Hawaii Day 8 Visited 5/25/2013 4.5 Forks and 4 Forks

KCC Farmer's Market - Kapiolani Community College, 4303 Diamond Head Rd, Honolulu, HI 96816

Now this is the shit I am talking about.  I love a good a farmer's market and it's even better when there are food stalls along side with it.  This is like the Union Square's Farmer's market plus the Smorgasborg Flea market all in one but on a slightly smaller scale.  We stumbled upon this place totally by accident on our way to Diamond Head.  I had just finished hiking to the top and we had a 2pm paddleboarding class, so we decided to check this place out for lunch since it was nearby.  Even though it's crazy crowded (and it was made even worse by the fact that Japanese tour buses were dropping tourists off by the bus load), I totally loved it.  Lots of great local fruits and veggies stands and other knick knacks like honey and flowers.

After I walked the entire market, I had to make the tough decision on what to actually eat for lunch.  The one surprising thing was that a lot of the food was pretty heavy.  I was kind of hoping for something light like a poke or local salad but there didn't seem to by any stalls that offered it.  So I landed on The Pig and the Lady, a Vietnamese place that offered lots of delicious soudning options and I chose the pho french dip ($11).  It was a totally and utterly amazing sandwich, one of the best ones I've had in a long time.  It was made with 12 hr roasted brisket, sauteed bean sprouts, thai basil chimmichurri, and pho au jus all on a super soft and pillow-y french bread.  Everything worked perfectly together and each bite had all the different ingredients dancing in my mouth.  The 2 ladies next me split the sandwich while I wolfed the entire thing down myself.   Deanna also ordered lunch here and got the vegetarian curry.

I know the picture doesn't really do a lot of justice to it but it was actually very good as well.  All the vegetables came straight from the farmer's market.  In fact, I saw one of the workers run to one of the vendors next door to buy some spring onion and put it directly into some of the dishes.  Talk about fresh.  Even though I was sweating and it wasn't a restaurant, this was one of my favorite dishes on vacation.  It proves that you don't have to go to a 5 star fancy places (or even a physical space) to have really good, quality food.

Cafe Sistina - 1314 S King St., Honolulu, HI 96814

For our last real dinner in Oahu we decided to go somewhere that had good veggie options so that both Deanna and I could enjoy our meal.  My friend Van had recommended this place as a great Italian place away from the hustle and bustle of the beach area.  At first I was a bit reluctant to have Italian food but I was glad I went.  I do have to comment on the decor of this place.  It's uber cheesey with tons of "fresco" artwork on the wall done to replicate the artwork in the Sistine Chapel.  It's a cute concept but it was just way too much.

We started with organic baby greens salad ($9.75) and it was a nice but huge starter salad.  It came with fresh tomatoes, cremini mushrooms, bell peppers, sweet onions, cucmbers and very lightly dressed with mango vinaigrette.  I would have preferred to have had a bit more dressing on it but otherwise it was a nice basic salad.  For entrees, I was torn because I really just couldn't stomach anymore heavy cream pasta and almost everything on this menu had some kind of heavy sauce or cream.  But I was also craving really fresh good seafood, so I asked our waitress for a recommendation.  She mentioned that the scampi alla vodka ($17.25) was a great choice, but I was a bit weary because of the heavy vodka sauce but she mentioned that it had more clam juice than anything else to give it flavor.  When the dish came out, I was a bit skeptical because it was huge and looked really heavy.

Bu it was actually incredibly delicious and not as heavy as it looks.  The spinach fettuccine was great and perfectly al dente, the shrimp was amazing and had that nice crisp and bite that truly fresh shrimp has.  There was a bunch of capers that added some saltiness to the dish but it wasn't overwhelming and the waitress was right when she said that the sauce as more heavily flavored with clam juice but it was just the right amount and it didn't make the sauce taste fishy or weird.  It was exactly what I wanted in a seafood pasta.  Deanna got an angel hair pasta with fresh pesto and she loved it as well.

And yes, it looks like enough pasta for an army but it was very very thin and it was just very spread out on a large plate.  That would be my one complaint about this place:  that even the food is great, they need to work a little bit on presentation.  It kind of looks like they just slopped the delicious pasta on a dish and it just doesn't look at appetizing as it should.  The waitstaff here (like most of the people in Hawaii) was super friendly and nice too.  It may sound strange to have had our final dinner at a totally non-Hawaiian restaurant, the didn't really matter because the food was great and that's all that matters.  Total bill:  $48/pp with tax and tip.