February 2024: Our Top 3 Most Popular Food Stories
Dim sum, mac salad and pastries were the top draws in an eventful leap month.
No. 3: Best Mac Salad on O‘ahu: Our Readers Weighed In
Photo: Lee Tonouchi
Published Feb. 6, 2024
Boiled macaroni, mayonnaise, salt and pepper: Who cares about mac salad? This isn’t a rhetorical question. The answer is at least six dozen readers who saw Gary Hashimoto’s Top 5 ranking on our website and social media and took the time to tell us their (mostly dissenting) opinions. Not only did we publish the results of this spontaneous poll, doing so generated even more comments. Here’s a sampling of the latest:
- @96741kauai: Hands down it is Highway Inn and if you pair it with the beef stew
- @kilinaheee_: Me personally, Kapolei Korean BBQ and Palisades Drive Inn.
- Steven Souza: Best mac salad is from Yummy/Peppas Korean Bbq, with runner up Bob’s BBQ.
- Mark Librie: Zippy’s chili, with mac salad mixed together…broke da mouth!!!
- Alverna H Robertson: Zippy’s
- John Hom: Best mac salad was Masa’s Massive. Overcooked macaroni and finely minced onions.
- Susan Marie Rothhammer: I don’t know why there isn’t a yearly macaroni salad contest. I would pay to sample and vote.
Who cares about mac salad? So many people, and so passionately, that we may actually look into Susan’s suggestion for a Mac Salad Fest. Would you come?
No. 2: Terry Cheung Just Opened a 350-Seat Dim Sum Restaurant Downtown
Photo: Mari Taketa
Published Feb. 7, 2024
Honolulu’s new dim sum king is a local contractor who loves eating at local Chinese restaurants. Makes sense, no? That helps explain why Terry Cheung’s appetite hasn’t stopped since he opened Kapi’olani Seafood Restaurant and, just before Lunar New Year, Honolulu Seafood Restaurant, both with extensive dim sum menus: He’s also opening a takeout counter called Dim Sum Station in Kāne‘ohe next month and a fourth dim sum eatery in ‘Aiea after that—and is talking about even more.
For us, the most striking aspect isn’t the number and speed of Cheung’s openings, it’s that they defy what’s happening in the rest of the Chinese food scene in Honolulu: Longtime Cantonese and Hong Kong Chinese restaurants are closing, replaced by newcomers specializing in dishes from Sichuan, Xinjiang and other parts of China. We dive into all of it, including Cheung’s rising profile, in The New Guide to Chinese Food, coming up in sister publication HONOLULU Magazine in April.
No. 1: First Look: Hawai‘i’s First Paris Baguette Opens Thursday
Photo: Jin Hong
Published Feb. 21, 2024
From comments on our previous mentions that Paris Baguette was coming, we knew the reaction would be huge. Fans of this global bakery-café from South Korea are still lining up for its fruit bites, sugar mochi donuts and pain au chocolat seven days a week—on Bishop Street (didn’t the pandemic empty out Downtown?). Their collective appetite made Hawai‘i’s first Paris Baguette one of the top-grossing stores among 200-plus in the U.S. and Canada, and, in just three days, catapulted this post to the No. 1 spot for all of 2024 to date. Sweet tooths who don’t like lines will be happy to learn that more locations are coming to Downtown and metro Honolulu in the coming months.
