Oahu 1-week visit report (long)

[JessicaRoberts]

Hi all - my husband and just wrapped up a 5 day/4 night trip to Honolulu (first trip without our son since he was born...). I gleaned our food recommendations from this board, and with such a short visit didn't feel the need to trouble everyone with the list beforehand, but I thought you might find our report interesting.

Rainbow
Sorry to start with a negative note, but we couldn't believe this place regularly gets rave reviews. I got the mix plate lunch, and while the BBQ had a tasty, subtle flavor (and it was unusual in my experience to have one piece of thinly-sliced meat), I had to abandon the chicken and mahi mahi after a single bite - they had both clearly been fried a long time before they made their way onto my plate, and were incredibly leaden and cold. Yech. I didn't care for the mac salad as it was just too too mayo-tastic, but I understand that's a matter of taste. My husband had the shoyu chicken, and the sauce was gloppy and plentiful, but rather one-dimensional. Overall, it was really disappointing as our first meal in Honolulu, especially since we were both hungry. I know that some really well-respected local hounds regularly recommend this place so I'm wondering if the chef had the night off or something...

Leonard's
I went on a long jog on our first morning in town (hey, when in Rome…) and made sure to end up at Leonard's to reward myself. We tried the regular and cinnamon malasadas as well as a haupia-filled malasada. I really liked these - they were nicely substantial, yet not heavy. I really like filled doughnuts, and the haupia custard was good, but I actually preferred the simple version - the custard one was just TOO much, in the end. Maybe I would have preferred a little higher dough-to-filling ratio. But I don't mean to complain; this was good eats, for sure! We also grabbed a pao dolce to take home with us but I didn't end up finding it nearly as interesting as the malasadas, but maybe that's because it was a day old by the time we ate it.

Matsugen
A thousand thanks to the CH'er who steered us to this gem with their <a href="http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/664550&quot;&gt;glowing, detailed review</a>! This was a major highlight for us, and we never would have found it on our own as it is on a quiet side street with a very understated entrance. This place was packed, and we were the only non-Japanese guests - and some of the servers did not speak much English. We started with a crab salad on tender greens. The greens were beautiful - very tender, and treated with care - and dressed with a particularly tasty version of that bright orange Japanese carrot-ginger dressing I always love. The crab meat was neither plentiful nor stingy, and it was very succulent and fresh-tasting.

Next we had their version of ahi poke, which was served lightly dressed on a bed of shaved onions accompanied by green onions, high-quality bonito flakes, FRESH (!!) wasabi, and three colors of wakame (green, pink & white). There were also some grains scattered over the top that I think might have been either buckwheat or brown rice - cooked very soft, and I would say even overcooked. It sounds strange, and I've never had a garnish like it, but it was a nice, if subtle, addition. The ahi was incredibly delicious, clear and beautiful in color, and tender - I recently had a crown installed, and my teeth are very sensitive on one side, but I could chew this as it basically melted in my mouth!

Finally, we had a cold enoki mushroom soba bowl, served with grated daikon radish, green onions, traditional sweet/soy/dashi soba sauce, and (again with the fresh) wasabi. This was lovely too - very subtle, but really well-balanced, and the fresh noodles were fantastic. Total for two for lunch: $43 before tip.

Diamond Head Market and Grill
We tried this place out for dinner first. My husband had the portobello burger, which to our great surprise was not a burger made out of portobello but rather a burger with the addition of portobello. That was fine with him - we're both omnivores - but I imagine it would have been disappointing to a vegetarian! My husband said the burger was solidly good - not remarkable, but well-executed. The fries were nothing special. I had the teriyaki chicken plate lunch and I loved this chicken! Three pounded chicken thighs were grilled nicely and had a very light, simple, housemaid teriyaki sauce. The meat was tender and very juicy, and went perfectly with the rice (and can I just take a moment to rave about Hawaiian sticky rice? I wish I knew how to get such great results at home!). Again, I didn't particularly care for the mac salad, but again, I blame myself. But this seemed like a pretty unusual variant, with mashed potatoes, peas, grated carrots, and black olives. On all y'all's recommendation, we took a blueberry cream cheese scone home for our next morning's breakfast and wow! Incredible! Has anyone ever asked them for the recipe? Or does your local paper do that thing where they'll ask local restaurants for recipes? Because if that recipe is out there, please please alert me right away!

We ended up going back to Diamond Head twice more, both because we liked it so much, and because it was a nice walk from our hotel. We had a basic breakfast - the eggs and rice were fine but the grilled Portuguese sausage was a knockout and made me wish, ardently, I could get this fine pork product back home in Portland. The cornbread was not to my taste; it was very cakey and sweet. We also shared another blueberry scone (and to my surprise I actually felt it had too much cream cheese, not that I thought such a thing would be possible) and a delightfully flakey biscuit. We grabbed spam and mochiko chicken musubi as well for a hike later in the day, and enjoyed both a lot (especially the chicken one, which was such a lovely combination of sweet/salty chicken, furikake, rice and nori). On our way out of town we stopped by to grab a banana scone (also delicious though much sweeter than the blueberry version) and teriyaki chicken soba rolls (a little bland without the sauce, which had too much oil - but once I poured off the oil that separated out, it was nice).

Haleiwa Joe's
Yes, despite <a href="http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/334698?tag=post-content-4613525;post_4613525_content&quot;&gt;Bill's warnings</a>, we gave this place a try, mostly because we wanted a place to sit down and have a beer. We risked ordering seafood: a rock shrimp salad and ahi poke. I am pleased to say that the quality of the shrimp and tuna were quite good, and we enjoyed them both…BUT the rest of the meal was indifferently executed. The salad greens were baby mixed greens that had their share of yellowed and bruised leaves, and there were fried tortilla strips that were not particularly fresh or crunchy. The dressing was pretty light and on the sweet side, but I thought it worked. The poke was dressed fine, but it was served on thick onion slices and large slices of cabbage that had definitely been sitting out all day. I basically focused on the shrimp and tuna and left the rest.

