Nesting in Oahu

I don't know what I'm going to write today.  Usually there's a burr under my saddle or a bee in my bonnet about something we experienced in each place we visit.

We just wound up six weeks in Oahu -- the longest stop on The Trip so far -- and I simply cannot synthesize the experience.  One reason is that we were back in our mother-culture, the USA.  Another reason was that our life was shaped by really mundane things.

This was our first stop in suburbia.  It was an experiment.

We rented an elegant house designed by architect Vladimir Ossipoff, a Russian-born, Tokyo-raised, Berkeley-educated designer who chose Hawaii as ground zero for his "war on ugliness."  After living in one of his beautiful houses for more than a month, I think E and I would enlist.  Every morning (when I remembered to fill the bird feeder), we woke up to a view that looked like this.

The house was sited beautifully at the tippy-top of a hill looking down over Diamond Head in one direction and Waikiki in the other.  There was a sort of viewing platform made of large, flat stones with a tree gracefully shading one side, and an (unheated) swimming pool on the other -- from which to take in this stunning view.

Walking in the entrance, you stepped down into an elegant, high-ceilinged open living room...

...which flowed into a spacious kitchen and dining room.

At either end of the house was a lovely suite.

The front of the house was hidden by lush foliage.  Hiding your house is apparently the thing.  Here is the beautiful entryway to one of the neighbors' houses, which I loved.  It reminded me of the children's book The Secret Garden.

We were also excited to discover a hiking trail nearby, with a heart-pumping climb to more phenomenal views...

The price, of course, for these beautiful views and seclusion was a looong downward trek to the nearest businesses.  Even for someone as walking-inclined as myself, 1.5 miles down (and up) a steep hill to grab a sandwich is quite a shlep.

You're in the suburbs, baby, what did you expect?

With one car.

For those of us who do not make our own sandwiches (ahem), that means burning a gallon-and-a-half of $4.50 gas, plus a good 30+ mins if you want to leave the house for lunch.  For those of us who don't want a super-aerobic hillclimb every time we jog, that means budgeting two hours for a workout.

Meanwhile the other person is stranded.  Stranded in a beautiful and comfortable place...but nonetheless stranded.

See, this is the thing you absolutely cannot know until you put boots on the ground -- how your life will fit with the geography, or topography, of a particular place.  I'm not going to do an anthropology lesson with this post, but here's a snapshot of culture on Oahu:

There's Waikiki, essentially an upscale, outdoor Hawaiian shopping mall with excellent mai tais and beautiful white sand beaches.  We gamely surrendered a few hours of buzzed contentment to the Mai Tai Bar at the Royal Hawaiian, where 30-year veteran bartender "Susan" rules the roost, with ambitious barbacks nipping at her heels.

Really, you could do worse.  After our wallet-busting stay in Australia (recall the $50 chicken pie), we thought the $14 top shelf mai tai was a great value.  It should come as no surprise, then, that a lot of Australians think so too.  According to one of the waiters we chatted with, Australians, Japanese, and Canadians make up the bulk of tourists in Waikiki.

An extension of Waikiki for ambitious tourists are the Pali Lookout (Parking $5) and the beautiful, but windy beaches of Kailua on the windward side...

...or the kid-friendly destinations of Hanauma Bay (where you have to watch safety videos before accessing the fragile beach) and the manufactured lagoons chez Disney at Ko Olina on the Leeward side...

 ...or the famous surfing beaches, Waimea Bay and Sunset Beach, on the North Shore (traffic like you wouldn't believe even when the water is flat as a pancake)...

Incidentally, touristy or no, I had a very satisfying teriyaki chicken burger at Grass Skirt Grill in Haleiwa, the largest town on the North Shore.

There were also the well-trod hiking trails to Manoa Falls and around the top of Diamond Head...

