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skchai

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  1. Amazing - thanks for the great responses! Thanks for the Mother's suggestion; sorry I missed it the first time. Slight change of plans - sorry! We just woke up. Jet lag and all - everyone except the wife was bouncing around off and and on throughout the night. Will probably try Mother's or Bon Ton depending on how things go. . . Probably will not be able to post back today; will try to update sometime tomorrow. Thanks again!
  2. The closest Indian place is probably India Cafe, but it is on the end of Kapahulu Ave. farthest from Waikiki. As far as I know there is no Indian place in Waikiki. Restaurants there reflect the demands of the tourist population, and as of yet there aren't many from the subcontinent or others who demand Indian food. . .
  3. Here's a very specific request for a recommendation tomorrow. We're going to the Children's Museum (Julia nr. Magazine in Warehouse District) tomorrow AM, then take Mayhaw's advice walk down to the Canal Street Ferry to cross the Mighty Mississippi and check out Blaine Kern. We're looking for lunch somewhere in the vicinity of the walk from the Children's Museum to the Ferry launch. Is Bon Ton Cafe any good? Mulate's? Emeril's requires formal wear, and anyway I don't think we're really up for something like Emeril's for a walk-by lunch. Uglesich unfortunately seems to be quite a walk in the opposite direction. Dinner will be in the Quarter. Probably kids won't have energy to walk far east of Canal, and we're looking to try out Mike Anderson, Red Fish, or Deanie's (I know we're supposed to go to the original, but given that we're mostly staying around the Quarter and its environs. . .). Wednesday (the day after tomorrow is Wednesday, right?), we'll probably rent a car, so we'll have a little more mobility to try out different places. . .
  4. THanks, Saturnbar! And welcome to this thread if not eGullet itself. Mayhaw - here's what we've been doing so far. Very touristy. Sorry, we'll try better tomorrow! Yesterday we spent the late afternoon walking around the Quarter. We did the Audobon Zoo -> Boat -> Aquarium thing today. Yesterday: So we've got that out of the way, and not even for breakfast. The Cafe du Monde beignets were surprisingly chewy. This was the kid's reward at around 4:00 for walking around with us. Dinner was at the Gumbo Shop - was around a block from where we happened to be walking at the time. Surprisingly cheap - I remember the mention of it from reading Time-Life's Foods of the World, which came out around 1969, so it's been there for a while. The famous chicken-andouille gumbo was just passable - kind of stingy quantity-wise but I guess what's why it's so cheap. Wasn't it supposed to be duck-andouille? The okra-seafood was actually better. . . Today: Lunch was at one of the Audobon Zoo restaurants. Catfish was surprisingly O.K. No pictures. Dinner was at K-Paul's. My wife is a great fan of blackened anything and I told her this was the "pioneer". That was enough. Surprisingly white-tablecloth (and pricey) for dinner, though they let us in wearing shorts. Wife had "Blackened Yellowfin Tuna". I know the image should be reoriented; sorry. New Orleans must be one of the few places in the country where it's not called ahi (hey!). I read somewhere that they don't serve redfish anymore because it became an endangered species due to Prudhomme's popularity. Actually was excellent - big piece as you can see, managed to cook it to "steak-like" rareness, which is almost impossible with tuna. That is, opaque but still soft inside. I had a blackened pork chop with Marchand de Vin sauce. Looks pretty good, right? O.K., they get away with charging fine dining prices for what seems like somewhat dressed-up Cajun Food (not that Cajun food doesn't deserve to be expensive - but it usually isn't). And it seems mostly tourists. But we liked the food a lot and didn't feel ripped off at all. But maybe that's cognitive dissonance.
  5. That's probably true - a big cookie is an expensive thing. On the other hand, macadamia nuts and other "luxury" add-ins that are made locally are, at least relatively speaking, cheap. But hey, we have to ship almost all our beer from the mainland and people still drink it! BTW, we do have a local dairy industry, but somehow the milk that's produced locally costs more than the milk that's brought over from California. Go figure - it probably has something to do with the land prices.
  6. Thanks again for the long and learned list of suggestions! Will go through the list and try to digest it all. Hopefully we can all get together and file a report back here. . .
  7. The post that started this thread has now turned into a brief article in the Honolulu Weekly food section.. Err. . . just happened to appear on the week when they put the section on line. No archives at this point for the restaurant section yet, so it won't be up more than a week! Note: the link above is now outdated, but here is a link to (a somewhat longer version of) the cookie article on my personal site. Hope you don't mind, Lesa! I think I've more or less answered my original question, though the answer wasn't as simple as I thought. Basically there are the following factors: small cookies were originally sold out of jars in the old general stores small cookies were easy for portion control in small startup companies, both weighing and cutting out small shortbread cookies were what they sold in the old public school cafeteria system sturdy, small cookies were more suitable for the omiyage trade since they held up and were easy to carry sheer personal idiosyncraticity (everything else I haven't figured out yet) Oh well.