Matsumoto Shave Ice
I've never liked snow cones or the shave ice I've had in the past, so I was not expecting to love this, but boy was I wrong! I got a lilikoi shave ice with ice cream, and my husband got a lemon/cherry one with condensed milk (yes, I know, we didn't go with the most purist version, but oh well). They were both wonderful - it was like eating snow, and the syrup managed to stay well-distributed in every bite, and be bright and flavorful without being sickly sweet. Also, they really could get away with charging more - it seemed like quite a treat for $2 a pop...

Town
We started with a salad with greens, fried pancetta cubes, walnuts, and shaved cheese (I believe it was pecorino but I neglected to write it down so I can't say for sure). This was a bit of a disappointing start to the meal as the greens were quite young and tender, and didn't really stand up to the flavors of the rest of the ingredients. I also felt like the proportions were off - I would have needed about twice as many greens to feel like I was eating a salad and not an assortment of ingredients lightly dressed with greens. The raw walnuts would have benefitted from toasting and from being served in smaller pieces, and the pancetta all fell to the bottom and was a bit hard to spear. The dressing was unremarkable.

Luckily our entrees were much tastier. I had the housemade pasta, which was relatively thick and cut into long, wide ribbons. It was served with caramelized kabocha wedges (these were tasty but again were sort of too big to integrate well), pancetta (again, but who's complaining?), and braised escarole in some fantastically tasty buttery sauce. I loved the dish and found it very filling. My husband had the mahi mahi, which was served with meyer lemon brown butter and served on a bed of vegetables. This was the knockout dish of the night, and I enjoyed my one bite he could bear to give up to me! The main thing that stands out about this dish for me were the *vegetables*. I adore seasonal vegetables and normally eat a ton of them, and this Hawaii trip has been sadly lacking in vegetables at all. These were beautiful, seasonal, and perfectly prepared: Hakurei turnips, parsnips, carrots, and some kind of green (I think escarole again). Yum! We had good wine as well. The total came to about $100 before tip.

Ono's
We were thinking of hitting Matsugen again, but in the end we wanted to try something new so we went with Ono's. We ordered the kalua pig plate and the poke of the day, which was ahi. The plate was generous portions and definitely enough for two. We enjoyed the kalua pig, especially after our server suggested adding some chili water. It was almost too salty but had good porky flavor and was tender. And we got rice but they brought us a bit of poi to sample, which was perfect - I enjoyed giving it a try, and I definitely understand its role in the meal…but in the end I still preferred rice, so we only ate about half our poi. I enjoyed the lomi salmon, though the out-of-season tomatoes were fairly flavorless. The pipikaula was perhaps our favorite part of the meal - I enjoyed how tender and thick-cut it was, with good soy flavors. It reminded me of the homemade beef jerky I've made in the past. The haupia was good, and I believe it was pretty traditional, though I don't get super excited about it as it's a little bland/waxy for my tastes. I've been avoiding writing about the poke because I don't even want to think about it - friends, it was terrible (and based on <a href="http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/7508... review</a> I had high hopes for it). Opaque, mushy, and fishy - so bad we each choked down a single bite and couldn't bear to eat any more of it. I have to say that I am baffled about how a restaurant could serve fish that bad - I don't know if it's worse to think that they were ignorant or indifferent to its poor quality. I would strongly NOT recommend Ono's to anyone based on the fish alone. And overall, there were good parts of this meal but it was not a knockout. I actually wish we'd gone back to Matsugen; I'm positive we would have had a much better meal in terms of quality and execution.

That's it - mahalo for letting us benefit from the CH hive mind, and I hope this report is interesting and/or useful to others! We miss your sun and food already!

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Matsumoto Shave Ice
66 Kamehameha Hwy, Haleiwa, HI 96712

Leonard's Bakery
933 Kapahulu Ave, Honolulu, HI 96816

Town
3435 Waialae Ave Ste 104, Honolulu, HI 96816

Ono Hawaiian Foods
726 Kapahulu Ave, Honolulu, HI 96816

Diamond Head Grill
2885 Kalakaua Ave Fl 2, Honolulu, HI 96815

Haleiwa Joe's Seafood Grill
66-011 Kamehameha Hwy, Haleiwa, HI 96712

Matsumoto Shave Ice
66-087 Kamehameha Hwy, Haleiwa, HI 96712

[JessicaRoberts]

p.s. Sorry about the HTML formatting - can someone educate me about how to make links and I'll correct them?

[KaimukiMan]

great reviews. glad to hear that you appreciated the simplicity of the 'original' malasada. the experience at rainbow is unique, and in some ways an acquired taste. one problem with the mixed plate is that in spite of it turning into a pretty big pile of food, you don't have time to really get into any one flavor - as you said, one thin slice of teri beef. And no, this is not health food.

for rice, you just have to buy the right kind... medium grain japonica, not the long grain you are used to buying. cooking instructions are about the same. put it in the pot, rinse it (3x is traditional), cover with water 1 knuckle above the rice, bring to a boil then simmer on low for 20 minutes (or better yet use a rice cooker)

sounds like you had a great trip. thanks for sharing.

[russkar]

Sorry to say this is practically my "DON'T GO LIST to a "T". There is much better all over the Island.

[UES Mayor]

oh russkar-you took the words right out of my mouth!! As I was reading op's review i was wondering the same exact thing!!!!!!!!!!