Hawaii Vacation Tips - Tiki Travel

D dogbytes Tiki Socialite seattle, wa Joined: Mar 24, 2002 Posts: 2243	D dogbytes Posted posted on Tue, Jun 22, 2004 6:01 PM i've been meaning to post our travel experiences in Oahu Nov 2003 ~ Saturday: Got off the plane Saturday afternoon and, upon picking up the rental car and dropping off the luggage, immediately started zooming around. Didn’t know our way around yet and had only one of those vague maps from the rental car place, but there are L&L Drive-insall over Oahu so that’s where we had a late lunch. L&L is a good local plate lunch chain; I had the mahi, my husband had the chicken katsu with curry, both “minis” (only one scoop of rice plus mac salad) since it wasn’t that long until dinner. L&L is always a safe choice and a good way to try plate lunch if you haven’t had it before. After lunch we picked up some coconut turnovers from Ken’s Bakery(41-865 Kalanianaole Hwy, in Waimanalo) just because they looked so good (they were, too). Dinner was at Sam Choy’s Diamondhead on Kapahulu Ave. (a ritzier place than the other Sam Choy’s on Oahu, the Breakfast, Lunch and Crab on Nimitz Hwy.). We loved the Sam Choy’s on Maui before, and this one is still great; I had a combination dinner with pan-seared moi (fresh-caught) in an edamame-garlic sauce, a small lobster tail, and an excellent piece of lamb in a peppercorn sauce, while my husband had the moi in a sweetish ginger vinigrette. Good food, the service was a bit off that night. Sunday: The day for the big swap meet at Aloha Stadium, and breakfast was warm malasadas (fried dough rolled in sugar, Hawaiian/Portuguese doughnuts) from a truck there. The swap meet was a bit disappointing, almost all the stands sold exactly the same mass-manufactured stuff, but by chance we met Gecko (!) there, the first day he had put up a stall at the swap meet. We arranged to meet later in the week. Lunchtime we wanted to try something truly local; problem is, a lot of the truly local places aren’t open on Sundays. We ended up going to the New Uptown Fountain (from the “Puka Guide”) which is at 522 N. School St. ; what the “Guide” doesn’t tell you is that it’s on this little, one-way stub of School which you can only reach going north from Liliha St. (also, the Chevron station the guide talks about is gone now). The place looks like a dump, but it had fantastic saimin. My husband had what the “Magee [=really big] saimin”(comes with vegetables, char siu, stuffed won tons), and it was truly huge. Oddly, the bowl that came with my combination was just as big and had more won tons in it! Mine came with a hamburger, homemade old-style patty on a nicely-grilled bun but no fixings at all, not even a pickle slice. Amazingly cheap and filling food. We went to Germaine’s Luau that night. Germaine’s has the usual crummy luau drinks (watery mai tais and such) but the food was pretty good, better than you get at a lot of luaus anyway; there was decent mahi, nice kahlua pork, good haupia. (If you’re really interested in authentic Hawaiian food, though, see Tuesday below.) Monday: For breakfast we head for Leonard’s Bakery on Kalahulu Ave for fresh-baked malasadas. Leonard’s is often considered the Malasada Mecca; they bake fresh throughout the day and offer five varieties, unfilled rolled in plain or cinnamon sugar or filled with custard, haupia (coconut “pudding”), or chocolate creme. The chocolate was the best filled one, but my personal fav was the unfilled cinnamon sugar. Since we visited the Arizona Memorial (Pearl Harbor) that morning, we chose Shiro’s for lunch as all four of them are in the Pearl City area; the one we went to is in a strip mall on Hwy 99, on the right as you head west from Pearl toward Ewa (Waimalu Shopping Center is the name, had a number of other interesting-looking food possibilities as well, and is across the street from a Goodwill which has a really large selection of used Hawaiian shirts and is worth checking out). At Shiro’s my husband had the Beeg Shiro, a double-decker sandwich with char siu and teriyaki, while I had saimin again, I forget the name of the dish but it had ten different toppings including a nice butterflied shrimp which came on the side so you could choose to dip it or plunge the whole thing into the broth. The broth at Shiro’s is chicken rather than the bonito flake broth they used at New Uptown Fountain; I liked it better, but my husband is a fan of the milder-tasting fish broth and didn’t. Again, an excellent, filling, and pretty cheap lunch. A visit to the Bishop Museum followed (great Hawaiiana, including a large display of tapa cloth), then we went for a sunset cocktail at the [/b]House Without a Key[/b] at the Halekulani; terrific view, really fun live entertainment, and good tropical drinks, but expect a wait for a table even just for cocktails so show up early. As a bonus, they validate you for four hours of parking in the hotel garage, so after that we just walked up the street to the House of Hong for dinner. [/b]House of Hong[/b] has that wonderful old-style Chinese restaurant decor giving it a fun atmosphere, but the food was only adequate. (Be warned; fried tofu there is not Japanese-style seared tofu in broth, but battered deep-fried tofu with a small saucer of very weak sauce on the side, rather strange to our taste.) We’re told the bar downstairs is good, but people were smoking and we decided against hanging out there. Tuesday: Our day for the Polynesian Cultural Center on the north shore, so we drove up to Kailua first to check out some antique shops. Breakfast was malasadas from