Dashed Hopes in Waikiki

The report on three restaurants isn’t pretty, but the fourth is a standout.

I’m disappointed. With dozens of new restaurants coming on line, I was hoping the glory days of eating in Waikiki, were returning. Nope.

I’ve not lost hope entirely. After all, Nobu Waikiki, is scheduled to open later this month. The Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center is promising a Wolfgang Puck steakhouse like Cut (that’s its name) in Beverly Hills.

So far, however, things aren’t so good. I sampled four new restaurants—and was let down by three out of the four.

The new Holokai Grill on the second floor of Waikiki, Beach Walk has a great look and feel—a young and eager service staff, lava rock walls, an outrigger canoe over the bar, a 30-foot Maori war canoe in the dining room (though I’m not sure it’s culturally appropriate to store napkins and tablecloths in it).

Holokai is a project by the same team that brought us Tiki’s Grill & Bar. The Waikiki Beach Walk development had wanted a Tiki’s, too. “But we didn’t want to cannibalize a restaurant that’s only a mile away,” Bill Tobin, the group’s managing partner, told me soon after opening. “We wanted something different, but not too different.”

Tiki’s opened with a sassy retro décor and an innovative menu from chef Fred DeAngelo, who is now winning awards at Ola in Turtle Bay. At Holokai Grill, the group played it safe—perhaps too safe.

Especially on the menu. The appetizers are unadventurous—fried calamari, coconut shrimp, popcorn chicken, wonton chip nachos, sliders. Nor does the salad menu break new ground. It includes a Caesar, a wedge of iceberg lettuce with bleu cheese dressing and an actual pineapple fruit boat.

Making the best of it, we ordered edamame, which came slathered in a salty garlic butter, and the sliders, all three varieties on the menu. The kalua pig sliders were marred by a “spicy guava sauce” more sweet than spicy. The hamburgers had a housemade mango ketchup, also sweet. By far the most palatable, to my taste at least, were the crab cakes with a wasabi ginger aioli.

After putting away half-a-dozen sliders, the four of us decided to split three entrées. The lemongrass-ginger crusted onaga was a nice piece of fish, thick and moist, served on a complicated swirl of sauces. However, the crust hardly tasted of lemongrass and ginger. Mainly it was just salty. The best thing on the plate was a risotto made with sweet Kunia corn.

The barbecued ribs were reasonably meaty and tender, though not as good as the slam-bang ones I remember from the early days of Tiki’s. The sweet potato fries disappeared fastest, since it’s hard to resist something that’s simultaneously sweet, salty and deep-fried.

The biggest disappointment was the Paniolo Steak. This 16-ounce rib-eye looked good on its bed of grilled onions, surrounded by little roasted potatoes in various colors, topped with some tomato wedges and drizzled with an aioli that was supposed to taste of pipikaula.

However, I’d ordered the steak medium rare. It arrived well done. And everything on the platter, except the potatoes, had been salted to within an inch of its life. “I’m really sad I can’t eat that,” said one of our party. “I was looking forward to eating cow tonight.”

We ordered three desserts to share. A banana tart, heavy on the whipped cream, the tart shell cold and hard. A coconut-infused crème brulèe, not exciting enough to get anyone to take more than a bite of it. Best was a warm apple strudel, which wasn’t a strudel, but an apple pie wrapped in phyllo dough, dusted with confectioners’ sugar, topped with vanilla ice cream.

The verdict: With the exception of the steak, everything was OK, but just OK. Perhaps exotic enough if you had Middle American tastes. Not terribly expensive, $180 with tip, for four. We didn’t leave hungry, we had a good time, but that was due mainly to the setting and the company.

If you are going to Holokai, you might consider a drink instead of a meal. With the exception of a bottle of Opus One for $160, there are only a dozen mainly mid-range wines on the list, so it’s not a wine drinker’s paradise.