The Diamond Head hike is stop #1 for many Japanese tour groups on Saturdays, while stop #2 is the fabulous Kapiolani Community College (KCC) farmers' market, which has a glorious array of delectable goodies like barbequed abalone and Kahuku papayas, which actually drip nectar.  I loved the papayas!

Ok, so that's the tourist circuit.  I think that "locals" generally stay away from most of this stuff.  They most certainly avoid Waikiki.

Then there is a kind of hybrid culture.  These are local institutions that have become tourist destinations, or touristy places that locals are proud of and go to on special occasions.  I think a lot of these places are favored by wealthy transplants to the island because they rate on an international scale -- or a national scale, at least.

At the top of this list are restaurants like Roy's.  Roy Yamaguchi is totally cool.  He has fantastic food chops: he was born in Tokyo, raised in Hawaii, studied at CIA in New York, and worked in a number of top French restaurants in LA.  He came back to Hawaii and began building an empire of delicious, creative Hawaiian fusion cuisine in 1988.  He is a seriously talented chef and entrepreneur.

I think Roy's is so cool because it nails this sweet spot between haute cuisine and comfortable Cheesecake Factory-like crowd pleaser dining.  I'll give you some examples...

Kiawe Smoked Szechuan Spiced Baby Back Ribs (friggin awesome)

Don't know the official name of these clams...but they came with a butter sauce made with Chinese black beans and roasted red peppers.  Maybe it sounds strange, but the flavors were incredible together.  Really the embodiment of a classically-trained French palate with a Hawaiian open-mindedness toward ingredients.

Then there was the devastating Hawaiian Martini: big fat chunks of fresh, local pineapple soaked in Stoli Vanilla and Myers's Rum.  This sounds adolescent, but really it wasn't.  It was perfectly balanced, creamy, and aromatic.  Surprisingly mellow and delicious.  For some reason, this drink reminds me of my dad dunking oatmeal cookies in bourbon ;-)

And, of course, there is awesome fish and sushi.  If you look closely at this picture, you can see the freshness of the ingredients in the luster of the rice and drape of the fish.

There are a number of other serious chefs in Oahu doing great French-Japanese-Korean-Hawaiian fusion.  On the top end are Chef Mavro and Alan Wong.  I'm kinda embarrassed we didn't go to these places, but my palate is seriously fatigued and I didn't want to eat "Grimaud Farm Muscovy Duckling, Gingered Green Mango Chutney, Sweet Kahuku Corn Fritter, 'Modern' Bigarade Sauce" at Chef Mavro's and E was cool to spending $$$$ at Alan Wong's fancy restaurant when we were underwhelmed by his casual restaurant Pineapple Room (at Macy's).

We did, however, really enjoy two slightly more casual fusion restaurants: Hiroshi Eurasion Tapas and 3660 on the Rise.  I actually had the best fish dishes of our trip at these two restaurants...

Crispy Skin Kona Kampachi with Mrs. Cheng's tofu, fennel, edamame, Kahuku corn, and Hau'ula dried tomato-hijiki broth (this was really good) at Hiroshi

 













Soy Sake Fillet of Butterfish at 3660 (perfectly prepared and yummy like a cupcake...sweet, rich, crusty)

Ok, those are the fusion guys and they are rocking it.  But that's just one piece of the locally-loved and internationally ratable stuff.  The other piece is seriously cas Hawaiian kitsch.

La Mariana is the tiki bar we all hope exists in real life.  It's a bar at a sailing club, with boats pulled up nearby kinda like motorcycles at a bike club.  It's buried in jungly foliage and the drinks will kick you on your butt.  It was half way into my zombie that I delightedly realized that "zombie" rhymes with "Strombie" (a goofy nickname my friend J-- gave to me).  

Another favorite in the kitschy category was Leonard's, a Portuguese bakery specializing in malasadas.  What, pray tell, is a malasada?  Well, Wikipedia claims that the word comes from the Portuguese mal-assada or "light-roasted."  I would describe malasadas as baseball-shaped, deep-fried donuts covered in granulated sugar and in some cases filled with crazy delicious coconut haupia, a thick custard with Hawaiian luau roots.  These things are soooo good that a sparrow waiting hungrily for crumbs outside the bakery actually flew at my face and took a bite while I was taking a bite (not joking).   

