{"id":2186,"date":"2009-03-28T23:20:09","date_gmt":"2009-03-29T09:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.studionewmedia.com\/blog\/?p=2186"},"modified":"2009-03-28T23:20:09","modified_gmt":"2009-03-29T09:20:09","slug":"queen-street-cafe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/2009\/03\/28\/queen-street-cafe\/","title":{"rendered":"Queen Street Cafe"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"queen_street_cafe\"<\/a>JeffW saw this place on the Channel 8 “Cheap Eats”<\/em> segment earlier in the week, so we went there for lunch on Friday.\u00c2\u00a0 I didn’t make the adventure down to the old Hamada Store<\/em> location on Queen Street just a little ‘Ewa<\/em> from Ward Avenue on the makai<\/em> side.\u00c2\u00a0 Apparently, even with the phoned-in order, my coworkers still had a half-hour\u00c2\u00a0wait for the food.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0The 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.\u00c2\u00a0 We couldn’t even get a phone call in on Thursday!<\/p>\n

Some web browsing beforehand earlier in the week made up my mind as far as what to\u00c2\u00a0order.\u00c2\u00a0 I saw a\u00c2\u00a0picture of the garlic furikake chicken<\/em> and that was it.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Initially, the\u00c2\u00a0appearance of the food was good.\u00c2\u00a0 For about\u00c2\u00a0$6 USD, I got a full plate lunch and a\u00c2\u00a0350ml soft drink – quite a good value!\u00c2\u00a0 The plates come with a choice of starch – white rice, mashed potatoes, or garlic mashed potatoes – and a choice of salad – macaroni or tossed.\u00c2\u00a0 I chose rice and tossed salad.\u00c2\u00a0 The rice was rice, and the salad greens were reasonably fresh, cut romaine lettuce.\u00c2\u00a0 The salad dressing was self-serve from a bunch of squirt bottles after you receive the plates, so I ended up with something spicy (maybe chipotle ranch?) that may or may not have been intended to be applied to the salad.\u00c2\u00a0 The salad greens were of acceptable quality and the dressing was fine.<\/p>\n

The entree chicken was overall mediocre.\u00c2\u00a0 The ingredient quality was good.\u00c2\u00a0 The chicken was reasonably fat-free, and the pieces that had skin weren’t excessively fatty.\u00c2\u00a0 One or two pieces had weird gristle or some gelatinous stuff, but in terms of general quality, the base chicken meat was better than similar entrees from Sugoi’s<\/em> or Mitsu-ken<\/em>.\u00c2\u00a0 The preparation was essentially stock “mochiko chicken”<\/em> with the addition of nori furikake<\/em> in the dredging flour, and a post-frying dipping sauce that was garlic infused.\u00c2\u00a0 This is where things sort-of fell apart.\u00c2\u00a0 There was little discernable flavor.\u00c2\u00a0 All the good ingredients and intentions amount to nothing if the end result doesn’t taste good.\u00c2\u00a0 I found the chicken bland.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0There was no significant garlic taste.\u00c2\u00a0 The furikake essentially was aesthetic.\u00c2\u00a0 The outside was not crispy, but instead\u00c2\u00a0was\u00c2\u00a0soggy from oversoaking, or too low a frying temperature.\u00c2\u00a0 The quantity was good – above average.<\/p>\n

I’ll give them another try.\u00c2\u00a0 Their advertising claims that\u00c2\u00a0they are “cook to order”, but my particular selection seemed precooked then idled too long.\u00c2\u00a0 If I had to make a decision from this one plate, I’d give them a pass the next time around, but I’ll give them a chance because they’re\u00c2\u00a0a new shop, and they are currently under pressure from the media exposure.\u00c2\u00a0 Good volume but average food quality.<\/p>\n

About $6 USD including a\u00c2\u00a0canned soft\u00c2\u00a0drink<\/p>\n

Two out of four grinning monkeys<\/p>\n

Ambivalent<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JeffW saw this place on the Channel 8 “Cheap Eats” segment earlier in the week, so we went there for lunch on Friday.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 Apparently, even with the phoned-in order, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[8,13],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paJYlx-zg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2186"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2186\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}