Hawaii Restaurants~The Honolulu Burger Company

Last Fall, I purchased a groupon coupon for the Honolulu Burger Company and paid $5 for a $10 certificate. I had read an article in the StarAdvertiser.com about this burger place and wanted to check it out while Mike and I were back home for the winter holidays. It's a locally-owned restaurant that serves Big Island range fed beef. 

Apparently a lot of people happened to be redeeming their groupon coupons at the same time, because the customer before us and a few customers behind us had coupons in their hand.

I apologize for the blurry image, this was the best picture I took of the burger. Mike and I were in a rush to get somewhere, that  I had to take a picture of the burger in the car.  We just ordered the classic XL burger ($6.89) with lettuce, tomatoes, sauteed onions, and your choice of dressings.  There is a large array of cheeses, toppings (kim chee, bacon, spam, etc) and sauces (ko choo jang aioli, BBQ, horseradish cream, and others) that you can add to your burger, but I just settled for the addition of a sweet chili aioli.
We both thought that the burger was tasty, except it was lacking a little flavor.  If there had been more sweet chili aioli or if we had chosen another sauce, I'm certain that we would have enjoyed the burger more.  Our sweet potato fries that we ordered came with the Big Island Honey Mustard, so we poured some of that mustard on our burger and it was wonderful!

Mike and I really enjoyed these sweet potato fries served with the Big Island Honey Mustard Sauce. Sweet potato fries are usually a hit or miss at restaurants.  They are either over-fried and too crispy to taste the sweetness of the sweet potato. Then there are those sweet potato fries that are undercooked and you are chomping down on almost raw potato pieces.  These sweet potato fries did not fall into the two previously mentioned categories. They  were perfectly fried, they were cut large enough to taste the sweet potato, but not an under-cooked piece of raw potato. 

Here's Mike's analysis of the fries-"They were good, I liked the extra seasoning on the fries and the honey mustard sauce that were served with the fries."

Honolulu Burger Company
1295 S. Beretania Street
Honolulu, Hawaii 96814
(808) 626-5202

Hawaii Restaurants~Angelo Pietro's

Pietro's Restaurant is one my sister's favorite restaurants.  It's an Italian-Japanese fusion restaurant that serves pasta and pizza dishes with an Asian flair. 
While we were growing up, this would be her restaurant choice to celebrate special occasions.  I really enjoyed Pietro's when my family first started frequenting this restaurant back in the days when it was located across of McKinley High School.  The chefs would experiment with appetizers and we would always receive small portions of the concoction of the day. Flash forward several years to Pietro's, now located on Kapiolani Blvd close to the Ala Moana Shopping Center.  The prices have increased, smaller portions, and there are  no free appetizers (and this was prior to the recession). 
Anyways, liked I mentioned, this is one of my sister's favorite restaurants in Hawaii.  She makes it a point to eat here at least once each time she visits Hawaii. 

Okay, so I do not hate Pietro's I just think that it's a bit over-priced and I like other restaurants more. One could argue that California Pizza Kitchen is over-priced, but I like that restaurant and no one is going to change my mind.
One of my favorite things about Pietro's are their dressings.  They have four different Asian-inspired dressings that are yummy! You can buy these at local stores such as Long's and Don Quixote. My family cuts up cabbage really fine and we top it with the sesame miso dressing (our favorite flavor). 

Here's the raw potato salad. Sounds a little gross, but it's really good. Raw potato is thinly sliced and is served with all the four dressings.

My standard order-I always order the same thing.  Mushroom and Spinach spaghetti with a shoyu-based sauce.  At Pietro's you have a choice of a cream, tomato, garlic and oil, or shoyu sauce.

Eggplant and Spicy Ground Beef-My dad's standard order. Our family pretty much sticks with what we know works.  I don't think he's changed his pasta order in the past 10 years. 

Natto Spaghetti-This is my sister's standard order. Yes, she likes natto too. 

Here's an order of a chicken, mushroom, and broccoli pasta with cream sauce. The cream sauce at Pietro's is a light cream sauce, so it's quite different from a really creamy alfredo.

My sister would hands down recommend this restaurant to people. I think Pietro's serves tasty food, I just do not enjoy it as much as my sister. 

Angelo Pietro Honolulu
1585 Kapiolani Blvd. Suite 110
Honolulu, HI. 96814
Ph: 808-941-0555

Lambsy

Meet Lambsy! I told my mom how I mistakenly threw away the stuffed lamb that she bought me a few years ago. This past weekend my mom sent me a package full of snacks and goodies and a new stuffed lamb that I have decided to call Lamb-sy.  She's a little bit bigger than Lamby, but is soft and has a similar face. 

Poke Bowls

One of the foods that Mike misses the most is raw fish. Be in sashimi, sushi, and poke. I'm sure that there are a lot of restaurants in Texas that serve high quality raw fish, but Mike and I have not tested those waters yet. Therefore, during our short vacation back home to Hawaii, we ate tons of raw fish.  Wait, for those of you who know me, let me rephrase that last sentence, "Mike ate a lot of raw fish." 

Paina Cafe's poke bowl.  Mike ordered a bowl with half shoyu poke and half spicy tuna. We opted to add a taegu topping to the bowl. My parents really like the additional taegu.

Mike's friend ordered the "Hawaiian Poke Bowl" which includes kalua pig, lomi salmon and your choice of poke. At $7.25 for this bowl, I'd say it is a good deal!

Poke from Foodland.