On the other hand, Holokai has a long list of cocktails with cute names—Whacky Wiki Wiki Watermelon Martini, Polynesian Passion Potion. The drinks are better than their names. The Luscious Lychee martini was, if not luscious, at least more than drinkable, redolent of actual lychee. I had a Whiskey Adobo—essentially a fresh whiskey sour adorned with an Italian brandy-vanilla-citrus liqueur called Tuaca. It was perfectly balanced, strong and weak, sour and sweet. It was the only perfectly balanced thing the evening offered.

I caught up with my friend, the Man About Town, sitting at the bar at Yard House, surrounded by highball glasses with about two ounces of beer in them. “No martini?” I asked.

“Martinis cost $10 here,” he said. “Besides, this place is all about beer, so I wanted to get with the program.”

At Yardhouse, the fish entrees, like this seared ahi, come fairly plain. Photo by Olivier Koning

I’ve heard from disappointed beer buffs that the Waikiki, Yard House has far fewer beers than the outlets in Southern California. I’ve also heard gratitude that Yard House has managed to get 30 or so beers imported to Hawaii that weren’t here before, at least not on tap.

I counted 104 beers on tap, which ought to quench almost anyone’s thirst. But for a place that tries to bring you the world of beer, Yard House has a curious attitude toward tasting. You can order a “six-pack,” that is, a half-dozen small glasses of beer. But you can’t pick which six beers you want to taste. The bar decides for you—and didn’t come up with a particularly inspired list that night.

You can also get 2-ounce “tasting” servings like the ones the Man About Town had ordered, at $1 or $2 apiece. You’d think at that kind of profit margin, the bar would let you taste all night. For some reason, you are allowed only three.

Of course, the Man About Town got six, three at the bar and another three when he joined me at our table. Not being particularly beer savvy, we mainly ordered beers with colorful names—Alley Cat Ale, Bare Knuckle Stout.

Our server, Cory from Michigan, said that the staff didn’t get to taste all the beers, though he added with a laugh that he was doing a pretty good job on his own. Nonetheless, he was of limited help in finding me a Belgian or Belgian-style golden ale.

So I was wandering in the beer wilderness until Jonathan Schwalbenitz, the ace bartender at Murphy’s, walked in with friends to have dinner. He ordered me an Affligem Blonde, a rich, luscious beer that had faint overtones of pear in the nose, served in a goblet the way Belgian beers should be.

The Man About Town settled on a pint of Moretti Pilsner, on the grounds that he liked Italy. I offered to buy him a half-yard glass, which stands 18 inches high and holds 32 ounces of beer. “Do I look self-destructive?” he asked.

The Yard House, despite its name, has abandoned its original yard-high glasses, which held twice as much beer and might be construed as fostering overindulgence. Half-a-yard is as high as you get.

Unfortunately, the food wasn’t as much fun as the beer. We didn’t start badly. The Man About Town ordered a moo shu eggroll that tasted surprisingly good, especially dipped in a gingery housemade apple sauce. “The sauce is hot,” said the Man About Town.

No, I said. American Chinese food is fond of slipping cream cheese inside these deep-fried pupu, to bind the flavors and create a better mouth feel. Yard House had gone one better and filled the cream cheese with red pepper.

The eggroll was the last good thing until dessert.

I had high hopes for the grilled artichoke. But all we got for $9.45 was a medium artichoke, split in half and smoky-flavored from the grill. Unfortunately, it arrived al dente—not a good trait in an artichoke. Unless you cook it thoroughly before you grill it, an artichoke stays pretty fibrous. The plate did contain some nice edible housemade potato chips.

Among the pasta dishes was one called (MAC+CHEESE)2. I’m a sucker for adult mac and cheese dishes. But this one looked gloppy, a bowl of castellane pasta (oversize oval shells), submerged in melted, but otherwise undistinguished cheddar. The dish was fortified with chicken, bacon and mushrooms. But one unpleasant flavor blotted out everything else —truffle oil.

