Eagle Cafe - Honolulu, Hawaii

For lunch me, my mom and aunt/uncle went to Eagle Café on Nimitz Hwy in Honolulu. I would describe that place as local home cooking. The servings are quite large. Not to mention, you got a drink, soup/salad/fruit cup, a roll and bread, and dessert with the meal.

My mom had the Ahi(tuna) belly and I had the fresh catch of the day which was Opakapaka (Snapper). You could choose the way you wanted the Opakapaka prepared; broiled, baked or Chinese style. I chose the Chinese style of fish prep which is a sweet soy sauce it sits in topped with fresh ginger and cilantro(Chinese parsley). The fish was really delicious. I got two filets which was too much to eat in one sitting so I took half my meal home. I like to soak my rice with the sauce and scoop that into my mouth. Ahh, simple food but warm and comforting. My Mom’s Ahi was good. The belly part of the fish is dark meat. The Ahi belly was prepared nicely because it was not fatty and not too heavy. It was served with tartar sauce. For dessert, we all chose the double crusted coconut pie. I packed mine up and split my mom’s piece. I thought the pie would be a sort of custard based coconut, but actually it was fresh shredded. Pie is not my favorite dessert but this one had a nice flakey, but not fatty, crust. It wasn’t too sweet which made it very nice.

Legend Restaurant - Chinatown, Honolulu

The Legend is a pretty popular restaurant during lunch time. They have dim sum rolling around on carts. My favorites are shrimp hagau, shumai, chicken feet, and jung. They had some new ones I tasted too; taro wrapped shrimp deep fried, spinach wrapped in fried mochi, seafood mixture. Don’t eat too much though, these little things aren’t the healthiest in the world, but hey you can enjoy once in a while.

Willows Restaurant - Honolulu, Hawaii

We went out to The Willows restaurant on a Sunday night while I was in Hawaii. The seating atmosphere is pretty nice. It’s in a hut-like setting with indoor ponds and waterfall waterscape. It was nice at night because you feel like you are inside a gazebo. On offer was a Hawaiian buffet. It’s hard to describe all the different things to someone who has never tasted the local food before. All I can say was that it was so Ono. I stuffed myself silly until my stomach couldn’t take anymore. My favorite is laulau which is taro spinach with pork in the center. It is wrapped in a Ti leaf and steamed a long time until it is soft.

The plate below has laulau, chicken long rice, poi, seasoned bean sprouts, watercress salad, lomi salmon, tako poke, poke, mahi mahi, haupia and kalua pig. I also has a mango smoothy. This was just a selection from the buffet. There was also a dessert spread, prime rib, suckling pig, and a number of other local dishes that I can’t remember them all.

There is my mom below. She’s got a full plate too.

Crab Cakes

I made these crab cakes for David’s celebratory dinner. I went to the market without an idea of what I was going to cook. The near by market had cans of crab on sale for $7. I thought that was a little expensive but what they hey, I associated the price with quality. I sautéed onions and garlic. I toasted some old Hawaiian sweet bread in the over and made bread crumbs. I mixed up the bread crumbs with the onions and half a can of shrimp, the crab, parmesan cheese and some eggs. Dipped the cakes in the remaining bread crumbs and pan fried them up with some butter and oil. I served them on top some sautéed fresh spinach and asparagus.

I also cooked up some artichokes and ate them plainly with mayo and ketchup mixture. I LOVE artichokes. I can eat them plain and steamed.

The Knick Retaurant in Milwaukee

We went to the Knick restaurant for Dinner. Last time I was there was in 2000 when I first moved to Milwaukee. It’s a hotel restaurant attached to the Knickerbocker. Back then I remember having the meatloaf. I thought back then it was good. Nothing out of this world but it tasted good. This time I returned I wasn’t expecting anything that great however I was pleasantly surprised. The food was American food, but it was made well.

David had a house salad with his meal. There was something tasty in the salad dressing which made the ordinary salad really good.

We had steamed mussels and clams for appetizer. It was plainly prepared and I would have wanted a more richer cream sauce. It was just steamed with garlic and wine. It was served with lavosh which made it difficult to sop up the sauce.

The shrimp and scallop entrée was served in a bouillabaisse sauce over fresh spinach. That was nicely prepared.

The Asian pear salad with walnuts, feta and spinach was very nice. I ordered the dressing on the side as I usually do, however it wasn’t very oily so I could have bypassed that part. The dressings had some unique flavors which I could not deconstruct with my tastebuds. There was a dark dressing that I’m guessing was a balsamic vinegar, sugar, soy and some other things. The yellow dressing was sweet honey mustard citrus type of taste.