  8. Thanks, Brooks and Rachel. We were thinking of Lafayette, but at this point it's all up in the air. The rental car turns out to be real expensive with the $30 / night hotel parking charge. Dunbar is already on the agenda, but will be looking be looking into some of the other places you mentioned as well!
  9. Lot of great ideas - it's hard to do much with the sauce itself, since the roux ingredients don't really go with the more obvious additives to a sauce such as wine, cream, coconut milk, or yoghurt. Tomatoes and / or caramelized onions both seem like great ideas. Other things that might (?) go well are a hoppy pilsner-like beer instead of water. Or putting a fairl amount of ground cardomon into the spice mixture. Or how about some yuzu juice (not too much)? All of these additions would help to "lighten" the taste of the curry. . .
  10. If you're looking for a much more comprehensive list of Fitzmorris' lists, you can find them here: Top Ten by Tom Fitzmorris
  11. At long last, I'm going to be able to visit New Orleans. My family and I will be there for 10 days starting this weekend. We will have a car for at part of the time, probably at the beginning. The one qualification is that we have two extremely rambunctious kids, age 4 and 7, and will probably be avoiding places where their presence, noise level, and desire to use the table as a playgym will not detract from other diners' experiences. Part of this time will involve conference attendance by both myself and my wife, so there will be times when one of us will be carrying around two kids. . . Presumably, then, we should avoid many of the high-end restaurants, but are there particular places, that you think will be especially kid-friendly? Also, if there are any eGulleters who are planning to be in NOLA at that time and wouldn't be opposed to getting together, just let me know!
  12. You're right about the fact that there's not enough kalo grown locally to even fulfill the demand for poi. According to an article in the Star-Bulletin this year's crop has shown a slight improvement over last year's which was an all-time recorded low, but there is often a shortage of poi at this time of the year. I read elsewhere that the number acres under cultivation for kalo has dropped precipitously over the past half-century. . .
  13. Mavro believes meditation beats marination The latest "fitness profile" of a local celeb chef. Worth it for the picture of Mavro standing on his head. Sam Choy’s Koloko wins Beard award But not the one you would expect. See this thread for more info. Host chef of Uncorked started as dishwasher, by Wanda Adams After immigrating as a refugee from Laos in 1971, Khamtan Tanhchaleun had to work his way through virtual every level from the bottom to the top before reaching his current position as executive chef for Ko'olau Catering Partners and host chef for this year's Hawai`i Public Radio benefit. Spain reigns: An isle fiesta celebrates the region's cuisine, by Betty Shimabukuro More about this year's HPR fundraiser, called "Rapsodie Espagnole". By Request: Dynamite dish explodes with flavorful fish, by Betty Shimabukuro A recipe for the fusion sushi counter favorite. Key Ingredient: Durian, by Eleanor Nakama-Mitsunaga A disquisition on the "King of (smelly) Fruits" Demand makes poi shortage possible, by Craig Gima Graduation parties and baby luaus this time of the year make shortages an annual event. Last year was especially tight, but this year shows some improvement. QUICK BITES: Maui restaurant on Hot Tables list I'm not sure quite how unhappy we should be about this. . . By Request: Tofu cookie leaves trail of crumbs online, by Betty Shimabukuro Apparently the Castle Medical Center cafeteria serves a tofu-walnut bar, but isn't willing to give the recipe away. . . Key Ingredient: Palm seed, by Eleanor Nakama-Mitsunaga That's the shiny chewy thing that goes into Halo-Halo and other kinds of shaved ice.
  14. I dunno. Who's to say what's going on inside his mind? But in general, if you want to talk about why there might be pressures for food columnists to resort to these kinds of grand, sweeping, and sometimes inaccurate comments, I more or less agree with merle. Restaurant reviewers are purportedly experts, after all, even when they're someone who was just pulled off the police blotter last week by some editor who heard that they "like eating". Even someone who's been on the job for years and has a genuine passion for food would still have a hard time keeping up with the bewildering array of ethnic foods that are available in any large city nowadays. So you get some reviewers who deliberately limit their scope, ignoring restaurants that they can't quite get a handle on (usually the low end ethnic). I guess the only other way of avoiding this kind of overreaching is to adopt a slightly different voice - that of an explorer (but more than a novice) rather than an expert. But I guess that's a hard voice to develop. . . I mean, are there any good examples of that kind of reviewer?