Truffle oil ain’t truffles. It’s oil doctored with a chemical called bis(methyl-thio)methane, which smells like truffles. You can’t blame Yard House for using oil: If it used real truffles, the dish would cost $250. Still, you have to use good-quality truffle oil sparingly to give the illusion of truffles, which was not the case here.

There was also a rectangle of opah, cooked dry, accompanied by a trio of three sauces, all sweet, even the Thai basil sauce. Add a molded round of rice, a few overcooked bok choy, and you ended up with a totally uninspiring plate. “This is like a college bar,” said the Man About Town. “You don’t go for the food.”

For dessert, I insisted on ordering a beer float made with a Belgian raspberry beer, Lindemans Framboise.

The Man About Town protested. When we were drinking our little samples, he’d tried the Framboise. He had the standard American reaction: “Horrible. It’s not even beer, it tastes like Kool-Aid.”

Never underestimate the power of ice cream to adjust someone’s world view. Confronted with a scoop of vanilla ice cream floating on top of the Lindemans Framboise, he went crazy. “This is the greatest dessert ever. I can’t believe it. This is the only reason I’d ever come back here.”

For the record, Lindemans Framboise does not taste like Kool-Aid. It tastes remarkably like fresh raspberries, which you might keep in mind the next time you’re ordering your date a beer.

We also ordered a chocolate stout float, but raspberry’s the way to go. Dinner for two, with a remarkably restrained quantity of beer, was $124 with tip.

I suppose I should have been beyond disappointment by the time I got to Atlantis. Unfortunately, I was hungry, as was the friend who joined me upstairs in the retail complex that replaced the Waikiki 3 Theatre.

Atlantis is all brass and glass. Its best feature is a lanai that allows you to gaze down on vacationers parading along Kalakaua. However, that pleasure was somewhat diminished by the racket of cement mixers building the new Hilo Hattie outlet across the street.

 We were there for a late lunch, but, starving, we were at first grateful the dinner menu was available. However, the blackened ahi nachos turned out not to be nachos. There were a few taro chips bundled up in a ti leaf. But this was mainly a portion of sliced, seared ahi—but not really seared. The fish had been overcooked to medium rare, faint pink in the middle.

This presentation was elaborate, with two sauces, the first a perfectly acceptable salsa fresca, the other a guacamole. Unfortunately, the guacamole had the same uniform color and perfectly homogenous texture as the kind you buy frozen at Costco. We actually were hungry enough to eat it, and to order entrées.

The spicy seafood pasta wasn’t spicy, but it did contain seafood, including bits of fish that tasted remarkably fishy, as if perhaps it was past its prime. “At least the scallops are OK,” said my friend. “But if I wasn’t so hungry, I’m not sure I’d eat much of this.”

As you might expect in a restaurant where many of the patrons were wearing JTB stickers, the menu was heavy on surf-and-turf specials. I ordered the Filet Neptune—which promised to come with crab meat and Béarnaise sauce. I did find some crab dotted about the top of the steak. However, the thick yellow stuff ladled over the top was not Béarnaise, which requires tarragon, shallots and chervil, as well as some deft cooking.

The waitress seemed to regret her choice of profession. “OK,” she said as we stalled on the entrées, “ready for the bad news?” By which she apparently meant the check, not the food. She seemed disappointed that we wanted dessert and coffee, so she simply disappeared.

Another server eventually took our dessert order, then disappeared as well.

“You think dessert is really coming?” asked my friend.

Our original waitress zoomed by and slapped down a check. “I guess not,” I said. As we gathered our things, the second server ran up with dessert. “I bet you thought I forgot you.”
Dessert was a mango sherbet, not a sorbet, with commercial raspberry-flavored syrup. We regretted waiting.

Nobody came by to pick up my credit card, so we traipsed up to the hostess stand to pay $100 with tip, an awful lot for a bad lunch.