Ok, so we've got the Waikiki tourist experience and we've got the (inter?)nationally renowned local experience.  Then there is the local experience.

God help me, I can't keep track of all of the different categories of people that make up the permanent population of Oahu.  In Lonely Planet Hawaii, 9th Edition, which I highly recommend, they break it out this way:

WHO'S WHO

haole -- white person (except local Portuguese); further defined as 'mainland' or 'local' haole."  

hapa -- person of mixed ancestry, commonly referring to hapa haole (part white and part Asian).

Hawaiian -- a person of Native Hawaiian ancestry.  It's a faux pas to call any Hawaii resident 'Hawaiian' (as you would a Californian or Texan), thus semantically ignoring indigenous people.

kama'aina -- person who is native to a particular place; literally, 'a child of the land.' A Hilo native is a kama'aina of Hilo and not of Kona.  It assumes a deep knowledge of and connection to the place.  In the retail context, 'kama'aina discounts' apply to any resident of Hawaii (ie anyone with a Hawaii driver's license).

local -- person who grew up in Hawaii.  Locals who move away retain their local 'cred,' at least in part.  But longtime transplants (see below) never become local.  To call a transplant 'almost local' is a welcome compliment, despite emphasizing the insider-outsider mentality.

neighbor islander -- any person who lives on any Hawaiian Island other than O'ahu.

transplant -- person who moves to the islands as an adult.

Got it?  There's more.  Among the locals, there is a significant amount of ethnic diversity.  This is old data (1990 Census), but it gives you the general picture:

Race	Percentage
Caucasian	33%
Japanese	22%
Filipino	15%
Hawaiian	13%
Chinese	6%
Others	10%

  
It's tough to believe that people of Korean descent aren't better represented, but nonetheless you can see a couple of important things.  First is that white people are not in the majority.  In fact, they never have been.  Hawaii is one of four US "minority-majority" states.  (The others are California, New Mexico, and Texas.)  The other important thing is that people of Japanese ancestry make up the largest distinctive cultural group (I don't count "Caucasian" as a cultural group because I think they actually mean "white" here).

So, going all the way back to my description of the cultural geography of Hawaii...you've got the tourist thing, the world-famous local thing, and the plain old local thing, which has a lot of Japanese influence.  The majority of Japanese immigrants to Hawaii were from rural/farming communities, encouraged to immigrate in the late 19th century to work in haole-owned sugar plantations by Hawaiian king Kalakaua.

I learned this at the Japanese Cultural Center, definitely one of the highlights of the visit for me. The main exhibition tells an incredibly compelling story of what it means to be American.  Here's a summary:

Facing poverty in their own country, rural Japanese risked immigrating to Hawaii to work in sugar plantations so they could earn 20 times their wages at home.  Unfortunately, when they got to Hawaii, they were exploited, discriminated against, and worked to the bone.

Eventually a permanent Japanese community took root as a powerful labor movement was born, Japanese picture brides arrived, and Japanese language schools were started. By 1924, 42% of the population of Hawaii was of Japanese descent.  The children of Japanese immigrants born in the U.S. territory became U.S. citizens.  These first generation Americans believed passionately in their American-ness because their families had endured so much to make them citizens of a country with the "best government in the world."

When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in WWII, these U.S. citizens were stunned to find their loyalty to the country they'd risked everything for questioned.  In response, many Japanese-Americans threw themselves head-first into demonstrating their loyalty by volunteering for the army and by contributing to charity works at home.  In some senses, this community fought for and affirmed their American-ness more than any other group in the U.S.. 

Really amazing.  Really inspiring.

