We missed our luau last year. This year we made up for it by holding a science luau with electric spheres, the Keck telescope and a host of other scientific tiki artifacts. | |
This year we waited until Labor Day weekend to hold our Hawaiian Luau. Once again, the trade winds blew, and the lau lau steamed. Our cupcake heiau dominated the dining room table hard by a big bowl of boiled icing and smaller bowls of coconut chips and roasted chocolate nibs. Our tiki idol took on a new look with its glowing red eyes, controlled by an Arduino. We even tried out a new drink, a slushy called "water off a duck's back". | |
Yes, we held our luau this year. Yes, we had lau lau. Yes we had Polynesian chicken cooked in a banana leaf, even though bananas don't grow in Hawaii. Yes, we had Mai Tais, but the real winners were the Test Pilots and Hells in the Pacific, the latter made with seriously powerful rum. | |
11/08/10 - Honolulu - Sushi Izakaya Gaku Some years back we had a wonderful time dining at Izakaya Nonbei, but we had gathered that this restaurant was under new management and not quite as good as it used to be, so we decided to try a new place. We were well rewarded by Sushi Izakaya Gaku, a wonderful little restaurant. As so often happens when we find a new restaurant, we made a point of dining there twice, just in case we can't get back there for a while.To start with, the sushi was wonderful, but our favorite dish was the house made tofu with sea urchin roe, a meat gelee and a bit of wasabi. Our waiter told us to mix up it. We did, and all the flavors blended beautifully. We mentioned that we liked sea urchin roe, so one of our dishes was sea urchin roe wrapped in thin slices of flounder, another great combination. What more can we say? The broiled sardines with sesame seeds were wonderful. The horse mackerel salad with ginger, shiso and scallions was a great use of shiso which can overwhelm a dish if one is not careful. The thin slices of seared fatty beef were exquisite, well marbled and perfectly prepared. All told, this is a Kaleberg rave. If you plan to go, get reservations. It's a little place. 1329 S King St Honolulu, HI (808) 589-1329 |
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Keywords: hawaii, restaurants, kale
This was the first tropical storm of the season. There was even a bit of rain, but the winds were moderate, or we wouldn't have driven down to Shipwreck Beach. It's always wetter and grayer up around Lanai City, but it was sunny on the coast. | |
We passed through the Garden of the Gods with its wild rocks and red stone. This part of Lanai has always been kind of wild, and parts of it look an awful lot like Mars. | |
11/04/10 - Lanai - Dawn and Polihua Beach On our last trip to Lanai, we didn't get all the way down to Polihua Beach. This time we did. |
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Our first visit to Lanai started the same day Castle & Cooke, the island's owners, announced that they were getting out of the pineapple business. The island had been a big pineapple plantation since the 1920s, but in the early 1990s they decided it was cheaper to grow pineapples in the Phillippines. The new plan for the island was as a resort with two hotels, one in the highlands and one by the sea. | |
Oahu tends to be underrated, probably because it's the only Hawaiian Island, except for Molokai, with an economy based on something besides tourism. Honolulu is a real city, despite what the birthers say. Oahu is a real tropical island, and outside the city proper it gets pretty rural. We had planned to do the big loop around the island, but didn't get much past Chinaman's Hat. Maybe next time, we'll finish the loop. | |
11/01/10 - Honolulu - Diamond Head and The Hau Tree We haven't been updating our website lately. Why? Because we were in Hawaii for a week. That's right. We went back, and this time we made it all the way up to Diamond Head. You can't miss Diamond Head. It's that big volcanic crater that dominates the coast past Waikiki. It's an old fort, and the only way into the crater is through the tunnel or a rugged climb over the crater's walls. We took the tunnel and climbed the staircase(s) to get some great views of Honolulu and the area.The crater floor is covered with kiawe, a rugged tree, covered with spines and fond of dry volcanic soil. From the viewpoint, an old artillery emplacement about 700 feet above sea level, you can see Waikiki, the mountains inland and much of Honolulu. The city, like Los Angeles, tapers off into the canyons. It's dry in the flat lands, but the hills are green. That evening, we had dinner at The Hau Tree and watched the sun set over the beach. Tropical sunsets are always amazing. |
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We held the annual Kaleberg Luau a while back, but we didn't post any pictures. We've been holding the luau since 2002, so it really has become a tradition. | |
Keywords: hawaii, food, luau, kale
We were browsing our new Hawaiian cookbook - thank you, Diane - and decided to try one of the recipes, a new way of cooking our local salmon. These Vietnamese tapioca wrappers are stuffed with salmon, macadamia nuts, coriander, and garlic. They taste even better than they look, and they look pretty good. |
Now and then you see pockets of Hawaiian influence in Seattle. There's the Kauai Family Restaurant down in SoDo. There's also a bit of Hawaii in Queen Anne. They say "Hawaii no ka oi", there is no place like Hawaii, so we imagine that Hawaiians like to bring a bit of it with them. | |
We should have posted sooner, but we were busy with our nearly annual Hawaiian luau. This year we built a cupcake heiau, incredibly loosely modeled after an old Hawaiian temple. As usual, we had lau lau, which is actually Hawaiian, and ahi tuna sushi, which is more Japanese. We also explored a new part of the Pacific Rim with a Balinese dish, chicken cooked in banana leaves. It was a surprise hit and a great way to use up all that turmeric root and galangal we had lying around.
You can find out more about the mechanics of the feast on our luau page. |
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We've been celebrating Hawaii with our own version of a luau. We've been cooking up lau lau, pipikailua beef, and chicken cafreal. Yeah, that last one isn't Hawaiian, but it is one of our Tabla favorites, and at least it is tropical. For more on our luau, check out the Kaleberg Luau page. |
Keywords: food, hawaii, art, kale