which is a chili-hot beef soup with shredded beef, green onions, gosari (fiddlehead ferns), and other vegetables. Aside from the spicing (and the sometimes the goat meat), it's a little like the north Mexican birria, which is why a lot of the Koreans who live on the Arizona-Sonora border seem to tkae to birria quite well. Yuchun's version has a lot of egg on top, which does help to cool things down and compensate for the huge amount of chili. . .
Good for a hot summer day, on the principle of "iyeol chiyeol" (use heat to cure heat).
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Forks fly at crowded Taste of Honolulu, By Will Hoover
Another report about the festival which I couldn't attend. . .
Good as gourmet, by Wanda A. Adams
First in a series of home cook profiles - this week, Corinne Inoue
USDA and UH team up to create experimental farm
From Kaka`ako to Pier 38
Booze is big at upcoming isle benefits
By Request: Filipino-style banana fritters yummy yummy, by Betty Shimabukuro
bandiay bandiay
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Helena's Hawaiian Food
1249 N. School St.
Honolulu HI
808 845-8044
Sorry for the long wait between reports - it's been a pretty busy last couple weeks. But here we are again.
Open since 1946, Helena's Hawaiian Food one of the oldest restaurant in Hawai`i that is still owned by the family that founded it. The most extraordinary thing about Helena's, however, is the fact that owner Helen Chock has been there nearly every single day from its founding until today. Even now, at age 87, Mrs. Chock is still omnipresent at the counter, and is still responsible for much of the food coming out of the kitchen. Now that has got to be some kind of record.
Of course, in order to stick around for that long, Helena's has had to serve up some very good food, particularly since it competes against many Hawaiian restaurants and luau productions with very similar menus. Indeed, the food is good enough to attract national attention - in 2000, Helena's won the "Regional Classic" award from the James Beard foundation.
But we must digress first to consider the concept of "Hawaiian Food", which can appear a little complicated to outsiders. Unlike "California Cuisine" or for that matter "Iowan Food", it doesn't refer in a broad sense to food being eaten in or associated with the state of Hawai`i, which tends to go her under the alternative label "Local Food". Local food is dominated by Asian and Western influences, ranging from the ubiquitous plate lunch with two scoops of rice to the self-consciously inventive Hawaiian Regional Cuisine.
Hawaiian food, on the other hand, refers to foods associated with the foods of the Kanaka Ma`olinative Hawaiians, just as the term "Hawaiian" refers not so much to the residents of the state as the members of the ethnic group descended from the original inhabitants of the islands. Even here, however, there is more to the concept than meets the eye, since the Native Hawaiian food is itself a moving target, absorbing a wide variety of influences from the outside world since first contact with the West in the late 18th century. Moreover, obviously, native Hawaiians do eat quite a bit of "local food" as well as all the other cuisines available in the state, so the boundaries between Hawaiian and non-Hawaiian food become harder to maintain.
In practice, the working definition of Hawaiian food seems to center around dishes that were included within the everyday and luau menu of elite Native Hawaiians at around the turn of the 20th century, as well as direct descendants from those dishes. Hence certain dishes like lomi salmon and chicken long rice, while they include ingredients that were not available in the islands prior to outside contact, are freely accepted as exemplary representatives of Hawaiian cuisine because they have been eaten by Native Hawaiians for more than a century. Other dishes that have been included more recently in the canon of Hawaiian cuisine, such as shoyu poke and pulehu shortribs, were probably not eaten a hundred years ago, but are direct adaptations of dishes that were commonplace at the time.
Anyway, end of digression. If anyone wants, to talk more about this subject, we've had a thread on it a while ago - "Real" Hawaiian Food: What qualifies?.
The first thing you notice when you walk into Helena's is how truly friendly the ambience is. Most of the customers seem to be regulars, and people are constantly walking up and down the aisles to talk to Mrs. Chock and her staff or to people at other tables. If there's no open table available (which is often the case), there's no formal waiting list, you're just welcome to hang around whereever you feel like, talking story, until something opens up.
The menu is more or less completely ala carte. You order a starch (poi or rice), then pick from a long list of small plate items, most priced in the $2.75-3.75 range. Generally, you'll want more than one item per person, but not much more unless you're very hungry, so overall you get eat your fill quite cheaply given the quality of the food.
Moving clockwise from the upper left hand corner, we have:
- pa`akai `alaea - coarse-grained sea salt tinged with red volcanic soil. See this thread for more information.