  15. Mahalo to everyone for your lively posts on this thread! Have been to Maple Garden dozens of times - it was my father's favorite restaurant. Was back there again last night. It was a banquet-type thing, so I didn't have a chance to check the menu for General Tso's Chicken. But we did have the fried chicken legs in spicy garlic sauce, the tea-smoked duck, as well as the Tungpo Pork. Even my wife liked the tungpo pork, even though she usually hates pork! Thanks for the info on the sou ma mein. Will have to check it out. Eastern Paradise also serves cchamppong, so it will be interesting to see if it's the same or different from their sou ma mein!
  16. Thanks for the excessively-kind comments Joan. Honestly, I'd hate to see what would happen if an omniscient fact-checker went through my posts. At least I have no idea how to take magisterial tone. . . Did you send Gold a link to this thread? Hopefully if he saw it (instead of being offended) he would take this as hint to tone down some of the smarty-pants about intl food. And maybe issue a correction or two when people point out where he's gone wrong (as you did regarding gooksoo). The issue isn't whether he knows a lot about food (obviously he knows a lot), but whether he's getting a little too full of himself. . .
  17. Behemoth, Really don't have much to add to the great posts by jschyun and jrufusj, which have covered most of the ground that there is to be covered. Vegetarian Food: The most prominent vegetarian restaurant in Seoul is Sanchon in Insadong. It's based upon Buddhist temple cuisine, as are most of the "first generation" of vegetarian restaurants in Korea. There has over the past few years been a "second generation" of vegetarian places based upon a diverse set of international influences, but I don't really know of one place to single out. Student Vibe: As jrufusj mentioned, there isn't any single location to pick out. It would be a good idea to walk around around the university neighborhoods like Shinchon and Daehagno (both easy to access by subway), and just look around at what people, peer in windows and such, before making a decision. When I was last there (summer 2002), it seemed the hot genre among students was "cchimdak" (braised chicken in dark soy-based sauce with vegetables) - it seemed like cchimdak restaurants were popping up everwhere. It comes out in a huge communal pan, and everyone picks away at it. But student fads are even more transient than others, so I'm sure they've moved onto something else by now. Street Food: There are a lot less than years ago, as urban development and health code enforcement have closed down many of the carts and the pojang matcha (tent stalls) that used to cover much of the city center. There's less risk of gastro-distress than before, but if you want to play it very safe, stick to stuff like roasted sweet potatoes. Don't eat the hot dogs on a stick, not that you would be tempted. On the other hand, the spicy fried chicken on a stick sold by a lots of folks along Jongno is pretty good. If you'd like to try street food-type specialties in more hygenic surroundings (at higher prices), you can go to many of the small stalls in the basement food sections of the big department stores like Lotte and Hyundai. There's plenty of other reasons to check the basements out. Similar to Japanese depachika, give you a chance to try out a large variety of popular local specialties without having to walk around too much. Junk Food: Lots to be had. For gimbab (like Japanese rolled sushi), there's a big chain called Jongno Gimbab that serves all kinds of weird stuff like cheese or kimchee gimbab. You might please your rebellious traveling companion and check out the local junk food scene at the same time by dropping into a local-style burger joint such as Lotteria, where you can check out the bulgogi burger and such.
  18. Another thing we need on all the shelves: Kukui nuts. Kukui nuts, not Macadamia nuts (an Aussie import from the late 19th century) were a mainstay of the traditional Hawaiian diet, forming the basis for a number of popular relishes. It's easier to find dried Kukui nuts imported from Indonesia (kemiri) than it is to find locally produced kukui nuts. . .
  19. I know what you mean, Ryan. Getting used to so many vegetables is a hard thing if you're used to the regular plate lunch. Also, it takes away from the amount for meat on the plate. . . That Engrish site is incredibly comprehensive! Also, there's another Hawai`i restaurant that uses that Engrish in its title - Kit'n Kitchen, the Hong Kong-style Italian place on University Ave.
  20. One immediate concrete benefit for the urban residents of elections are the celebratory sweets that are distributed by victors. Anyone had any? Any difference between Cong and BJP / NDA celebratory sweets (other than, presumably, that there less of the latter than the former)?
  21. No country music playing there. Hawaiian music if anything. Actually, I have slightly more insight into the name than I let on (I think). I believe I read someplace that Richard Chan chose the name because to him it created an image of freshness in people's minds. Never mind that it doens't really mean anything. Just like a lot of the other Japlish, Konglish, and Chinglish slogans you find on everything from T-Shirts to soft drink cans throughout East Asia. . .
