Hawaii
Trip 2006Hawaii
Trip 2006We got up at 6:00 as usual, checked out, packed the car, and went across the street to Ichiban’s for breakfast. It’s a little Japanese place in a strip mall nearby, very casual, very homey, and with excellent food. Robert had a miso soup and a shrimp-scallion omelet (his omelet, of course, was served with two scoops of rice on the side). I had a saimin, a very popular breakfast dish in Hawaii. It was a great, fun, non-breakfasty breakfast, and afterward we wandered into the Ah-Fook supermarket in the same strip mall, buying more mochi to take on the plane.
My plane had been to go to the wildlife sanctuary in Kahului and look at birds and/or fish (whatever wildlife was there, really), but even though we could see a little viewing station, we couldn’t find an open road in toward it. Instead, we just gassed up, returned the car, and got on a 10:00 Aloha Air flight to Oahu, slightly earlier than we’d planned.
Once we landed, we picked up our car—another PT Cruiser convertible, this time in red—and drove up the central plains of Oahu toward the north shore, stopping at the excellent restaurant, caterer, and take-out place, The Poke Stop. Everyone there was incredibly friendly, offering lots of samples. They have very very good quality fish and seasonings, and an excellent value on the rolls/prepared foods. We dined outdoors at their tables on 1⁄4 pound of sesame tako poke, 1⁄4 pound of Maui onion-ahi poke, and 1⁄4 pound of the delicious salmon poke, plus a creamy ahi poke roll tempura—a giant, delicious bargain at just $6.50.
Since we had to drive directly past it, we stopped briefly at the Dole Pineapple Plantation. We didn’t do the tour this time, but we did try the pineapple maze, which was the World’s Largest Maze as of a few years ago. We finished it in a pathetic thirty-one minutes (the top five times, just for reference, are in the 6-7 minute range—impossible on a first try, we believe) while eating a chocolate-covered slab of pineapple—yum.
We made it to the north shore, though it was by now incredibly hot, and we had a shave ice at Matsumoto’s, at first joining the giant line. I had a small, no ice cream or beans, but raspberry and li hing mui syrups with sweetened condensed milk. Robert had a large, ice cream and red beans, and then (he called it his “stealth” ice, since he thought he was choosing all white syrups) vanilla, lychee, and coconut syrups, with sweetened condensed milk. Unfortunately, due to the magic of food coloring, he ended up with red, blue, and yellow, somehow!
Post-shave ice, we drove around the north shore, checking out shrimp trucks for later and beaches for now. First we followed a crowd of stopped cars to a short beach just south of Waimea Bay, where we saw basking green turtles on the beach and in the water. Next, we drove all the way to Sunset Beach, and stood on the sand for awhile watching the 20+ surfers attempt the 15-foot waves, just a few days after the surfing championships had ended. The waves were lovely to look at, but clearly too much to swim in, so we doubled back to the turtles, where Robert tried to snorkel with them, but a woman said there were really treacherous currents even though the water there (protected by rocks and somewhat sheltered) actually looked fairly calm, so he gave up the idea.
Driving back to the other end of Haleiwa, we stopped at the Malama Market and bought some Waialua sodas—root beer and mango, the root beer especially very good, very different, almost citrus-y, than others we’d had—which are locally made, with all Hawaiian ingredients. Drinking our root beer, we stopped at the first shrimp truck in Haleiwa, apparently the only one in the area that peels the shrimp before making garlic shrimp, so you don’t lose all the good garlic from the shell while you eat. The drive back to Honolulu and Waikiki was slow and full of traffic, but it gave us time to digest, and we got to watch the sun get lower and lower in the sky as we drove.
At 6:30 we checked into our hotel, the Waikiki Sand Villa, very unfriendly, but with an acceptable price and location. I don’t really recommend them. Still, our room was fine, and we got cleaned up, used the (annoyingly wired) Internet connection to check our mail, and headed out for dinner.
Dinner
was Kat’s sushi, 715 S. King Street in downtown Honolulu; it was mildly
hard to get to, but a really fun place, a $20.95 all-you-can-eat order-as-you-go
kind of place. Since we were sitting at the sushi bar and we were the only people
there, we asked for omakase, and Robert became a big fan of the all-you-can-eat
omakase experience. The chef (unfortunately we didn’t get his name) was
great, very friendly, down to earth, yet highly skilled. The fish itself was
of excellent quality, and obviously quantity wasn’t anything to complain
about either. (Pictured at left: "rabbit" sushi.)
There were perfect nigiri, good ahi, salmon, hamachi nigiri, then a great caterpillar maki, great scallops chopped with masago, and perfect conical small handrolls; there was also excellent conversation about sushi around the world, east vs. west coast sushi tastes, masago vs. tobiko, crowds, etc. Interestingly, Kat’s Sushi does most of their business through catering, so we may have found Jef and Jin’s caterer if they end up having their wedding in Hawaii: they’re Korean-owned, specializing in bringing a centerpiece display, chilled fish counter, and chef to an event to make the sushi live in front of people. Since their rates start at about $300 for a group of thirty people, and then go up from there, they sound like a pretty good deal, and we can certainly vouch for the quality.
After dinner, we walked down a few blocks to see the Honolulu City Lights, various outdoor displays with surfing snowmen and both gay and religious Christmas scenes. City Hall itself was open and completely lit up, full of decorations and lights and dozens of Christmas trees, each decorated according to a theme by different government agencies (for example, there was the DMV tree, decorated with license plates). Everything was jammed, and very festive (especially the three Christmas tee shirts I saw on people walking around), and very, very Hawaiian in its friendly laid-back approach to the holiday.
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Created: 12/26/06. Last Modified: 12/26/06