Spicy tuna from Foodland

Tako (Octopus) Poke from Foodland

I read about Ono Seafood on another blog and wanted to check it out. You can choose between shoyu poke, spicy tuna poke, tako poke, or any combination of the three pokes.  The poke bowl is reasonably priced at $6 and that includes a can of juice/soda or a bottle of water

I ordered the spicy tuna bowl. . This spicy tuna was composed of raw fish, onions, green onions, and tabiko (flying fish eggs). I liked the addition of the crunchy fish eggs, but I was not a fan of all the raw onions in my spicy tuna.  It was more of a gourmet type spicy tuna rather than the traditional conveyor belt sushi bar spicy tuna.

Paina Cafe

Ward Warehouse
1200 Ala Moana Blvd
#24
Honolulu, HI 96814
(808)356-2829
Ono Seafood
747 Kapahulu Ave Apt 4
Honolulu, HI 96816
(808) 732-4806

Hawaii Restaurants~Morimoto's

One of my friends suggested that for this year, instead of exchanging Christmas presents, we double date and enjoy a dinner at the newly opened Morimoto restaurant in Waikiki.  I hadn't been keeping up with the Hawaii food scene and was excited to try out this new restaurant. I was even more excited when she texted me that Morimoto would actually be at the restaurant on the night she had made reservations.

My friend heard that Morimoto's was supposed to have outstanding ikura. She was telling me that Morimoto has this long process of cleaning the roe, soaking it in sake, and then the final result is non-fishy tasting ikura.  Mike and I gasped a little when we heard that ONE piece of ikura (salmon roe) sushi was $5.  You can see the single piece of ikua sushi in the far back of this picture.
We also ordered the soft shell crab roll and the spicy tuna roll. 

Morimoto Smoked Sushi-Seared toro, salmon, eel, tuna, hamachi and five sauces.  Isn't that pretty? I'm still learning how to eat raw fish, so the highlight of this dish for me was the five sauces in playful eye dropper like tubes.  There was a yuzu sauce, shoyu, hot sauce, an aioli (?), and a green one that was not wasabi. I think it was cilantro. 

Ishi Yaki Buri Bop-A Japanese play on the Korean stone pot bi bim bap.  The hot stone bowl arrives at the table with rice and slices of raw yellowtail tuna. The waiter then places the fish on the sides of the bowl and slightly sears the fish.  A shoyu based sauce is poured over it.

Chirashi Sushi-Assorted sashi over sushi rice.

Chef's Combination Sushi-Mike ordered this.  His sushi included a spicy tuna and an assortment of nigiri sushi. He said that the quality of the fish was close if not the same as Sushi Sasabune. 

Chocolate Peanut Bombe (I seem to have misplaced that picture).  My friend's husband tried this and I think his clean plate meant that that dessert was delicious.  This is a picture of the Sansho Pepper Roasted Pineapple. The waiter described this as a play on pineapple upside down cake. It was served with a buckwheat castella cake and toasted rice ice cream. I really enjoyed the ice cream, the pineapple cake had too much of a burnt bitter note for me.

Tofu Hot and Cold-Cheesecake, Souffle, and sour cherry sorbet. I ordred this dessert because it sounded playful and I wanted to see how it would be executed.  I was underwhelmed with this bland dessert, but the waiter had warned me that it was not one of the favorites.  The cheesecake and the souffle both had great textures, but how much can you really flavor a tofyu dessert?  The best component on the plate was the contrasting flavorful cherries and sorbet.

Really, this is just a picture of Chef Morimoto's back. We were at the restaurant for over two hours and he only left the kitchen to serve this one table near the kitchen.  Boo.  Last year, Chef Morimoto was actually at my work place for a demonstration and book signing, but I was off for work travel and missed it. 

Morimoto's
1775 Ala Moana Bld.
Honolulu, HI 96815
(808)943-5900

Hawaii Restaurants~Kurukuru Sushi

I'm back...with  my better than 20/20 vision right eye and my 20/30 vision left eye (it is supposed to improve to 20/20 over the next few weeks as my eye heals). Now I can start posting about all the food that we ate while back home in Hawaii over the winter holidays. 
The first restaurant that I am highlighting is Kurukuru Sushi in the Pearl Kai Shopping Center.  We've concluded that this is our favorite cheap conveyor belt sushi restaurant on Oahu.  This place is always crowded, so we know that other people think the restaurant is good too! We got to the restaurant about 10 minutes before it opened for lunch, so that's why this is a picture of an empty restaurant.

Why do we enjoy Kurukuru so much?  It's cheap for decent quality fish and the restaurant does not skimp on the fish and toppings.  While we were driving home, we passed by a Genki Sushi and noticed that the parking lot and restaurant was not very crowded.  Hmmm....maybe people are starting to realize that kurukuru has the better deal.

Poke Bowl with half shoyu poke and half spicy tuna. I think this bowl is $7.95 or $8.95 and is topped with poke and a slice of raw tuna and salmon.  For the amount of fish in this bowl, I think it might be a better deal than ordering plates of nigiri sushi.  Oh and on this visit to Kurukuru, we found out that if you're ordering a half-half bowl, you can request to have more shoyu poke or more spicy tuna.  We ordered more spicy tuna and a guy a few tables down requested more shoyu poke.

Karaage Chicken

My favorite sushi, the natto (fermented soybean) sushi. Mmmm.....they put so much natto on the sushi  that I knock some of it off and eat with some of the rice from the poke bowl.
Kurukuru Sushi
98-199 Kamehameha Hwy
Aiea, HI 96701
(808) 484-4596