After my awesome trip to Hawaii last year, I was surprised to find that there really weren't that many Hawaiian restaurants in NYC (even though there are about 100 different kinds of cuisines in the city). So when I read that Onomea had opened up by a local Hawaiian and that it was 15 minutes from my apt, I had to try it. Even though Hawaii is part of the US, it really has a food culture all on its own and while I loved some of it (I'm obsessed with poke), I could have done without some it (I'm looking at you loco moco).
Onomea is located right around the corner from all-time favorite place, Fette Sau, and the inside of the place is pretty cute and inviting. It's got a beautiful carve out of the islands in the back of the restaurant and lots of pictures of the islands to make you wish you were actually in Hawaii instead of eating Hawaiian food in Williamsburg. The menu has a lot of your staple Hawaiian items: poke, spam musubi, loco moco, and Kalua pig and cabbage. The waiter said that the owner was from Hawaii and that all the recipes were old family recipes - sweet! We split the poke ($13) for the table, while Van got her own order as her main meal as well as the shoyu shrimp skewers ($9). I got the Kalua pig and cabbage with spam fried rice ($15), Anuja got the tempura ahi roll ($10), and Chelsea got the shoyu chicken ($13). The poke appetizer came out first and my first impression it looked pretty legit. The flavors were pretty spot on with green onions, sesame oil and soy sauce and the tuna was nice and fresh. It might have been a bit too heavy on the sesame oil but overall, considering there are no other places to get poke in the city, I was pretty happy with this version. Next came our entrees. The pig and cabbage plate consisted of pulled pork and cabbage served with macaroni salad, regular green salad, and spam fried rice. There was a pretty hefty amount of food on my plate that I wasn't sure if I was going to finish everything. I tried the macaroni salad first and it was fine, nothing really to write home about. I wasn't a huge fan of the smaller size macaroni shells used and while I'm probably in the minority, I actually like mayo and wished there was a bit more mayo to the salad. The actual pork and cabbage part of the dish was very meaty and had much more pork than cabbage. I wish there was more cabbage to offset the heaviness of the pork. Despite my numerous trips to Hawaii, I have surprisingly never had spam fried rice. In all honesty, it didn't really taste that different from regular fried rice except that it just had a few pieces of salty spam. I'm not sure if it was the spam or the salt in the pork, but I did feel like they were a bit heavy handed in the salt on the dish. In fact, I probably drank an entire carafe of water on my own. I didn't try anyone else's food except for Anuja's tempura roll. You'd think by the description that it would be these small to medium size rolls - like what you find in a typical Asian restaurant. But no, these things were the size of a small house. We were all a bit shocked by the whole thing and sadly, they didn't really taste very good. There must have been about a pound of rice that had too much rice wine vinegar in it with bits of cooked tuna and carrots and then wrapped in seaweed, covered in tempura batter and deep fried. I felt really bad this was Anuja's main entree because it was just kind of a hot mess. If our meal had ended here, I probably would have rated this place a 2.5, but their dessert kind of brought them back up to the 3 range. We got the coconut custard and it was a lovely refreshing dessert. I love coconut so I didn't mind the intense flavor of it, but if you don't like coconut I'm sure you'll find it too overbearing. It's got an almost soft tofu consistency sprinkled with shaved toasted coconut on top. Chelsea and Van both got gelato (in coconut and vanilla flavor) which were pretty good. We were a bit surprised that they didn't offer shaved ice, which is the quintessential Hawaiian dessert.
All in all, it was fun experience but definitely not on par with a true Hawaiian experience. The poke was definitely the best part of the meal but at $13 for a small plate, it's quite the difference from the giant vats of poke you get in Hawaii for less. If you've got a Hawaiian food craving, Onomea gets the job done but I'd still rather be on the beaches of Hawaii instead. Total bill: $30/pp with tax and tip
Photo Credit: Yelp
No comments:
Post a Comment