Oh nooo! GoShiGo
I hate days like yesterday. A downward spiral, triggered by a single text message from Melissa Chang: “GoShiGo closed?!”
Nonononono. Plenty of room for misinterpretation with ethnic holes-in-the-wall where English isn’t the first language. Maybe the surfer dude who owns Honolulu’s best udon shop took off for a week to chase waves in Bali. Maybe they’re renovating.
I picked up the phone and called my hairstylist, Anna. After years on Keeaumoku, Anna knows every business within a three-block radius. She knows who cooks the sweet beans for the shave ice at Coffee Day, which shops copy recipes, what new restaurants are opening next month. Anna is THE best foodie source on Keeaumoku. And her salon sits right upstairs from GoShiGo.
Anna, what happened to the noodle shop downstairs?
“Noodle shop? Ah, tsk! Closed. So sad.”
No! Why?
“Business slow. Everything price going up. It’s hard for everybody.”
His udon was the best!
“People like, yeah? So many people said so good. And that man, he did everything himself: making noodles, interior, painting, everything. He worked hard. So sad.”
I know.
GoShiGo had a special place in my foodie heart not only for its udon, but because I watched its birth. It appeared very quietly last year against a string of restaurant closures, an ode to optimism in the face of recession.
One day at the foot of the stairs leading to Anna’s, the back door of the tiny space that used to belong to the ramen shop Taishoken was open again. A young Japanese was outside painting tables. Anna said he’d proudly shown her the interior of the new shop he was designing. He was the owner.
My next haircut, GoShiGo was open. Anna said the young man was there every morning, making noodles by hand.
I walked downstairs and fell in love. The cold udon was thin, translucent and amazingly bouncy. I had it with soft, creamy natto that was slimed up a few more notches by freshly grated mountain yam and a barely poached egg whose runny yolk added richness to the bowl. I mixed everything together, slurped without coming up for air, then tilted the bowl and drank the smoky, thick broth.
When I talked my way into the kitchen afterward, Hidetaka Ushiki was kneading dough in a huge lacquered bowl, pulling and folding the mass over and over as he told me he’d studied with an udon master in Tokyo and brought the recipe to Hawaii. For weeks he’d experimented with different flours and waters to find the right consistency for our hotter, moister climate. Then he laid out the dough in a sheet, picked up a cutter and chunk-chunk-chunk, thin noodles appeared.
A poem on the wall was handpainted in Japanese:
When it’s delicious, you laugh
When you laugh, you get hungry
Have another bowl of udon
And laugh all over again.
You know how it is when one of your fave spots dies? A little bit of what makes this town delicious goes with it. I mourn for GoShiGo partly because of the Ushikis out there. Driven by passion, they take big risks, work tremendously hard and hope enough people will like their food.
And I mourn because I’ll miss the glorious triple slimefest atop perfect udon. With all the duties in a professional foodie’s galaxy, I got to have it only every couple of months, but I miss knowing that bowl was waiting for me.
News yesterday of GoShiGo’s demise started me down a long and depressing memory lane of dishes so good they’re seared on my brain, but that went down with their restaurants. Can’t help it, and I really don’t mean to depress you, but they deserve this final homage.
I’ll keep it short and recent. For what it’s worth, I’ll always remember:
Stacy’s Laulau. Stacy’s booth continues with beef stew, pastele and other dishes at the Blaisdell and Mililani farmers’ markets and other locations, but their laulau is no more. Can’t get enough workers, says her husband, Bert, and business is so slow that Stacy has had to go back to a full-time job. Of all the laulau I tried islandwide for a Metromix ranking, Stacy’s was the only one steamed in foil, and when you opened it, the juices ran down the sides and pooled deliciously under succulent, well-seasoned leaves and pork.
Raraya. No, not the have-it-your-way ramen or even the pork bone broth that was simmered for three days. It’s Raraya’s curry loco moco that lingers on my brain, over a year after I tried it. A springy, pure pork patty hidden under a bright orange Kraft single, all smothered in Japanese curry cooked with that pork bone broth and nothing else. I waited too long to go back for another. Really regret that.
Pasta & Basta. Spaghetti is my favorite food in the whole world, and Donato Loperfido makes some of the best on this island. You can still find a small sampling of his noodle dishes at Sapori, but Pasta & Basta at Restaurant Row was a small piece of heaven for pasta lovers.
Umi no Sachi. I know this izakaya and sushi bar lasted only a few weeks in the current Mexitlan Grill space in Kaimuki, and that its demise was probably hastened by a positive review I wrote in The Honolulu Advertiser. Slammed from the day the review ran, the restaurant closed that weekend. I loved the creative energy behind the daily specials, simple dishes executed well and with flavors that popped, like melty rib-eye skewers set off by wasabi and ponzu, and rich, juicy salmon cakes cut by the sting of fresh-grated daikon.
New Elim. Aside from a delicious, meaty, homemade mandoo, this place had a pudae chige or army stew that set you on fire. Yes, that was luncheon meat and hot dogs in the bubbling red broth, and yes, that was a pack of instant ramen on the other side of the pot, along with Smokies, mandoo, beef, kimchee and cabbage, and it was shockingly, addictively good.
Ho Jin’s. This was by Starbucks in Kailua. I’m a townie who doesn’t care one way or another about mandoo soup. For Ho Jin’s I’d take my biggest pot and drive over the Pali. They used a secret ingredient that tasted like nutmeg, but I could never find out exactly.
C&C Pasta. Do you remember how good their fresh pasta was? Do you remember the lightness of their sauces? I do. C&C was one of the best things about Kaimuki.
I’m sure I’m missing some, but these are my main foodie R.I.P.s. What about you? What made Honolulu a richer foodie scene? What dishes do your taste buds miss?
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