4 Ways to Eat Outside of the Box in Honolulu

Someone out there in restaurant land was doing some unconventional thinking, perhaps just to keep me from getting bored.

Tucked away on my computer desktop, I keep a list—not of restaurants to eat at, that’s never a problem, but restaurants that seem interesting enough to write about.

 

This month, I looked at the list and scratched my head.

 

Even by my standards, it was an eccentric assortment of eateries: A downtown paninoteca. A Nepalese restaurant in Kaimuki. A high-end macrobiotic cafe. And a venerable takeout place turned out by its landlord into a lunchwagon.

 

The only common denominator? They were individually out of the ordinary. And as a list? Sort of weird and wonderful, definitely not boring. It was the least I could do to eat at all four.

 

Haili’s Hawaiian Foods

WHEN MANAGEMENT AT WARD CENTERS SUGGESTED A LUNCH WAGON, RACHEL HAILI DECIDED IT WAS A GOOD WAY TO KEEP HER FAMILY BUSINESS GOING. IT’S NOW PARKED ACROSS FROM WARD THEATRES.

PHOTO: JOSS

 

I am as fond of Rachel Haili as I could be of anyone who once fed me ake maka, raw beef liver dotted with inamona (crushed kukui nuts) and hairy with ogo. She at least handed me a napkin, just in case I spit out the first bite. I didn’t. I’ll eat anything once, though in the case of ake maka once was enough.

 

Haili is one of three sisters, the second generation to run Haili’s Hawaiian Foods. The ake maka was part of lesson eight years ago in real Hawaiian food that also included aama crabs, loko (don’t ask) and raw octopus—none of which were included in the mainstream Hawaiian fare they dished up at their half-century-old stand in the Ward Farmers’ Market.

 

You hate to see an institution go down, and Haili’s looked like it might when a reshuffle of Ward tenants pushed them and other vendors out of the market. “We didn’t want to lose our customers in this location,” says Haili.

 

They didn’t. “The Ward people suggested we do a lunch wagon,” she says. At first she thought, “No, no, that’s too small. I can’t do what I do.” But then she remembered her Chinese mother running a lunch wagon at KCC, so now there’s a brightly painted, shiny new lunch wagon parked across from the Ward Theatres, with a few picnic tables in a landscaped strip along the parking lot.

 

Haili’s Backyard Luau, they call it. Which works if you happen to have Auahi Street running through your backyard.

 

We stopped by, ordering a Hawaiian combo plate ($8.50) and a pelehu steak plate ($9). “We have squid luau today,” said the girl at the counter.

 

“Get it, get an order,” said the friend who’d joined me. “Don’t even hesitate.”

 

I’d ordered the combo plate because it came with Haili’s pork laulau, which manages an extraordinary richness without adding the usual square of fat. In addition, it has a dense layer of taro tops. Taro tops, when cooked, look like moribund spinach, but Haili’s still have a wonderful, almost floral fragrance, and a slight mint tang.

 

The plate—actually a cardboard cafeteria tray—came with some watery lomi salmon, a spicy poke made with au (swordfish), some tasty but nearly chickenless chicken long rice.

 

Much the same, minus the laulau, came on the steak plate—bite-size pieces of steak, marinated in the usual garlic, pepper and sugar, with a texture that made it obvious somebody had been at it with a meat tenderizer. The steak came with a housemade mango and pepper salsa, which was good, but unnecessary.

 

Since my friend was diverted by the squid luau, I stole as much steak as possible. I like squid luau, which despite the name invariably contains octopus, not squid. But the coconut-taro tops stew is often too sweet for me to consume in any quantity. Finally my friend set down his plastic spork. “Pau?” I asked.

 

“After you eat all the octopus, the magic’s gone,” he said.

 

Haili’s still has some magic going for it. “Business has been picking up, the location is so visible we are getting tourists,” says Haili. “They’re cute, always asking, ‘What’s poi?’”

 

The Haili clan intends to keep the lunchwagon going even after it completes its move to a new location, probably on Kapahulu Avenue. Look for it. Order the laulau.

 

1020 Auahi St., (808) 593-8019, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., Sunday 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., mybackyardluau.com

 

Hale Macrobiotic Restaurant

THE TEMPEH REUBEN AT HALE MACROBIOTIC RESTAURANT. THE SAUERKRAUT IS WONDERFUL. THE TEMPEH? THAT DEPENDS HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT SOY BEANS AND FUNGUS.

