Tokkuri Tei

After the conclusion of this year’s Okinawa Festival, I was quite roasted having spent pretty much the entire days there out in the sun. I felt in dire need of some beerage, and air conditioning. Fabio and I started going over options for the Kaimuki area. Bulging forehead vein burgers at Big City came up. Food options there didn’t appeal this evening, and if anything, the a/c is TOO much there for shorts and t-shirts. Fabio mentioned the place Koh no Tori next to Imanas Tei by Pucks Alley. The description perked my interest, well priced izakayaish tidbits.  Then thought of Tokkuri Tei. Tokkuri Tei is one of the places that for years I’ve been saying should try. I heard good things about it, but never got around to going there.

So we decided to check it out. On Kapahulu Ave cramed in the little collection of shops with Papa Johns and Socker Locker. Parking is tight, if you don’t like the idea of valet, you’ll need to find street parking. Entering, you’ll be greeted by a homey lived in atmopshere. It was quite crowded with only the counter open, which was just fine. Get to watch the sushi chefs (which is an anomoly of izakaya in Hawaii) do their stuff. Browsing the menu, particaly the first half of it is the liquor section. They have a pretty large selection of sake, which is fitting, seeing as an izakaya is something like Japanese for bar and grill. We both decide to have a beer that you don’t see elsewhere. Technically it shouldn’t be called beer since it says it’s brewed with rice. But sampling the nice sized bottle, it tastes like a good clean Japanese beer. No outstanding notes, an easy drinking beer that goes well with tasty bits.

Fabio had mentioned gyu tan (beef tongue) from the other place, so that was on the mind and first to be ordered. We like tan. Tan is good. Tan shio (salt) style here and yummy, although I’ve had yummier. I’d hazard a guess that it’s not cooked over coals here?

 Fabio had spotted the kurobuta sausage on menu, and the aspara batah caught our eyes almost simultaneously. They were soon on the counter before us! Tasty arabikiy snap and the asparagus was wonderful, afirming our adage that butter makes everything better.

Next decided we needed some rice. Since they were out of salmon skin, we asked our waitress for suggestions and this roll was the result. Um, you know I forget which one this is, spicy scallops among others. Pretty good, although I think we really wanted that salmon skin.

Next decision was we needed something from the fried food group. What? You don’t know about that basic food group? I saw kakiage and we basically ended up with the mixed tempura. Nicely done tempura, but honestly with the large selection of other intriguing items, I would have rather tried something else.

In perhaps a rather weak attempt to be healthy, we searched for another vegetable item. Eggplant miso sounded good, and we like eggplant. I’m not quite sure how healthy it is, the cooking method looks pretty light, but I’m sure the miso sauce is a sodium haven! Neat presentation with the log tower of doom (build a campfire like this and you’ll know what I mean) and the different miso.

Satiety levels were reaching happy and we want to cap the night off with some nigiri. It’s always good to ask about what is particularly good that day. Our waitress is honest about it and refers us to the sushi dudes manning the counter. They’re pretty furiously filling orders, so I decide to chill a bit and enjoy my second 250ml beer. Fabio prods me to ask in Japanese and as the action lulls I grab the chance to ask. Perhaps it confuses maki guy for a second, they speak perfectly fine local kine english. He passes me off to nigiri guy who recommends the aji (mackerel) and also says the hirame is local. Interesting, I didn’t know about this. I later find out from my mom that she has heard that hirame is being farmed in Hawaii. It’s hard to go wrong with chef recommendations, they are after all the ones who know the ingredients the best. Aji can be fishy so it’s not often you find it as sashimi here. In this case, it was quite good. The hirame, though also good, had a bit more “tooth” here. Not as wonderful as when we’ve had it in Whistler Canada. Perhaps a product of the temperature, same reason you don’t find good toro here.

We end the night in good spirits. The food and service was good (although we had to remind the waitress for water), the atmosphere casual and busy, but we never felt rushed. In fact I think we spent almost three hours there. Oh, and my wallet was $60 lighter for my portion of the food described above and .5 liters of beer. Not cheap, but I was happy and that’s what counts. Don’t expect a romantic dinner here, you’re all in one room, no dividers and chairs spaced just enough for the servers to get through. No worries about overactive a/c, the a/c couldn’t keep up with the btu’s all the burners were pumping out and the numerous bodies.

3 out of 4 grinning monkeys.