While I wouldn't say that the food in Hawaiian is world renowned, it does have a warm and fuzzy part of my heart just because of how much I love anything related to Hawaii. There are some traditional Hawaiian foods that I am a huge fan of (ehm, poke) but it's generally not a cuisine that you see around a lot. So when this place opened up, my friend Van and I (she's also a big Hawaii and food fan) had to give it a try. Apparently the place was opened by two Per Se alums which may explain why we was so hard to get a reservation - we couldn't one until 3 weeks out and at 6pm none the less.
The menu is broken up into snacks, starters and mains - the waiter had recommended 12 dishes which I would say is way to extreme and honestly a bit offensive. We netted out at 2 snacks, 3 starters and 4 mains which sounded like a lot of food. The cuisine is not quite traditional Hawaiian - it's more high end fusion Hawaiian - it's got elements of Hawaiian flavor with their own twist to it. From the snack section, we got the corned beef tongue musubi ($6) and the silken tofu ($12). From the starter section, we got 2 orders of the big-eye tuna poke ($17) and the kalua pork croquettes ($11). From the main section, we got the spam agnolotti ($18), garlic shrimp over rice ($22), mochi crusted fluke ($21) and pineapple braised pork belly ($20). So yeah - we went a bit overboard but there were 4 of us at dinner and from what we could see, the dishes were on the smaller side.
We started with the musubi which in its traditional form is made with grilled spam over a block of rice and tied together with seaweed. This one was more like a sushi roll but it had beef tongue, cilantro and peanuts in it. Surprisingly the thing that I didn't like wasn't the beef tongue but the peanuts. The beer tongue was actually quite tasty and had a similar consistency to grilled spam. The peanuts weren't bad, but they just didn't seem to fit with the dish. The silken tofu was made with uni, ikura (salmon roe), shiitake and miso. I thought it was going to be like a silken tofu cube but it was more like custard. Obviously I loved the uni and ikura - but there wasn't enough of it (there never is). But once you got a taste of the mushroom and miso, it was a bit overwhelming. Despite everyone's love for uni at the table, the overall dish wasn't a fan favorite. On to the tuna poke - the dish that we were all most excited by. This one was made with tuna, macadamia nuts, pickled jalapeño, and seaweed. It was good but I love poke in it's purest form without much else beside sesame oil and soy sauce so the fact that this had nuts and jalapeno made it a bit too complicated than it needed to be. But the actual raw chunks of tuna was nice and tasty. The kalua croquettes were served with cabbage and katsu sauce and this was a definite crowed pleaser. The inside was a soft delicious pork and potato filling and the outside was nice and crispy and I'm always a huge fan of katsu sauce. The cabbage was actually a really nice refreshing side to the dish.
Next we moved on to the main entrees which all came out together. I tried the pork belly first - it was quite tender and actually pretty fatty on top but I didn't mind that at all. It came with yams, mustard greens and peanuts (again!!). I'm glad that I split it with the table because while it was good, it was definitely way too heavy of a dish to have on your own. Next I moved on to the best dish of the night, the garlic shrimp over rice. The shrimp were HUGE and drenched in garlic - so how could that not be delicious? The shrimp were nice and tender and had real bite to it. It was by far my favorite dish. I guess after that anything would be a bit of a disappointment but the spam agnolotti just didn't measure up regardless. It was fine - not a terrible dish but it was an ok dish. Lastly I tried the fluke which came with baby bok choy, kabocha squash, pinenuts, and black bean. It was a nice white fish and I enjoyed the mochi crust to it but it could have used a bit more injection of flavor beyond the veggies and black bean. Even though we ordered a ton of food, the portion sizes were fairly small and I was still pretty hungry at the end. We ordered the bruleed pineapple ($10) for dessert which was exactly how you imagined it - half a pineapple with a sugar brulee top - it was very sweet and it felt very Hawaiian but I'm not sure it was worth $10.
Overall, there were some great dishes that are definitely worth coming back for. While I do agree that it's best to share a bunch of dishes here, you could definitely cobble a solid individual meal here if planned correctly (I'd recommend musubi, maybe poke and definitely the grilled shrimp). While this place wasn't a traditional Hawaiian restaurant, it did remind me of Hawaii enough that I'm now craving to go back and experience the real thing. Total bill: $70 with tax, tip and drinks
Photo Credit: Yelp
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