the Leonard’s Jr. truck (noticing a pattern here yet? :wink: .) Alii Antiques in Kailua (21 Maluniu Ave.) was the real find, though. Hard to locate (the storefront’s not really on Maluniu) and there’s actually two shops, one off the parking lot and one across the alley leading to the parking lot; the one across the alley is chock-full of Hawaiiana and tiki stuff. Prices aren’t low, but are better than you find in Honolulu. Heading away from Kailua on the Kamehameha Hwy. we regretfully bypassed Giovanni’s shrimp truck in order to have lunch at the Waihole Poi Factory, 48-140 Kamehameha Hwy. (This one needs some directions; first, it’s on the Hwy 83 Kamehameha, not the Hwy 99 Kamehameha; also note that as you head north it splits into Hwy 83 (which is then named Kahiliki Hwy) and Hwy 836 (which takes the Kamehameha name), but then these two come back together after awhile and it’s Hwy 83/Kamehameha. The Factory is not too far past the junction of the two highways). The place looks really run-down from the outside, but DO NOT BE PUT OFF. This is real Hawaiian food, the kind which the stuff at commercial luaus is only a pale imitation of. I had the tripe, stewed in a tomato sauce just like my Aunt Betty used to make, with absolutely incredible chicken long rice on the side. My husband had the Aloha (?) plate with lau lau, lomi lomi, and chicken long rice; he also chose to have poi (you can have rice instead) which I admit was better than the poi you get at luaus, but was still poi (he liked it; some Hawaiians there mistook us for locals, me because I looked local, him because he was eating the poi). The meals also came with little hunks of steamed taro and breadfruit and with two squares of haupia, one traditional coconut, one chocolate. The coconut was the best haupia I’d ever had until I tasted the chocolate, which was even better! They sell boxes of haupia for $5, you should strongly consider bringing along a cooler and buying some to go. By the way, seating at the Poi Factory is on picnic tables outside, and the place is only open from 10 to 2. But you just can’t get more local than this. Again, don’t pass this up when you go to the windward or north shores. The rest of the day was spent at the Polynesian Cultural Center. Great entertainment including a fantastic show that evening, but don’t expect good food. The culinary highlight was the Pineapple Delight, ice cream and canned fruit in a hollowed pineapple. Wednesday: We broke the malasada streak by going to Wailua Bakery and Shave Ice(525 Kapahulu) for breakfast, which was a variety of filled buns: sweetish Portuguese egg bread, like King’s Hawaiian Bread only fresh, filled with char siu, inuki bean paste, or custard. Also got some excellent butter cookies and a “honey cake” which was basically a giant Twinkie without the fake cream filling. Really good. No coffee, so we went up the street to a Starbucks, bought a tall drip and used their outdoor tables. The bakery is on the same block as Bailey’s Antiques and Aloha Shirts, which is great fun to check out; they have the real article, shirts from the 1940s and 50s, at prices you probably won’t feel like paying (looking is free, anyway). We did get one of the modern reproduction shirts they also stock; there’s a variety of tiki mugs and other memorabilia offered as well. Lunch was Tiki’s Grill and Bar at the Aston on Kalahua. The decor is the main draw, lots of Shags and other tiki artists on display here. The food was pretty good, with local fish (opa in this case) in the fish and chips and a good fried calamari steak. Drinks can be ordered in a souvenir hurricane glass or a coconut shell with a Tiki’s logo silkscreened on it, $9. We met Gecko that evening for cocktails at La Mariana Sailing Club. This place is nearly impossible to find: Go down Sand Island Rd. until you see Auiki St., then start looking at the right side of the road until you see a little sign that says “La Mariana” on a driveway; take the driveway back until you see the club, you can’t see it at all from Sand Island Rd. Anyway, the decor here is unbelievable and should not be missed, much of it rescued from extinct tiki bars such as Trader Vic’s Waikiki. We had drinks and some good lumpia, also a great time with Gecko, his girlfriend and brother, and Tiki Royale who was also in town. After that, we went to Alan Wong’s (1857 S. King St., on the third floor of a very nondescript building, watch for the valet parking sign). Great higher-end food, with a terrific selection of fresh fish; they had opakapaka! (Never pass up opakapaka if you find it, even places where it’s on the menu often are “out” of it.) We had that and the ginger-encrusted onaga, both wonderful. Corn chowder with lobster to start was served as little piles of ingredients in the dish which the hot chowder was then ladled over. Desserts were also terrific, fantastically rich “chocolate crunch bars” and a banana cream “pie” (a saucer of crust balanced on bananas and creme anglaise, whipped cream and chocolate ice cream on top). Plus they had a coffee menu with about a dozen different Hawaiian beans available. A small, very popular place, so reservations are a must. Thurday: The end of the Oahu portion of the trip was breakfast at our hotel (the Doubletree Alana) just because we had a $25 meal credit there. Well, $25 just paid for one (quite ordinary) continental breakfast, one (pretty good) carmelized banana upside-down pancake, and a side of linguica. Not great by any means. To be continued with our adventures in Kauai.. [ Edited by: dogbytes on 2004-06-22 18:04 ]

