Archive for the 'Food' Category

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Buffalo Boys

Published on May 10, 2009 in Food and Review by taro. Closed
Buffalo Boys Hoagies

Buffalo Boys Hoagies

Few weeks back I got a chance to stop in to Buffalo Boys Hoagies to grab lunch. We’d done their register so I knew about them opening, but I wasn’t the one who worked on it so no one there knew who I was. I was there strictly as a normal customer. The store has a warehouse feel to it, its actually a small space, but the open ceiling and space gives it that feel.  There’s about 8 tables to sit at, otherwise its take out for you! So I placed my order, I don’t know what I was thinking, I guess I wasn’t feeling very meaty, and ordered the Buffalo Blue chicken finger sub, from a place touting New York style hoagies. I know, I know, what a fool. Continue reading ‘Buffalo Boys’

Edible Briefs – Haleiwa Joe’s, Kaneohe

Published on May 8, 2009 in Food and Review by risu. Closed

Took my mom to dinner at Haleiwa Joe’s at Haiku Gardens for an early Mother’s Day dinner.   I started with a Gordon Biersch Marzen draught – it arrived lukewarm.  Mom had the $29 Filet which was properly cooked according to her request – on the rare side of medium rare.  That looked like an A.   I got the $20 salmon with a $3 starter house salad.  The salad was 60% iceberg and 40% romaine with three tomato wedges, two thin slices of English cuke, a sprinkle of dessicated carot gratings, and 8mm-wide strips of nori laver.  The salad was obviously premade, covered with plastic wrap, and stockpiled in the fridge.  The miso-sesame vinaigrette was indistinct and flavorless, not unlike the mystery dressing at the Whistler Village Brewhouse Restaurant that made the salad wet, but didn’t make it taste good.  Salad gets a D – skip this one.  Salmon was served with seasoned mashed potatoes and cooked julienned carrot and zucchini.  The salmon filet was covered with a macadamia nut pesto and fried potato strings.  The flavor was good, but the salmon was overcooked and dry.  I found a half-dozen pin bones, and the blood line wasn’t cleaned from the filet, leaving a bad tasting region adjacent to it.  I’ve had good luck with the salmon before, but this time it gets a C+.  Dessert was the “Paradise Pie” which was a giant wedge of Oreo-crusted coffee ice cream pie sprinkled with toasted almond slivers and drizzled with Belgian chocolate sauce.  It was good, but the base ice cream quality was pedestrian.  It still gets an A though.  Desserts are all “share” size. Continue reading ‘Edible Briefs – Haleiwa Joe’s, Kaneohe’

Natsukashii Aji

Published on May 6, 2009 in Food and Review by risu. Closed

retro_pepsiPepsi Throwback

Mmm… tasty! There once was a Golden Age when soft drinks were sweetened with “real” sugar – either from cane or beets. Through the intervening years, sugar prices rose, so cheaper high-fructose corn syrup slowly began to be cut in to keep the prices down and profits up. Nowadays, HFCS is the primary sweetener and sugar is uncommon in the USDM. For a limited time, Pepsi will produce and sell a retro version of their product. Once you taste it, you will remember what Pepsi used to taste like back in “small kid time”. The change was so gradual, you probably didn’t realize it had happened! The difference is almost like the flavor gap between diet and regular… okay, maybe not that bad, but it is detectable. The sweet is not stronger, but it is brighter. The other flavorings are not as muddled, and the aromatics are more pronounced. Continue reading ‘Natsukashii Aji’

Sweet Home Café

Published on April 28, 2009 in Culture and Food by derek. Closed

Word of a new Taiwan Style hot pot restaurant had been circulating around for a while, so after reading and deliberating, and schedule making, I rounded up some of my eating buddies (K and J) to go check it out a few months back.  We found it to be very economical, and every left with a Euphoric Sense of Well Being™.  Unfortunately that time noone had a good camera with them.  We finally managed to get everyone back together again for another visit this evening

sweet home cafe

sweet home cafe

Continue reading ‘Sweet Home Café’

Raraya

Published on April 24, 2009 in Food and Review by taro. Closed

p1010160Discovered by Scat, just newly opened at 1145 South King Street, a new ramen-ya, Raraya. located next to The Bike Shop and across the street from Precision Radio, near the intersection of S. King and Piikoi. The sign notes that it is iekei ramen, which some quick Net searching indicates it’s a style of ramen from the Yokohama area and seems to have originally been a chain of ramen shops. It features a broader flat noodle, slices of cha siu, spinach, sheets of nori and the options of specifing oilyness, saltyness, and firmness. Continue reading ‘Raraya’

