Category: food

Restaurants (2022)

Mitchell, I saw this youtube video on plate lunches, and they mentioned Island Style BBQ Corp (corporation?) on North King. Have you been there? I never heard of this place, and it didn’t look that great. What about Bob’s BBQ in Dillingham? I feel like you said positive things about their plate lunch, but I can’t remember.

Great Food Synergies

Some types of food seem to go well with each other. A great example in Hawai’i is spam musubi–spam, rice, and nori. It might be the tomato-basil-mozzarella equivalent in Hawai’i, which may or may not speak badly about Hawai’i. What are some others? I’d also be interested in hearing an explanation as to why these foods go well together.

The Plate Lunch Thread

Right now, if a visitor came to O’ahu, I’m not sure which plate lunch I would recommend. A part of me feels like plate lunches have gone down hill–or there really aren’t many outstanding places. Do you guys agree or disagree? HK’s and Grace’s were two of my favorites, but I think there’s only one Grace’s left. (The one in Pearl City seemed to go downhill a bit, too–and they eventually closed.) I also really liked Koi’s, but their brick and mortar closed.

Here’s another question: What entres or sides would you like to see in a plate lunch? The first entre that comes to mind for me is Indian butter chicken. A good butter chicken would be awesome in a plate lunch. I wouldn’t mind seeing other types of rice in plate lunches–like biryani, or other types of Indian or Middle-Eastern style rices. I’m not sure if locals would like this, as they’re more like rice pilaf. I also wanted to see a mushroom risotto as well, but I’ve heard risottos are too difficult to make or you can’t make them and have them sit on the side.

Building the Best Local-style Bento

A few weeks ago, I was thinking that if Zippy’s opened up restaurants on the mainland, particularly in college towns on the west coast, they could do well. This conversation lead to another idea: What if you just opened up a bento place, sort of like K’s Bentoya in Waipahu–where they only have two premaid bento options. But what if you tried to top the Zip Pac–that is make a bento that’s better. Is there a better bento than the Zip Pac? I’m not saying it’s the best, but it’s a good one. (The ubiquity of Zippy’s probably contributes to it’s popularity.) Anyway, what would you include in the best bento? To me, if you could make one or two great bentos, that’s all you’d need to make a killing. On the west coast, I think this could become popular with non-Asians/Hawai’i people as well.

(Note: This was originally part of a thread that discussed bentos and plate lunches, but I decided to create separate threads for each topic.)

Restaurants (2019)

I remember Don recommending Cafe 8 1/2 (or something like that), an Italian restaurant in town. They closed before I ever got to try there, but I believe the owner opened a new place called Soffritto on Pauahi Street. Whether the owner is the same, I went to Soffritto’s recently. In addition to Italian food, they also serve Cajun food there. The pictures I saw on yelp made me want to check out the place. Unfortunately, they’re only open for lunch on weekdays. (They were open Saturday nights, and we tried to go recently, but they were closed. When I asked the owner about this, he said he no longer opens on Saturday. He said he’s getting a wood fire oven, though and will open on Saturday evenings in the near future.) I was on vacation so I recently went down for lunch. The verdict? Continue reading “Restaurants (2019)”