PHOTO: COURTESY OF HALE

 

I took my family, including my two semi-adult and highly opinionated children, to Hale Macrobiotic Restaurant. Perhaps a mistake. “What’s macrobiotic?” demanded the older of the two.

 

“It’s a nutritional theory that has no basis in fact,” I said. “It holds that foods have metaphysical properties like yin and yang. But there’s no dietary theory so nuts that somebody in America doesn’t believe it.”

 

“The sign says Natural and Vegan,” she said as we pulled into the parking lot. “Please tell me this isn’t raw food again.”

 

“I think it’s cooked.”

 

“We’re just down the street from Sorabol,” she said. “If this place is too weird, we could walk up there and order octopus. I love their octopus.” Proving at least that what’s weird to one person is ono to the next.

 

Thank heaven, Hale is not your standard under-capitalized hippie health-foodery. It’s in the former Makaloa Street location of a restaurant called Okonomiyaki Kai —which I enjoyed very much until it was overshadowed by the owners’ similar, but even better restaurant, Kaiwa, in the Waikiki Beach Walk.

 

Rather than close Okonomiyaki Kai, the two transformed it into Hale—from the Hawaiian for house, the Japanese for sunny and the English for healthy, as in hale and hearty.

 

What you end up with is a crisply run, professional, well-designed Japanese restaurant with a menu that eschews refined sugar, dairy products, eggs and red meat, and goes heavy on whole grains and organic, local produce. None of this in and of itself is a terrible idea, though in sum it poses certain culinary challenges.

 

My children looked at the menu with dismay. “They have french fries,” I said hopefully.

 

So I ordered the fries—which were quite nice, by the way, with some sort of housemade catsup. Then, emboldened by a glass of organic chardonnay (a wine list! In a macrobiotic restaurant!), I just kept ordering food for the table, hoping someone would like something.

 

My wife and I liked almost everything. There was a kale and Kula strawberry salad, with a dense tofu dressing. This looked like a Christmas tree, rising off the plate roughly cone-shaped, with strawberry stars on top and a base made from braised gobo. My daughters tried to pick off all the strawberries, a good choice because they had that real fresh deep strawberry flavor. Kale is too tough to be my favorite leafy green—but this was cooked tender and was quite tasty.

 

The next dish, in contrast, looked like a mess. A half avocado was strewn with shreds of myoga ginger (not really ginger, but a flower bud) and ogo. The ogo was remarkably fresh, translucent green and crisp. “This is the way we used to get ogo when we were kids,” said my wife. “You never get ogo this good anymore.”

 

Next up was a puffy, whole-wheat pita bread with thick and garlicky hummus. It was a hit, less so the sushi variations, made with brown rice. A “sushi” cake was topped with chickpeas, avocado squares and radish, all in a veggie-naise that made you appreciate mayonnaise. The thoroughly lackluster “California roll” was accompanied by remarkably freshly pickled vegetables.

 

Of the entrées, the most popular was the fish burger on a whole-wheat bun, with sweet potato chips and a small round of grilled corn on the cob. I rather enjoyed the “Reuben” sandwich with fresh sauerkraut, but it was made with slices of tempeh instead of corned beef. Tempeh is made from fermenting whole soy beans with a fungus, Rhizopus oligosporus. The fermented beans are actually held together by the mycelia of the fungus. Tempeh has its good qualities, more protein, fiber and vitamins than tofu, and the fungus fights off nasty intestinal bacteria.

 

Is it good? Only if you can’t stand the thought of eating meat. Otherwise, it leaves much to be desired in flavor and, especially, texture. My kids ordered it in a TLT, which was the tempeh-variation of a BLT. They muttered something about it tasting like cardboard. They’re spoiled: It’s way better than cardboard.
In fact, the food was, within its limits, pretty darn good. Things perked up at dessert, although by that time the restaurant was full and we had to wait nearly 15 minutes for it.

 

The hit was the brownie with soy-milk ice cream, which tasted all the world like a real brownie. Equally good was the mochi-flour waffle with berries, although the waffle had been made too far ahead and was too hard.

 

What I liked best was the little bowl of sherbet, which wasn’t really a sherbet. It was more like a granita, frozen and then chipped out of the container, so it was chunky—doubly chunky with raisins and bits of pineapple and pomegranate. It wasn’t like American ice cream, so the kids shunned it, but I thought it a fine finish to a meal that was far from the usual stuff.

