Hawaii Day 7 5/24/2/13 3 Forks and 3.5 Forks

Mac 24/7 Hilton Waikiki Beach Hotel, 2500 Kuhio Ave., Honolulu, HI 96815

When I'm on vacation, I generally try to avoid restaurants in hotels just because I like to get away from the hotel and because they're generally more expensive.  But in the Waikiki area almost every building is a hotel or resort and it's difficult to avoid eating some meal at some hotel.  One of Deanna's friend had mentioned that Mac 24/7 at the Hilton had great food and since it was right across the street, we gave it a go.

The vibe here is more of a cool, fun, modern diner and I had read that it was on the Travel Network's Man vs. Food for the pancake challenge.  When we sat down, the table of Japanese tourists next to us got the Mac Daddy pancake and they literally worked on it for an hour and they barely made a dent in ti.  I was not ready to dive head first into a pancake the size of a car, but I did end up getting a meal that also almost left me comatose.  Most of the hotels we had been staying at so far offered free breakfast but most of the food was your standard, eggs, bacon, fruit kind of thing.  I decided to get the most "local" breakfast on the menu which was the kalbi, rice and 2 eggs overeasy ($15).  I had an idea what kalbi was but I wasn't expecting 3 giant strips of meat.  Kalbi is essentially a Korean beef short rib and it was quite tasty here. It was super thin (which made it slightly easier to deal with than if it were a filet cut) and had the great marinated taste of a bulgoi.  I normally don't get sunny side up eggs but they were fried perfectly here with a perfect runny yolk inside.  My only gripe was the rice.  It was dry and could have been moister and stickier.  While I enjoyed my meal, it was kind of hard to start off my day with essentially 3 large strips of meat and white rice.  I should also mention that Deanna got the Mac Attack ($16) which was pancakes, eggs, potatoes and your choice of bacon or sausage.  There was a mis-communication about the meat and they brought out a plate with bacon on it.  Deanna told her that she didn't eat meat and if they could make a new batch, which they said sure.  They came back in 2 minutes with a "new" dish without bacon, so it's pretty clear they just took the bacon off the plate which wasn't exactly what Deanna wanted.  I took a quick bite of her pancake and it was nice and fluffy  but I definitely wouldn't be able to eat an entire plate full of it.  I should note that the waitstaff, while very nice, is soooo slow.  Even the table next to us made a comment about it, but I guess that's island life. :)  Total bill:  $18/pp.

Sansei Seafood Restaurant and Sushi Bar Waikiki Beach Marriot Resort & Spa, 2552 Kalakaua Ave., Honolulu, HI 96815

Sansei came highly recommend on both Big Island and Oahu, so when we didn't get a chance to go on the Big Island we had to go when we were on Oahu.  We both had friends who had separately raved about this place and both said it was some of the best sushi they had anywhere.  While we were looking up the address to this place we noticed that they had a Friday Happy Hour special - 50% off!  Perfect!  My two favorite things, sushi and a discount. :)  But the catch here was that it started at 10PM.  It was a late night happy hour that ran from 10-1AM and also had free karaoke.  In order to not go totally crazy and be starving, we did grab a drink and a quick snack at Roy's.  I didn't review it here simply because we just split salad but I will say that the salad there was delicious and I would totally go back there for a full meal.

We got to Sansei around 9:45pm and there was already a line of 70 people there!  Crazy.  People walking by were giving us looks and asking what we were waiting in line for.  Luckily the line moved pretty quickly and I kid you not, we were the LAST people to get a table.  It was essentially first come first seat (I guess the wait staff just didn't want to deal with all these crazy people at night), but there was a 2 top outside (away from the karaoke) and we got the last one, otherwise the hostess had said to check back around midnight.  Yeah - I'm a city gal and don't mind eating late but having dinner at midnight was not what I wanted. 

So I probably should have known that a 50% discount does come with some strings attached.  While there was a 3 page menu (with everything on the menu 50% off) but it was about half the size of the regular menu.  So there were tons rolls that we had seen on their website that wasn't available for this happy hour deal which was a bummer.  I guess that does make sense but still a bit disappointing none the less.  But I made the best of the situation and ordered more than I probably needed to.  I ordered the sashimi trio appetizer (regularly $18), the caterpillar roll (regularly $15), and the Alaskan roll (regularly $12).  I thought that the prices seemed a bit over inflated and maybe they jacked up the prices just for happy hour but then again it's also a sushi restaurant in a hotel right on Waikiki beach, so that all lends to higher prices. 

The sashimi was fantastic - 3 pieces of salmon, 3 pieces of tuna and 3 pieces of yellowtail.  It's a classic but always a goodie if the fish is fresh - which is was here.  The caterpillar roll consisted of fresh unagi rolled inside out and wrapped with creamy avocado, topped with masago and unagi glaze.  This was my favorite roll of the night mostly because the avocado was super ripe and creamy and the eel was great.  It was very filling and was totally worth the half price and even the full price because there were 8 pieces of it.  Next I tried the Alaskan roll which was a "flower roll" which was slices of raw salmon and shiso wrapped around a mini rice ball, topped with seasoned salmon roe and fresh lemon in a "flower" shape.  This was essentially like an inside out roll with the rice on the inside and the fish on the outside.  The salmon was very fresh on the outside and I loved the plethora of the salmon roe on top of it.  It was just difficult to eat with the fish wrapped on the outside because it was so slippery and it kept slipping out of my chopsticks.  I also wasn't a huge fan of the shiso leaf inside.  I've never been a lover of shiso and this just confirmed my belief of it.  I should have totally stopped here with my food but I felt like I could do one more roll, so I ordered the scallop and cucumber roll (regularly $6.50) which had fresh, minced scallops with cucumber and masago aioli.  It had all the components of a great roll but it was way to big and had too much of rice inside.  Given the fact that I was already pretty full, I just couldn't deal with all the rice so I had to poke it out of the roll which kind of destroyed the roll in general.  But the scallop was fresh and delicious, so if this roll was half the size it would have been perfect. 

Given the reduced size of the menu, they cut a lot of the veggie rolls so Deanna ended up ordering the tempura onion rings, a cucumber avocado asparagus roll and another kind of pickled veggie roll.  I only tried the tempura onion rings and they were pretty good and crispy.  They could have been a bit smaller and thinner but overall they weren't soggy.  

While I am not a huge fan of karaoke, the whole karaoke experience at night with what looked like mostly locals was a lot of fun.  People were really belting it out and enjoying themselves and their enthusiasm was definitely infectious.  I also wanted to give props to our waitress.  She was super friendly and awesome.  She gave us some great tips of local, off the beaten path bars that we did end up going to and they were great.  While I can't say that the sushi here was the best I've ever had but I will give it the benefit of the doubt because we went during a crazy late night happy hour.  Total bill for just my portion was $40 with 2 beers. 

Photo Credit: Yelp