When Elise and I had the privilege of visiting our good friends Jon and Layla in Honolulu, we also paid a visit to JJ Bistro and French Pastry. I was surprised to find that there was more than meets the eye at JJ's, and much that meets the eye too, especially in the rainbow-colored pastry case. I wrote about JJ's for the Globe, which you can see in today's paper and online here.
What better way to end a series on Hawaiian food than with fruit?
In Hawaii, fruit abounds. You'd have to work not to eat it.
Fruit nearly bursts from the corner market bins that barely contain it. It sprouts out of cracks in the sidewalk. It hypnotizes you, forcing your hand, until you come to holding a limp, empty papaya skin with seeds scattered around your bare feet like buckshot.
"What have I done?" you wonder. It was your third papaya that morning.
Our friends Jon and Layla aren't gardeners or even particularly fruit-crazed, but the apartment they rent just happens to have growing in its modest yard figs, pomelos, and avocados. I happen to have growing in my yard poison ivy.
Their next door neighbors have bananas, and nearly every other house on the street -- and everywhere else in Honolulu -- has at least one enormous papaya tree standing sentinel, its bombs of fructose ready to drop. Coconuts, pineapple and guava are similarly omnipresent.
In Hawaii, fruit just happens. While hanging out in a city park we realized that we were standing under a tamarind tree, and we picked them out of the grass and feasted (wincing). Rogue mango trees grow on vacant lots just daring you to make a dent in their incomparable bounty.
Appropriately, while in Hawaii I was reading Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World by Dan Koeppel. In it he declares the Cavendish, essentially the only banana available to most of us, to also be the worst banana in terms of flavor. He describes other, more desirable bananas that have the texture of apples, and bananas described by the adjective "juicy."
Luckily I could go get bananas anywhere I wanted. And nearly every banana I saw was an apple banana, which are a little shorter, a little fatter, a little more tangy, and a lot better.
And so I stumbled around Hawaii high on fruit most of the time. I thought about government recommendations for fruit servings and laughed. It seemed all I needed to do was open my mouth, and fruit would fall into it, or maybe be placed there by a mongoose.
In Hawaii, Korean barbecue means something different than it does on the mainland. And that difference is price.
My good friend Layla, who we were staying with, grew up in Honolulu and then lived in New York for a number of years. The first time she had Korean barbecue outside of Hawaii was on another island: Manhattan.
She ordered what she always ordered, and when the bill came, she ordered a tranquilizer and a padded van to haul her to the nearest asylum, having gone completely insane at the difference in price. That asylum burned down to the ground, but they say you can still hear Layla's voice calling out over the ashes.... "Why!? Why was the panch'an fifteen dollars?!"
I may have exaggerated about Layla, but despite Honolulu's high cost of living, the city boasts a very low cost of Korean barbecue. The to-go container pictured at top was a massive amount of food, and though it was dominated by a huge hunk of kalbi, most of the weight was comprised of vegetable matter. These veggie sides included spicy, shredded daikon, steamed Chinese (Korean?) broccoli, bean sprouts in sesame oil, and... cuttlefish. Macaroni salad was another option. Each plate cost about eight bucks and felt like it weighed eight pounds.
The beef had that irresistible combination of sugar, soy and charcoal. Most of the sides had a twang of fermentation, and I really can't emphasize enough how much food this was. Four very hungry adults and one kind of hungry 3-year-old could barely polish off three containers. You do the math.
Apparently Korean BBQ is a popular food to pick up en route to the beach. When I was growing up in Florida, we often stopped at KFC (then Kentucky Fried Chicken) on the way to the beach.
That makes me wish that I grew up in Hawaii instead, and not just because of the beach snacks. Well actually, yes, exclusively because of the beach snacks.
When I first heard about butterfish, I assumed it was just a clever name. Never did I imagine that such a supple, butter-like fish actually existed. But of course it exists in Hawaii.
Or does it? Turns out that butterfish is not actually a kind of fish, though there is something called a butterfish in England, which is an eel, which is okay, because an eel is a fish. ( I know because I googled the phrase "is an eel a fish?") Here's what Hawaii Magazine had to say about all this:
"In Hawaii, butterfish is a preparation, not a species of fish. What you are looking for is actually miso-marinated black cod. (This is another confusing fish name, since black cod is actually a North Pacific sablefish, named for its dark black skin.)" 
I ate butterfish -- or whatever kind of fish it was, prepared in the butterfish style -- at the Honolulu farmer's market. The fish was just one of many wonders there, including local coffee and chocolate and of course all of the stunning tropical fruit the islands are so well known for. As you may recall from previous posts, I'm a big fan of coconut juice, and it was nice to not have to drink it out of a can for once.
Another astounding feature of the market were the plants being sold. At Massachusetts farmers markets we can buy plants like rosemary. In Hawaii, you can buy a vanilla vine.
The only downside to the market was that the produce we bought there was not allowed out of the country. The staff at the airport made us take it out of our carry-on's, even though we swore we'd eat it all by the time we reached the mainland. They wouldn't even let us eat it there in the airport.
I just hope that they bent the rules and had themselves a little forbidden fruit feast as soon as we turned and walked away.
When I couldn't remember the name of the Japanese pub we ate at in Honolulu, I knew that there was a single word I could google to have my answer. In seconds I had it: Tokkure-Tei.
That word was "norichos." And what, pray tell, is a noricho? Only the most delicious portmanteau I've ever tasted.
The noricho is a zany marriage between nachos and sushi (where the "nori" comes from). Now that I re-read that description, it kind of makes me want to vomit, but I swear that they're delicious. Who doesn't want to eat deep fried, nacho-shaped wedges of seaweed piled with roe, avocado, daikon sprouts, tomatoes, and American cheese?