 

For four, it cost $152 with tip and my single glass of wine.

 

1427 Makaloa St., (808) 944-1555, Tuesday through Sunday, lunch 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.; dinner 5 to 9:30 p.m., limited free parking, major credit cards, halemacro.com

 

Mix Cafe

SANDWICHES MORE OR LESS ITALIAN-STYLE FILL THE DISPLAY COUNTER AT THE NEW ALAKEA STREET MIX CAFE.

 

Two years ago, I reviewed Mix, a miniscule, 15-seat Italian restaurant on Beretania Street, which whipped up some of the best pasta in town. “You should have to beg to get a seat here,” I wrote.

 

You’d still have to beg to get a seat at owner Bruno Iezzi’s second Mix Café, because there are hardly any. The new Alakea Street location is mainly takeout, a few tables ringing the edge. And there isn’t pasta. It’s a paninoteca, a sandwich bar of the kind that has spawned a subculture in Italy.

 

Who knew downtown Honolulu was starving for Italian sandwiches? There’s a line, and Iezzi’s selling more than 200 sandwiches a day.

 

But no pasta. “We’re not allowed to cook there, it doesn’t have a kitchen,” says Iezzi. “Maybe someday, but I’m too busy to do that now.” In fact, his next project is “some interesting salads.”

 

He’s already got salad going for him. For $7, Mix’s sandwiches come with a mixed green salad and a plastic ramekin of pleasant vinegar-and-oil dressing. And what sandwiches. A half-dozen varieties a day, including beef, pork, chicken and turkey, which Iezzi roasts himself, no sliced deli meats.

 

The preparations are simple. The pork is done in sea salt and fennel seeds, the roast beef merely short ribs rubbed with sea salt, which come out tasting like a much more expensive cut of meat.

 

These aren’t classic panini. In the first place, most aren’t done on a panini grill. “Too slow,” says Iezzi. They’re warmed in small ovens, which melt the slices of gouda.

 

Also, notes Iezzi, Italian panini are “less filled” than American taste dictates. “I had the famous sandwiches in New York. They were filling, filling, filling, so much, between two thin slices of supermarket bread. I thought the balance uneven, so my sandwiches have more bread, but enough filling for Americans.”

 

Of all the fillings, perhaps the tuna is the most interesting. It’s essentially a salad Niçoise on a bun—slices of hard-boiled egg, capers, olives, haricot verts, tomatoes as well as tuna. “Ah,” says Iezzi. “That was my first inspiration. I tasted the tuna melt everyone else serves.” He pauses to shudder. “I couldn’t serve that.”

 

His only regret? Canned Italian tuna would be too expensive for him to hit the $7 price point he thinks people are willing to spend for lunch.

 

One day I walked over and bought one of every sandwich Mix offered, carting them back to the office, to general applause. We cut them into small slices, so people could taste all of them. The favorites were the tuna and the roasted chicken (real pieces of chicken, roasted red peppers, gouda). However, the roast beef disappeared in a flash, and nobody wanted to tell anyone else how good it was.

 

Most people ate only a token portion of the salads nestled next to the sandwiches in their brown boxes. While I was consuming a full plate of salad, the rest attacked the dolci I’d bought. The banana muffin was fine, slices of real banana on top. But the cheers went up for the flourless chocolate cake and for the carrot cake, which had chunks of dried cranberries and chocolate.

 

“Great lunch,” said one. That’s why there’s a line outside of the new Mix.

 

1025 Alakea St., (808) 532-4540, Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., no parking, major credit cards, mymixcafe.com

 

Himalayan Kitchen

EVERYONE LIKES THE TANDOORI-OVEN BREAD AT HIMALAYAN KITCHEN, HERE WITH A JALAPENO-CILANTRO DIP.

PHOTO: JOSS

 

Everyone I know who’s spent any time in Nepal—admittedly, that’s all of two people—insists there was nothing to eat there except rice and dhal (stewed lentils, etc.). “Breakfast dhal, lunch dhal and dinner, surprise, more dhal. I never want to see a bowl of dhal again as long as I live,” said one of them.

 

I was pleased to find that Himalayan Kitchen has Nepalese and Indian food. Food is no respecter of borders, so I’m sure that Indian-style food gets eaten in Nepal and vice versa. But you will find Web sites on Napalese cuisine complaining that Nepalese restaurants in the West aren’t really Nepalese, they’re Indian.