  22. I think the most plausible story is that Orange Chicken / Beef it was originally an adaptation of Szechuan Tangerine Peel Beef. Then it got the Sino-Americanization treatment: (1) battered before being deep-fried (2) lots more sugar in the sauce (3) lots more cornstarch in the sauce. Which I guess (except for 2) is not that different from the Sino-Indianization treatment or the Sino-Koreanization threatment.
  23. Trifles make Perfection. the selected works of Joseph Wechsberg. I know the title sounds precious, but it's about time that somebody put together the essays of this great food writer of yesteryear. His essays on Henri Soule and Fernand Point show how the production of haute cuisine hasn't really changed to the extent that we think it has. . .
  24. I Love Country Cafe 451 Pi`ikoi St. Honolulu, HI 96814 808 596-8108 http://www.ilovecountrycafe.com/ I'm not sure in what language the phrase "I Love Country Cafe" can be found. Hawaiian Pidgin? Japlish? Whatever it means, it's become on of the more popular dining places on Oahu in the past few years, despite, or because of, the fact that it doesn't really fit into any of the traditional dining categories that you find here. Its menu includes many of the traditional Hawai`i plate lunch favorites, such as mochiko chicken, chicken katsu, fried mahimahi, pork adobo, roast pork, teri beef, etc. However, the presentation is a bit more upscale than your usual plate lunch place - while you can get mac salad here, the more common accompaniment is stir-fried seasonal vegetables or a proper tossed salad, with Manoa lettuce, beansprouts, etc. And the rice is brown rice, unless you specifically request white. But there's more: In addition to plate lunch foods, you also get various pastas, "Broiled Pesto Mahimahi", "Sauteed Ahi with Tomato Balsamic Sauce", "Shiitake Braised Tofu", and . . . fresh-baked scones for breakfast?! O.K., what the hell is this? Perhaps one can say that I Love Country Cafe is a place that aspires to appeal to both the local-style plate lunch crowd and to yuppie types looking for a slightly upscale diner type of experience. Similar to places like Big City Diner in Kaimuki and Sam Choy's BLC in Iliwei (for lunch at least). But the most bizarre thing of all is that ILCC has also become a cult favorite of sorts with the local bodybuilding community, and part its menu reflects the low-fat, low-carb, high-protein demands of those people. You can tell by looking at the pictures of celebrity and not-so-celebrities that line the back wall of the restaurant. Half of them seem to be bodybuilders - or at least muscular people who enjoy posing half-naked. The rest seem to be a mix of beauty queens and newscasters. One item on the menu, the "body-builder special" simply sounds evil - plain steamed chicken breast with peanut sauce and salad. But rest assured that your concern for health does not have to go to such extremes. If you concentrate on the plate lunch-style entrees, you will find that you will eat very well, and with more fiber and less grease than if you went elsewhere. Here's their pork adobo (pork cubes braised in soy-vinegar-garlic sauce). This is a major serving, as you can see, but the pork is not fried after braising, unlike in the traditional version. I know, healthiness and everything, but is seems slightly wan thereby. And this is the first time I've ever seen carrots in pork adobo. Otherwise, however, pretty good - decent amount of garlic and black pepper in the sauce, and the pork is tender. And not a small serving either. Toss salad and brown rice on the side. Here's their popular mochiko chicken / furikake mahi set. Unlike the other plate lunch-style entrees, there's no salad at all with this set. Instead, the rice comes in the form of a kind of Asian-style brown rice pilaf, seasoned with shoyu and studded with bits of browned onion and carrots. The mochiko chicken (chicken rolled in seasoned rice flour) is pan-fried rather than deep-fried, and is moist for a chicken breast. The furikake mahi is also pan-fried, and is again they manage not to dry it out. The whole thing is covered with a thin layer of teriyaki sauce and chopped green onions. The ILCC founder, Richard Chan, has been involved in literally dozens of different business ventures here in Hawai`i, with mixed success, since immigrating here 20 years ago. It was only when his wife, Millie, reportedly a great cook, became active in his businesses that things took off for him. The ILCC main branch is in a truly desolate-looking strip mall adjacent to Ala Moana Center, next to the Pi`ikoi offramp coming down from the second floor of the center. In fact, if the parking lot is full, you can just park in the first floor area at Ala Moana and walk over through a small opening in the wall. The other branch is in the Kahala Mall, close to the new Kimuraya Bakery.
  25. Thanks for the nice comments on the review. Glad your wife enjoyed eating there! Regarding General Tso's chicken. You're right that it's very hard to find in Hawai`i. I haven't really been looking for it, but I'll start to scan menus from now on. . . It seems that the popularity of the dish in the U.S. began in New York and spread westward. There was a thread about it in the China forum a while ago: General Tso's Relatives
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