i've been meaning to post our travel experiences in Oahu Nov 2003 ~

Saturday: Got off the plane Saturday afternoon and, upon picking up the rental car and dropping off the luggage, immediately started zooming around. Didn’t know our way around yet and had only one of those vague maps from the rental car place, but there are L&L Drive-insall over Oahu so that’s where we had a late lunch. L&L is a good local plate lunch chain; I had the mahi, my husband had the chicken katsu with curry, both “minis” (only one scoop of rice plus mac salad) since it wasn’t that long until dinner. L&L is always a safe choice and a good way to try plate lunch if you haven’t had it before.

After lunch we picked up some coconut turnovers from Ken’s Bakery(41-865 Kalanianaole Hwy, in Waimanalo) just because they looked so good (they were, too).
Dinner was at Sam Choy’s Diamondhead on Kapahulu Ave. (a ritzier place than the other Sam Choy’s on Oahu, the Breakfast, Lunch and Crab on Nimitz Hwy.). We loved the Sam Choy’s on Maui before, and this one is still great; I had a combination dinner with pan-seared moi (fresh-caught) in an edamame-garlic sauce, a small lobster tail, and an excellent piece of lamb in a peppercorn sauce, while my husband had the moi in a sweetish ginger vinigrette. Good food, the service was a bit off that night.

Sunday: The day for the** big swap meet at Aloha Stadium**, and breakfast was warm malasadas (fried dough rolled in sugar, Hawaiian/Portuguese doughnuts) from a truck there. The swap meet was a bit disappointing, almost all the stands sold exactly the same mass-manufactured stuff, but by chance we met Gecko (!) there, the first day he had put up a stall at the swap meet. We arranged to meet later in the week.

