Fellow Foodies and Travellers,
Sabrina and I hope you enjoy this first instalment of ‘revisited’.
Every so often we’re going to mine our memories of a beloved travel destination for more material and there’s no city in the Americas that we love more than Honolulu.
Marco & Sabrina
PS for the rest of the Northern Hemisphere Summer we are going to be publishing our stories every other Thursday, instead of weekly.
Don’t know about you, but we could do with an occasional siesta!
Fittingly for one of the most isolated major cities on the planet, Honolulu’s feeling of otherness starts steps away from the iconic high-rise-clustered curve of Waikiki beach used to great effect by Hollywood’s dream factory in that classic helicopter tracking shot from ‘Hawaii Five O’.
Sabrina and our daughter have been pestering for us to visit here for well over a decade, but I couldn’t get past my prejudice that the island was at best over commercialised and at worst ruined, so it wasn’t until we’d visited every other part of the archipelago that I finally relented. How wrong I was!
To better appreciate the gulf between Waikiki’s manufactured Polynesian myth, luxury Tiki tourism and beachside Rodeo Drive vibe (Waikiki is the only place I know in the world where you can see surfboard carrying beachgoers stroll past a Hermès or Ferragamo store), we are staying in the primped, pink palace hotel The Royal Hawaiian. Along with its older sibling The Moana Surfrider, these two establishments transformed the area from a swampy backwater surrounded by duck ponds and taro fields into the ultimate expression of Brand Hawaii. Dwarfed by the high rises that surround it, our beautiful pink relic may be overrun with upscale Japanese wedding package celebrants (the lovely back lawn by the ocean has seldom been without a gazebo or its adjoining lanai and rapidly melting ice sculpture), but the hotel’s Monte Cristi hat shop, where you can pay up to $20,000 for the finest woven wide-brims, still opens its doors daily in the adjoining Palm Grove, the deckchairs are still laid out in neat rows behind a velvet rope on the Waikiki sands by white uniformed beach attendants at dawn every morning and outrigger canoes still ferry excited passengers to and from the beach. I found a marvellous sepia photograph in the hotel of a peak-capped Bing Crosby. Sporting the biggest grin you’ve ever seen he’s surfing a wave in a two-seater outrigger canoe, while the oarsman grits his teeth and knots his brow in rapt concentration.
Walk only one block north of this fantastic confection and the real city awaits, with its rich stew of Asian American cultures which make up 70% of Honolulu’s population- Japanese around one corner, Chinese, Filipino, Vietnamese or Korean around the next, all with their distinct food, shopping and cultural offerings in a quirky streetscape which is two parts cool Japanese and Chinese and one part Main Street USA.
Our breakfast this morning at an immaculate upscale Japanese café had an impossibly glossy homewares store attached, while in Chinatown one evening we explored both its crowded, cacophonous food stores and hipster cred Art Walk, before cocktails and a superb Vietnamese dinner in the lovely French colonial dining room of Duc’s Bistro. Honestly, it’s hard to pick just one dish out for posterity, as whichever cuisine you choose the food here both in Honolulu and outside is extraordinarily good (quite the best in these islands). Highlights include Oxtail Ramen around the corner from our favourite bakery the Halekulani, superb sushi at the Hawaiian Sushi café followed by Guava and Lychee ice cream at Henry’s Market, which we enjoyed on a long moonlit beach stroll. Then, on the island’s famous North Shore Sunset beach as surfers risked life and limb riding monster 30 foot high waves, we had a simple but delicious lunch of Poké (ubiquitous in these islands but never better than here) and seaweed salad with a side of crispy salmon skin. Ending with rainbow shaved ices all round.
Roasted Duck breast with Ginger Sauce: Serves One
It’s a tough call, but being originally from Hong Kong I love Roast Duck and this dish at Duc’s Bistro was a new take on an old favourite of mine. You can roast a whole duck, but it’s much simpler and less time consuming to prepare it piece by piece.
Marinade for duck breast
Pinch of Chinese 5 spice
1/4 tsp minced ginger root
1/4 tsp minced garlic
1/2 tsp hoisin sauce
1/2 duck breast
Mix all the ingredients together, rub the meat side of the breast only then pat the skin side dry. Let it marinade for at least 4 hours in the fridge with the skin side facing up without covering.
Preheat the oven to 200 C. Heat an oven safe frypan to very hot, lay the duck skin side down and reduce the heat to medium high, cook until the fat has rendered and the skin is golden. Flip the breast over and put in the oven for ten minutes, remove and let rest.
For the sauce
6 very thinly sliced ginger and then julienned
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1/2 tsp hoisin sauce
1 tsp rice wine
1/2 tsp fish sauce, or to taste
1 large garlic, minced
1 tsp chilli oil
1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 cup chicken stock
Slice the duck breast to whatever thickness you like.
Heat a wok with the olive oil, add the ginger and garlic, toss for a minute and don’t let the garlic burn. Add the hoisin sauce, rice wine, fish sauce and the sugar, toss to combine, now add the chicken stock and chilli oil, reduce until slightly thickened. Return the duck slices and warm through.
Serve with steamed Jasmine rice.
O’ahu’s natural gifts are phenomenally beautiful but rather like Honolulu’s over developed Waikiki strip, iconic sights such as Waimea Canyon where we took one look at the stacked coach park and Disney style diorama before beating a hasty retreat, are disappointingly overpackaged. Occasional blots on the beauty of the landscape also whiplash you out of Shangri La (also a fascinating museum for real in Honolulu), from the overblown vulgarity of Turtle Bay Resort to the monumental fish out of water white stuccoed weirdness of the Mormon temple, on the BYU campus.
By all means enjoy Oahu’s nature at its most ordered, at one of the island’s half dozen botanical gardens (Ho’omaluhia, which is framed by a spectacular ridge with canopies of Monkey Pod trees is especially enchanting) or walk through the fragrant frangipani forest near Koke volcanic crater, but also pack a rental car with a picnic and escape to one of the remote beaches in the North East around Kahana Bay and pinch yourselves as you walk completely alone though the mist in a landscape that wouldn’t look out of place in ‘The Lost World’.
To cap our eating odyssey we drive up the East coast to Waiāhole for a lūʻau (traditional Hawaiian feast) at the Poi Store. This is an authentic cultural experience stripped of the Polynesian song and dance show which usually accompanies it, and which gets right back to the origins of the word which references the taro leaves (Poi) which are at the core of the dishes they serve at this traditional roadside eatery. We came for the Squid and Beef Lūʻau but stayed for their Sweet Lady of Waiāhole dessert made with taro and haupia (coconut milk) ice cream.
A sweet ending to a trip, which at every turn has confounded expectations.
That’s so interesting, Lena. I had no idea taro was part of the Cypriot diet. Island life! Who knew?
Happy to be of service! The great thing about these islands is you can visit any day of the year and the weather will be beautiful.
Never heard that Kinks song before. Think they may have used canned wave sounds as they're a lot bigger and noisier on Waikiki Beach!