The restaurant validates parking at the Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center, but, confided the young woman at the hostess desk, only when they happen to have validation stamps. But you know enough already to stay away, right?

I wasn’t eager to eat at MAC 24/7. A 24-hour eatery on Kuhio? One that touts its pancakes? But, for once, I was pleasantly surprised. The Prince Kuhio became a Hilton last April 1st. The lobby has been totally redone, with a pleasant garden outside. And just walking into MAC 24/7 is a treat.

For once, a hotel has abandoned all the cliches of Hawaii décor. Following a trend in high-end restaurants across the globe, the hotel created a stunning contemporary diner, modern, nothing retro, nothing tacky. The design’s clean, colorful, with a counter that seats two dozen, booths and even a private dining room where the centerpieces on the table are fish bowls with live fish.

The pancakes at MAC 24/7 aim for shock and awe.  You need at least four people to eat one order. Photo by Olivier Koning

MAC stands for modern American cuisine. “They’ve got soul food no matter where your soul is from,” said my wife as she perused the oversize menu. Some Hawaii: saimin, loco moco, seared ahi. A little Midwest: meatloaf with garlic mashed potatoes, white cheddar mac and cheese. And a little Southern: fried chicken and waffles with country gravy.

I was poised to eat my way through the entrées. “No,” said my wife. “We have to have pancakes first.”

 “With our pancakes, we’re aiming for shock and awe,” said the waitress as she brought them out. An order of pancakes at MAC is as large as a birthday cake—14 inches in diameter, three high, with a mound of goodies, in this case, chunks of banana, walnuts, chocolate.

You’d need four people to eat an order, though it might be more comfortable with six or eight. Despite their size, they are just pancakes. If I thought you’d listen, I’d tell you not to order them. Even my wife ignored me, but, of course, she’s had a lot of practice at it.

I’m telling you not to order pancakes because there’s real food on the menu. After we’d both consumed a small wedge cut out of the stack, me under protest, we got down to the fun stuff.

On a long narrow plate came a tomato and Maui onion salad, the alternating slices sprinkled with an excellent bleu cheese and some flat leaf parsley, the edges of the plate drizzled with a freshly made pesto sauce.

My wife had the meatloaf, tasty, not too bready, with a thick tomato sauce baked into the top. It was served on a clear gravy with lots of those wonderfully textured shemeiji mushrooms from the Big Island. Even the plate looked great, with a raft of jade green asparagus and a large portion of garlic mashed potatoes.

The lobster potpie was even better. Potpies tend to get soggy crusts. This one did away with the crust altogether. It was simply topped with a golden dome of freshly baked puff pastry. Bubbling in a rich cream sauce were pearl onions, baby carrots, green beans, new potatoes, Big Island mushrooms—and lobster, lots of it. Both the shellfish and the vegetables still had great texture. I am getting hungry just recollecting it.

MAC has a full bar, and with the lobster, I felt compelled to drink a glass of chardonnay. But the drinks that might command your attention are nonalcoholic. There was an egg cream that brought back New York. A cherry-lime rickey that brought back my childhood. And a ginger ale made from fresh ginger syrup that redefines the beverage.

If you can forgo the pancakes, there are cupcakes worth having for dessert. The bakery’s still aiming for shock and awe, though. These are cupcakes of massive girth—carrot cakes and peanut butter-filled chocolate cakes, and a stunning pineapple-upside-down cupcake with Malibu rum.

We took cupcakes home to the children to make them feel better after we tortured them by describing the pancakes they’d missed.

I managed to rack up a bill of $90 with tip, but we ordered more food than two people could possibly eat—and I just had to have the $25 lobster potpie. Prices are otherwise moderate. Pancakes for six or eight are $11.

This is a remarkable restaurant, with a conscientious kitchen, an unpretentious, friendly staff. And you don’t have to ask whether it’s open.