Beer Is Good – “33” Export Lager

Published on April 24, 2009 in Food and Review by risu. Closed

33_export_label33_exportHad this hoppy Pilsen from VBL Tien Giang Limited, Vietnam with dinner at Hale Vietnam. This beer has a convoluted history, originally being a product of the Lao Brewing Company in Laos until 1990, but now produced by various breweries and sold in various idiosyncratic markets around the world. The particular USDM-labeled specimen I had was labeled that it was brewed in Vietnam. It still had the LBC tiger logo, but it was all-red, instead of the brown tiger inside a red circle that is the current LBC logo. Continue reading ‘Beer Is Good – “33” Export Lager’

Queen Street Cafe

Published on March 28, 2009 in Food and Review by risu. Closed

queen_street_cafeJeffW saw this place on the Channel 8 “Cheap Eats” segment earlier in the week, so we went there for lunch on Friday.  I didn’t make the adventure down to the old Hamada Store location on Queen Street just a little ‘Ewa from Ward Avenue on the makai side.  Apparently, even with the phoned-in order, my coworkers still had a half-hour wait for the food.  The interior layout was apparently not set up for efficient customer or workflow, and the staff level was insufficient for the level of work subsequent to the TV spot publicity.  We couldn’t even get a phone call in on Thursday! Continue reading ‘Queen Street Cafe’

Journey to the East – I Hate Crab!

Published on March 15, 2009 in Food and Travel by risu. Closed

Okay, maybe not hate, but I don’t think I’ll be eating any for a while anyway! A few years back, I got a whole Hanasaki-gani with dinner at an inn in Rausu. It was split between two people, but was still quite a challenge to eat all of it. This time around, in a visit to Kawayu-onsen, the crab dinner came with crab sashimi, crab sunomono, crab nabe, crab miso soup, crab rice, crab tofu, and of course, a platter of whole crabs!  There was no way we could possibly eat all of that crab.  Even with a valiant effort, we didn’t even get through half of it.  Only the dessert didn’t have crab in it!  Unfortunately, it was the first day of a multi-legged onsen tour, so we couldn’t bag the unfinished crab and take it home with us.  Zannen, desu… Continue reading ‘Journey to the East – I Hate Crab!’

Heirloom Cutlery?

Published on February 17, 2009 in Culture and Food by taro. Closed

I just rediscovered the drawer full of sharp things. The good ones are knives that she brought back from my grandparents place. The couple junk ones you can barely see are the ones she got here that don’t get used anymore. But those Japanese knives look pretty nice, and I don’t even think they’re the real good ones. One of them I spotted a price tag of +5,000 yen, around $50 so not your dollar/yen shop variety, but the super good ones run into multiple hundreds. There was a couple of the veggie cutting blades, sorta cleaver shaped, broad squarish and pretty thin.  Decided to bring one of them out and use it yesterday. It’s a three layer blade, apparently fairly common for the consumer grade Japanese kitchen knives. Side plates are a softer more ductile steel, in this case stainless, and the center the harder grade edge steel. I thought this one might also be stainless, but apprently hagane as labeled on packaging is normal carbon steel. The knife is nice. Cuts amazing! Made some paper thin cucmber slices. Continue reading ‘Heirloom Cutlery?’

Engrish?

Published on February 14, 2009 in anime, Culture and Food by taro. Closed

On cover of Japanese mini tupperware like container, I didn’t notice until I was eating my lunch the other day. I can’t figure out if this was a mistake and they meant to have “KITCHENWARE” and it got by spell check since its valid words, or if they really meant “KITCHEN WAR”. You can never tell. Sounds like an anime show. Don’t laugh, a few seasons ago there was Library Wars. And yes, it really was about special forces librarians battling an evil purple oppressive nazi looking government faction. The military hardware and action was actually pretty detailed. Almost believable if it weren’t for the pretty silly premise. I don’t have a problem with the information controlling regime, I have a problem with that regime and these library forces are supposed to be both sanctioned government branches of the same country, and that aside from this conflict, the lifestyle of the populace seems quite normal. Anyway, the same country that presented Library Wars made this container, so look out oppresive mass produced prefabed food outlets, the forces of home cooked packed lunches are valiantly battling to uphold the virtues of cooking with freely grown local produce! No preformed chicken blob for me, homemade daikon, carrot, and kuuri amamsu sumono for me! (Yes, that’s what I had in my Kitchen War container)