Lunchtime we wanted to try something truly local; problem is, a lot of the truly local places aren’t open on Sundays. We ended up going to the New Uptown Fountain (from the “Puka Guide”) which is at 522 N. School St. ; what the “Guide” doesn’t tell you is that it’s on this little, one-way stub of School which you can only reach going north from Liliha St. (also, the Chevron station the guide talks about is gone now). The place looks like a dump, but it had fantastic saimin. My husband had what the “Magee [=really big] saimin”(comes with vegetables, char siu, stuffed won tons), and it was truly huge. Oddly, the bowl that came with my combination was just as big and had more won tons in it! Mine came with a hamburger, homemade old-style patty on a nicely-grilled bun but no fixings at all, not even a pickle slice. Amazingly cheap and filling food.

We went to Germaine’s Luau that night. Germaine’s has the usual crummy luau drinks (watery mai tais and such) but the food was pretty good, better than you get at a lot of luaus anyway; there was decent mahi, nice kahlua pork, good haupia. (If you’re really interested in authentic Hawaiian food, though, see Tuesday below.)

Monday: For breakfast we head for **Leonard’s Bakery **on Kalahulu Ave for fresh-baked malasadas. Leonard’s is often considered the Malasada Mecca; they bake fresh throughout the day and offer five varieties, unfilled rolled in plain or cinnamon sugar or filled with custard, haupia (coconut “pudding”), or chocolate creme. The chocolate was the best filled one, but my personal fav was the unfilled cinnamon sugar.

Since we visited the Arizona Memorial (Pearl Harbor) that morning, we chose **Shiro’s **for lunch as all four of them are in the Pearl City area; the one we went to is in a strip mall on Hwy 99, on the right as you head west from Pearl toward Ewa (Waimalu Shopping Center is the name, had a number of other interesting-looking food possibilities as well, and is across the street from a Goodwill which has a really large selection of used Hawaiian shirts and is worth checking out). At Shiro’s my husband had the Beeg Shiro, a double-decker sandwich with char siu and teriyaki, while I had saimin again, I forget the name of the dish but it had ten different toppings including a nice butterflied shrimp which came on the side so you could choose to dip it or plunge the whole thing into the broth. The broth at Shiro’s is chicken rather than the bonito flake broth they used at New Uptown Fountain; I liked it better, but my husband is a fan of the milder-tasting fish broth and didn’t. Again, an excellent, filling, and pretty cheap lunch.

A visit to the Bishop Museum followed (great Hawaiiana, including a large display of tapa cloth), then we went for a sunset cocktail at the [/b]House Without a Key[/b] at the Halekulani; terrific view, really fun live entertainment, and good tropical drinks, but expect a wait for a table even just for cocktails so show up early. As a bonus, they validate you for four hours of parking in the hotel garage, so after that we just walked up the street to the House of Hong for dinner.
[/b]House of Hong[/b] has that wonderful old-style Chinese restaurant decor giving it a fun atmosphere, but the food was only adequate. (Be warned; fried tofu there is not Japanese-style seared tofu in broth, but battered deep-fried tofu with a small saucer of very weak sauce on the side, rather strange to our taste.) We’re told the bar downstairs is good, but people were smoking and we decided against hanging out there.

Tuesday: Our day for the Polynesian Cultural Center on the north shore, so we drove up to Kailua first to check out some antique shops. Breakfast was malasadas from the Leonard’s Jr. truck (noticing a pattern here yet? :wink: .) Alii Antiques in Kailua (21 Maluniu Ave.) was the real find, though. Hard to locate (the storefront’s not really on Maluniu) and there’s actually two shops, one off the parking lot and one across the alley leading to the parking lot; the one across the alley is chock-full of Hawaiiana and tiki stuff. Prices aren’t low, but are better than you find in Honolulu.