- shortribs pipikaula style. These are based upon shortribs that have been brined and seasoned, then hung up to dry before being broiled over high heat (pulehu).
- kalua pig - the luau food par excellence, the Hawaiian version of pulled pork, originally cooked in an underground oven (imu).
- haupia - a starch-thickened coconut pudding, cut in squares, that is the invariable dessert at luaus.
- squid luau - squid cooked in a sauce featuring pureed luau (taro) leaf and coconut milk.
- poi. - the (in)famous traditional Hawaiian staple made from fermented mashed taro root thinned with water. Helena's version is relatively mild and unsour.
- fried butterfish collar - name describes it all.
- lomi salmon (center) - raw salted salmon, mixed with diced tomatoes, green onions.
The two bottles flanking the haupia contain soy sauce and chili pepper water.
Here are some closeups of the entrees:
The shortribs pipikaula style are one of Helena's trademark dishes. You can see rows of the ribs hanging laundry-style in the open kitchen. Pipikaula is the traditional Hawaiian jerky, though it tends to be moister and thicker than American jerky, somewhat more like South African biltong. The use of shortribs, and the way they are cut, on the other hand, seem to reflect the influence of Korean kalbi.
Whatever the origin, they are a great experience - chewy, salty, crusty, concentrated meat.
Helena's version of kalua pig is steam-cooked in a true imu (underground earth oven), though the oven itself is off-premises. Thus it has the smoky, briny taste that is distinctive to imu cooking, in which spent embers, red-hot stones, and seaweed all contribute to the taste of the final product, and the sealed oven ensures its moistness.
The squid luau is extremely creamy and comforting. No brief blanching here; the greens are cooked to the point of falling apart, and mixed with large amounts of extremely rich coconut milk. The chewy bits of squid offer an pleasant textural contrast. Chicken is another food that is also given the leaf-and-coconut treatment.
The lomi salmon here is full of goodies, adding sweet Maui onions, ogo seaweed, and small cubes one additional kind of raw fish (ahi?) to the salted salmon / tomato / green onion mix. Refreshing.
The butterfish collar is another one of Helena's specialties. Like Japanese cuisine, Hawaiian cuisine has a real appreciation for the sweetness of the meat in the collar area of the fish. Eating the collar involves a lot of poking and nibbling to get at each small morsel around the bones, but it's worth the effort. Butterfish collar is also available boiled, either plain, in stew gray, or with watercress.
Helena's only disruption in business was in 2001, when they moved from their old North King St. address to their new haunts on N. School St. The new location is close to Bishop Museum, in a small strip mall across from Mitsu-ken's Okazuya and ajoining Mitsuba's Okazuya. The parking here is pretty minimal, so you may sometimes have to wait a while for spots to open up, or find street parking somehwere in the vicinity.
- pa`akai `alaea - coarse-grained sea salt tinged with red volcanic soil. See this thread for more information.
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Welcome to eGullet, AuntieNellieKulolo! Hope to hear more from you.
No Jollibee's in Hawai`i as of yet. The Jo-ni's in Ala Moana unfortunately closed down, as did another location in Kalihi. Don't know if there still might be another location in existence.
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Another article on the Taste:
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Wonderful blog, Boris_A. . .
Simple question, perhaps, but what are the origins of cheese dishes such as fondue and raclette? They seem reflect a kind of culture that seems in some ways to prefer foods that are prepared outside the kitchen. Were they originally prepared outdoors? Émincé de veau also seems to often be prepared at table in restaurants.
The Austrians have about 15 named ways (once about 30!) to cut beef for boiling. And every gourmet has his preferred piece. Tafelspitz is the crown.Boiled beef is popular in Switzerland as well, but with cuts of lesser quality.
BTW. Wechsberg mentioned the following types of boiled beef being served in Meissl and Schadn during the 1930s in his great essay from Blue Trout and Black Truffles:
Tafelzpitz, Tafeldeckel, Rieddeckel, Beinfleisch, Rippenfleisch, Kavalierspitz, Kruspelspitz, Hieferschwanzl, Schulterschwanzl, Schulterscherzl, Mageres Meisel (or Mäuserl), Fettes Meisel, Zwerchried, Mittleres Kügerl, Dünnes Kügerl, Dickes Kügerl, Bröselfleisch, Ausgelöstes, Brustkern, Brustfleisch, Weisses Scherzl, Schwarzes Scherzl, Zapfen, and Ortschwanzl(!) Thanks, ludja, for bringing up Wechsberg - I can't resist quoting him either.