 

As anyone who lives in Hawaii knows, cuisines fuse, evolve, accommodate foreign tastes, refuse to respect borders. So it was OK with me whatever cuisine this charming little second-floor eatery wanted to serve, as long as it was good.

 

We ensconced ourselves on the covered lānai, watching basketball games at Kaimukī Community Park and the traffic stream by on 11th Avenue, idly flipping through the eight-page menu, and getting precisely nowhere.

 

In a situation in which the menu rings no bells, there’s a simple solution. We asked the waitress, if she was going to eat here once, what would she order?

 

At first, she played it safe. She suggested the tandoori mixed plate—roasted meats of all descriptions fitting most American tastes. And, she pointed out, people tended to like the flatbreads slapped to the side of the clay tandoori oven and baked.

 

We were easy. We ordered the tandoori bread in its garlic-and-diced-jalapeño version. Perhaps our adventuresomeness prompted her to come up with something less usual. We ended up ordering two things on her recommendation, even though we had no idea what they were.

 

The first was a cold appetizer called an Everest choella. Actually, the dish is usually spelled choila. It’s apparently a favorite of the Newar, the indigenous people of the Katmandu Valley, who make it with water buffalo meat. I’d like to try that.

 

At Himalayan Kitchen, it’s a chicken dish. It looks pretty much like the Nepalese version of a taco salad. Instead of a taco, the shell is made from a papadum, a thin, bean-flour and seed flatbread—imagine it as a giant, spicy cracker. In the middle of the papadum, chicken with onions, peppers, tomatoes, dressed in a pleasant citrus-spice dressing, zingy but not hot. In fact, we loved it, not knowing at the time we were missing out on the water buffalo.

 

The second dish, which the waitress found for us buried at the back of the menu, was a lamb bhuna, a Northern Indian style of curry. The bhuna didn’t present itself as anything particularly exciting, just a bowl of lumpy yellow stuff with a few sprigs of cilantro on top. But, wow, did it taste exciting, little soft explosions of flavor wrapped around tender morsels of lamb.

 

Himalayan Kitchen is a startup, with a few rough edges and a welcome earnestness about it. People kept checking to see if we were happy, including a gentleman we eventually realized was one of the partners, Suman Basnet. If I understood him correctly, the bhuna started by slowly cooking down garlic, onions, tomatoes and spices in ghee (clarified butter), then adding layer upon sapid layer of ginger, coriander, pepper, cumin, turmeric, lamb, garam masala. This is what cooking is for—a chorus of divergent flavors all singing different parts of the same tune.

 

Back to our original order. The naan bread was addictive, lightly spiced—if finely diced jalapeño fits your notion of “lightly.” It came with an even spicier jalapeño-cilantro dipping sauce.

 

The mixed tandoori grill was fine—no water buffalo, but a couple of spicy shrimp, some black-peppery lamb bits cooked on a skewer until they cohered almost like a sausage, and tender chunks of chicken marinated in yogurt and spices, the chicken pieces tender and toothsome, although colored violently red as tandoori restaurants tend to do. All this paled beside the bhuna—almost anything would.

 

Finally, dessert—mango kulfi, a kind of eggless ice cream that arrived in small cubes the way it apparently would in Nepal. In addition, Basnet described to us a dessert that was some kind of giant hand-molded milk ball. We looked totally dubious, but he brought us one anyway to try. One look at the oddly shaped white ball swimming in whey and my wife said, “I’m lactose intolerant.”

 

I tried it, and it was innocuous enough. “I think it needs a better name,” said Basnet. I’m afraid it needs more than that.

 

Dinner for two was $62 with tip. The check included no alcohol, because Himalayan Kitchen has no liquor license. You may bring your own wine, no corkage.

 

We had failed to do so, and were reduced to drinking some kind of rose water-yogurt concoction. As we walked out, I spotted KHNL anchor Diane Ako with not only a bottle of wine, but her camera and a notebook on her table. She was writing up the restaurant for her “Date Night” blog (due out midmonth). In case you’re wondering, she was with husband Claus Hansen. “We’re so busy we never see each other,” she said. “This is fun, though I’m surprised we’re still both awake this late.” 

 

1137 11th Ave., (808) 735-1122, lunch Tuesday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.; dinner nightly, 5 to 10 p.m., paid municipal parking, major credit cards.

          

John Heckathorn has been writing award-winning restaurant reviews for HONOLULU Magazine since 1984.