Heading away from Kailua on the Kamehameha Hwy. we regretfully bypassed Giovanni’s shrimp truck in order to have lunch at the Waihole Poi Factory, 48-140 Kamehameha Hwy. (This one needs some directions; first, it’s on the Hwy 83 Kamehameha, not the Hwy 99 Kamehameha; also note that as you head north it splits into Hwy 83 (which is then named Kahiliki Hwy) and Hwy 836 (which takes the Kamehameha name), but then these two come back together after awhile and it’s Hwy 83/Kamehameha. The Factory is not too far past the junction of the two highways). The place looks really run-down from the outside, but DO NOT BE PUT OFF. This is real Hawaiian food, the kind which the stuff at commercial luaus is only a pale imitation of. I had the tripe, stewed in a tomato sauce just like my Aunt Betty used to make, with absolutely incredible chicken long rice on the side. My husband had the Aloha (?) plate with lau lau, lomi lomi, and chicken long rice; he also chose to have poi (you can have rice instead) which I admit was better than the poi you get at luaus, but was still poi (he liked it; some Hawaiians there mistook us for locals, me because I looked local, him because he was eating the poi). The meals also came with little hunks of steamed taro and breadfruit and with two squares of haupia, one traditional coconut, one chocolate. The coconut was the best haupia I’d ever had until I tasted the chocolate, which was even better! They sell boxes of haupia for $5, you should strongly consider bringing along a cooler and buying some to go.

By the way, seating at the Poi Factory is on picnic tables outside, and the place is only open from 10 to 2. But you just can’t get more local than this. Again, don’t pass this up when you go to the windward or north shores.

The rest of the day was spent at the Polynesian Cultural Center. Great entertainment including a fantastic show that evening, but don’t expect good food. The culinary highlight was the Pineapple Delight, ice cream and canned fruit in a hollowed pineapple.

Wednesday: We broke the malasada streak by going to Wailua Bakery and Shave Ice(525 Kapahulu) for breakfast, which was a variety of filled buns: sweetish Portuguese egg bread, like King’s Hawaiian Bread only fresh, filled with char siu, inuki bean paste, or custard. Also got some excellent butter cookies and a “honey cake” which was basically a giant Twinkie without the fake cream filling. Really good. No coffee, so we went up the street to a Starbucks, bought a tall drip and used their outdoor tables.

The bakery is on the same block as Bailey’s Antiques and Aloha Shirts, which is great fun to check out; they have the real article, shirts from the 1940s and 50s, at prices you probably won’t feel like paying (looking is free, anyway). We did get one of the modern reproduction shirts they also stock; there’s a variety of tiki mugs and other memorabilia offered as well.

Lunch was Tiki’s Grill and Bar at the Aston on Kalahua. The decor is the main draw, lots of Shags and other tiki artists on display here. The food was pretty good, with local fish (opa in this case) in the fish and chips and a good fried calamari steak. Drinks can be ordered in a souvenir hurricane glass or a coconut shell with a Tiki’s logo silkscreened on it, $9.

We met Gecko that evening for cocktails at La Mariana Sailing Club. This place is nearly impossible to find: Go down Sand Island Rd. until you see Auiki St., then start looking at the right side of the road until you see a little sign that says “La Mariana” on a driveway; take the driveway back until you see the club, you can’t see it at all from Sand Island Rd. Anyway, the decor here is unbelievable and should not be missed, much of it rescued from extinct tiki bars such as Trader Vic’s Waikiki. We had drinks and some good lumpia, also a great time with Gecko, his girlfriend and brother, and Tiki Royale who was also in town.

After that, we went to **Alan Wong’s **(1857 S. King St., on the third floor of a very nondescript building, watch for the valet parking sign). Great higher-end food, with a terrific selection of fresh fish; they had opakapaka! (Never pass up opakapaka if you find it, even places where it’s on the menu often are “out” of it.) We had that and the ginger-encrusted onaga, both wonderful. Corn chowder with lobster to start was served as little piles of ingredients in the dish which the hot chowder was then ladled over. Desserts were also terrific, fantastically rich “chocolate crunch bars” and a banana cream “pie” (a saucer of crust balanced on bananas and creme anglaise, whipped cream and chocolate ice cream on top). Plus they had a coffee menu with about a dozen different Hawaiian beans available. A small, very popular place, so reservations are a must.
Thurday: The end of the Oahu portion of the trip was breakfast at our hotel (the Doubletree Alana) just because we had a $25 meal credit there. Well, $25 just paid for one (quite ordinary) continental breakfast, one (pretty good) carmelized banana upside-down pancake, and a side of linguica. Not great by any means.

To be continued with our adventures in Kauai..

[ Edited by: dogbytes on 2004-06-22 18:04 ]

Post #97857 by dogbytes on Tue, Jun 22, 2004 6:01 PM