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Thanks, rlivings. I've started a thread on the Taste of Honolulu, and posted the menu from Midweek on the thread.
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Beard House behind the Scenes, by Joan Namkoong
A report of Chef Mavro's dinner for the Beard House
By Request: Dad gets wish for Okinawan pork specialty, by Betty Shimabukuro
Rafute!
Farmers' market to open earlier
KCC Farmer's Market summer hours: 7:30-11:30. Special events planned
FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Long-lost recipes resurface, by Wanda A. Adams
Palama by the Sea Foam Cookies, Pottery Steak House Hen Sauce. . .
Holoholo: Building the Royal Brewery took fine masonry skill, By Burl Burlingame
America is a nation that takes beer seriously. So it's probably not a coincidence that in 1898, the same year Hawaii was annexed by the United States, the Honolulu Brewing and Malting Company was established in Honolulu. All they needed was a professional place to make suds.All Kosher, All the time, by Betty Shimabukuro
Mazal's Kosherland, the first local kosher grocery
By Request: Bad weekend to start a diet, by Betty Shimabukuro
Taste of Honolulu coming up. . .
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Great site. Wonder how they can know about the cuisine of so many different cities! The "China Pictures" section has photos of many of the same places.
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PPC, Welcome back! We're all envious of your lifestyle. . . . Please do let us know more about your experiences in the hotbed of Chinese culinary culture!
Your hypothesis about the origins of Champon make a lot of sense to me. By the way, the owner of worldramen.net, "BON" is a former eGullet forum host.
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Japanese curry aside, there are also a fair number of Indian restaurants in Japan as well.
And how about the popularity of so-called "sizzlers" on restaurant menus in India? Aren't they a version of Japanese teppanyaki?
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Great to hear from you Alana. Hope things are going well with Gray Kunz and folks in NY.
Want to concur with Oneidaone, who no doubt knows a lot more about these restaurants than I do.
Compared to other upscale,innovative local restaurants, Sansei (at least the Honolulu location) seems to serve a relatively larger kama`aina clientele. Their tempura items are very popular (local people do like their fried stuff, as KarenS can tell you), but as Oneida points out they're certainly by no means the dominant thing on the menu. Pretty typically locals will show up pretty late at night and hang out at the restaurant bar, ordering pupus and drinks from the very long appetizer menu.
L'Uraku is a lot of fun with its upside-down umbrella-filled, and the food is excellent and reasonably priced for the quality. It definitely takes a Japanese attitude towards its Hawai`i cuisine, with sophisticated use of ingredients like miso, wasabi, ume, etc.
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Welcome to eGullet, tanspace. You've got a great eating site there - I'll definitely use it as a reference next time I'm in San Francisco (this August).
How champon got to Nagasaki is kind of a mystery to me. There has been a substantial Chinese community in Nagasaki since the early 17th century, but given Nagasaki's geographical location, it seems more likely that they would be from Southeastern China rather than Shandong. Perhaps this would explain why Nagasaki champon is so different from the Korean cchamppong or the original Shandong chaomamian. But then, why the similarity in names between the Nagasaki and the korean dish? Any insights you could provide on all this would be appreciated. . .
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Oneidaone, you're right that the top local chefs typically are very generous themselves up for a lot of charitable activities. But I guess my point (if there was one) was that it's usually it's at a higher end than such a paper-plate kind of dining experience. Thanks for pointing out, however, Yamaguchi's past help to IHS.
Didn't mean to offend anyone with the use of the term "minion"! Used it only in the same sense as you, the most positive sense. I agree that Nasuti and Okumura are very talented chefs in their own right. . .
Some more pictures from the festival. . .
A huge pot of potion being cooked up by a chef at the Pacific Club becomes. . .
"Ginger Tomato Broth" for "Garlic Herb Marinated Monchong".
A roasting joint from Big G's Catering becomes. . .
"Rotisserie Roasted Garlic Prime Rib with Garlic Mashed Potatoes"
I had a few scrip left, and this was our souvenir home. Deep fried moi.
Laters. . .
Bắc Nam
in Hawaii: Dining
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Interesting about the lamb - I'll definitely ask them next time I go there?
Do let us know if you're ever in Hawai`i - maybe we can organize an eGullet Vietnamese food outing . . .!