Okay, so the American cheese still kind of makes me want to vomit, but after much sake it made me want to do the reverse of vomit (eat it).
The somewhat kitschy, fusion-born noricho is surely the signature dish of this very fun to eat at Japanese pub-style eatery, itself a cross between a sushi bar, a gastropub, and a tapas restaurant. But they also do straight-up sushi very, very well, as in the butter-soft, super fresh, not even remotely fishy tasting mackerel nigiri.
I happen to love mackerel in all forms, even canned, but this was the best I've ever had it. We also ate tender, charcoal grilled slices of tongue....
A sweet, creamy portabello dish that was like slow-cooked mushroom candy...
Baked Alaska rolls....
And the boiled peanuts that start the meal, which are oddly similar to the hot boiled peanuts found throughout the South.
We finished with a perfectly good grilled okra, but at that point in the meal and after that much sake, I think we were all secretly wishing we'd just ordered a second round of norichos.
I'd like to dedicate this installment to what Hawaii might do best, and that is snacks.
Fun, cheap, filling, steamed, slightly sweet, Asian, rice-based snacks, to be more precise. It seemed that everywhere I went, be it fruit stand or convenience store, such snacks were to be had.
Perhaps my favorite was the sticky rice and banana treat wrapped and steamed in a taro -- or was it banana? -- leaf above. The thick, toothsome rice was redolent with banana, at the center a slice of the actual fruit, which seemed to have surrendered most of its substance to the surrounding starch. Though small and delightful, this was a serious dose of sticky rice, and it took both Elise and I to finish it while cruising down Waialae to the beach.
From the same fruit stand (the one across from Town) we purchased little buns which turned out to be stuffed with (surprise) pork as well as hard boiled egg. They were faintly sweet, and I could have eaten a million of them.
Other snacks included a trio of Malaysian handhelds from the food court in Honolulu's Chinatown. Once again, each was either rice-based or contained banana. There was a steamed log of sweet-salty glutinous black rice, a skewer of three sweetened balls of rice flour cooked with milk and with a somewhat caramelized crust, as well as a perfect little banana crepe. Each cost a dollar. (Not pictured: a jackfruit smoothie with tapioca pearls.)
Yesterday I was in Northampton, MA, which is generally a good snacking town. I was hungry. I wanted something fun, cheap, filling, steamed, slightly sweet, Asian, and rice-based. I wanted something like what I'd eaten nearly every day in Hawaii.
I couldn't find it.
If my previous post on poke led you to believe that all Hawaiian food is sunny and light, allow me to introduce you to plate lunch. If Hawaiian foods were Lord of the Rings characters, poke is an elf, plate lunch a cave troll.
Poke says "welcome to Hawaii!," places a lei around your neck and fans an ocean breeze in your direction. Plate lunch slaps you a little too hard on the shoulder so that you fall down in the sand and just take a nap instead of trying to stand back up.
I only ate plate lunch once, so I may not have the most accurate take on it, but as I understand it, a plate lunch is a heavy dose of meat, usually pork, a few scoops of white rice, and a seemingly misplaced side of macaroni salad.
It took three of us and one two year old to finish a plate lunch combo with both Kalua pig and lau lau at a place called Keneke's in Waimanalo. The amount of meat, especially for the price, was either astounding or disconcerting depending on whether you're thinking about your stomach or the rising temperature of the planet. Certainly no one needs that much meat in one sitting, but I certainly loved eating it.
The Kalua pig was a juicy mound of smoked, shredded pork. Exactly what the seasonings were I can't say, though salt figured prominently. The lau lau was pork wrapped in lu'au leaves which where then wrapped in taro leaves and steamed. (Apparently lau lau often contains butterfish as well, and though I didn't see any in there, I will get to butterfish soon.) The pork was about as tender as could be, the lu'au leaves rich and deeply flavorful, like a cross between spinach, calaloo, and pure iron.
My understanding is that these dishes were traditionally cooked in an imu (underground oven) and are now more commonly prepared by steaming on the stove top. Again, refer to Rachel's book if you want to know for sure. All I know is that it was delicious.
I really don't know where to start, so I'll just say this: Hawaii is a culinary wonderland, and I hope you get to go there.
I have lots of dewy observations about Hawaiian cuisine that have probably been made by countless others before me (why, it's East meets West!) so I'll spare you those. If you want the real deal, check out Rachel Laudan's The Food of Paradise. If you just want to know what I ate during my trip there last week, read on. I'll try not to use the words "lush," "exotic," and "better" too often.
I'll start by introducing you to the first Hawaiian food that I was introduced to. Reader, meet poke. Looks amazing, doesn't it?
It is! Poke, pronounced poh-kay, is a raw fish dish that consists of super-fresh seafood and ample seasoning. It's tempting to compare it to ceviche or sashimi, but poke is its own beast, it is absolutely scrumptious, and I miss it dearly. And I can't say that about too many beasts.
Depending on the variety, poke will also contain slivers of raw onion, seaweed, or even kimchi. Though poke is a traditional dish, like most Hawaiian foods its modern incarnation folds in elements that originated with other cultures. But some of my favorite "flavors" included Polynesian ingredients like the kukui nuts you see sprinkled on the ahi poke above.
Elise's favorite was, hands down, the smoked marlin, which in texture was close to jerky. Smoked marlin poke was sweet, salty, spicy, and of course smokey and marliny. It went very well with the baby soft white rice that we always ate with our poke, which usually came from the Tamura's in Honolulu. Not necessarily what you'd expect from a liquor store, but it was probably the best thing you could buy there.
With its high protein content, cool temperature and oceanic flavors, poke is the perfect post-beach food. I ate some after surfing, which I also tried for the first time. Hard to say which I liked better.
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