On the ground, what this feels like is...a culture that is profoundly American: friendly, pragmatic, and on some level, very alert to the issue of justice.  It's also a culture where casual Japanese cuisine is the mainstay of the local food scene.  I was often startled to find myself in an environment that was so distinctively Japanese and to feel perfectly at ease asking the waiter, who was just as American as myself, to explain, for instance, how Japanese onsen hot pot cuisine works.

Which brings me to my favorite restaurant in Oahu: Hakkei.  We loved Hakkei so much, we OD'd on it.  While their specialty hotpot itself didn't float our boat, all of the other exquisite little dishes were divine -- masterfully created by someone with a really sharp palate.  Some of my favorites were:

Peanut butter banana red bean mochi (oh my God this was so awesome, just the slightest bit of PB, perfectly married with the other flavors, and the most sensual texture).

    














Then there was the scrumptious, crusty-chewy miso rice ball...

And the exquisite blue shrimp in the shrimp-ahi-avo poke.  I'm sure the shrimp had breathed its last just seconds before it reached our plate (it's the translucent white behind the carrot curl)...

And E adored this simple sesame spinach salad, which you could get at any number of other izakaya restaurants (i.e., Japanese pubs with small plates), but which was somehow a work of gastronomic art here.

Aside from visiting a blur of very decent izakaya and sushi places, we kept gravitating back to two Japanese noodle houses: Goma Tei Ramen and Jimbo Udon.

"Look," I said to E when we sat down at the noodle counter at Goma Tei, "you can tell by people's body posture that the food is good."  And so it was, a Japanese take on one of our Sichuan favorites, spicy-sesame dan dan noodles with very tender braised pork.  Plus a nice, icy glass of Asahi on draft. 

Meanwhile my favorite dish at Jimbo was udon with grilled mochi, chicken, and greens.  100% comfort food.  The best thing ever after shlepping on foot across town in the intermittent drizzle.

The other part of the local scene that we checked out gastronomically was essentially Hawaiian delis.  Places where you can get poke of every stripe, tako (that's octopus for the uninitiated), lomi lomi salmon -- not to be confused with lau lau, a pork and butterfish juggernaut wrapped in taro leaves -- and ahi katsu -- big chunks of top grade ahi breaded with panko and deep fried.  For a more thorough intro to local and Hawaiian cuisine, check out the posts by KaimukiMan in this thread on Chowhound.

After much poke sampling across town, we gave the poke blue ribbon to Fresh Catch.  They also make killer smoked tako and ahi katsu.

 











 

Another part of the local scene was the (mediocre, I'm afraid) cluster of restaurants serving something akin to California cuisine.  While we thought it was cool that restaurants like Town, 12th Ave Grill, and Salt showcased fresh local ingredients, we thought they needed to sharpen their cooking skills.  Only one place -- Epic -- really delivered with a solid cioppino.  Unfortunately we never went back because the parking in Chinatown was such a pain in the butt. 

So that was it...

We oscillated between these worlds of Waikiki-tourist, fancy local, and local-local...but never found a place to settle in.  If you live in tourist land, everyone you meet goes away or is paid to wait on you.  If you live in transplant land (that's really what fancy local is), you kinda feel nervous for living high on the hog while most local people can't.  A computer repairman told E there are absolutely no jobs in Oahu (he'd just taken a salary cut).  And if you live in the local-local scene, you live in a world where you're not-from-here-and-never-will-be or a world filled with mediocre independent shops and restaurants.

Thus, over the course of our stay, my world got smaller.  I gave up looking for the heart of the island and grew cool to bumper stickers like "Slow down.  It's not the mainland."  It puzzled me that such a diverse society could be so insular.  And then it occurred to me that the cultural diversity of Oahu comes from another time, another generation.  The current generation aren't looking to the outside world.  Several people we talked to had never been to the mainland, much less other countries.  One transplant told us he hadn't been off the island since arriving 20 years ago. 

I'm embarrassed to admit this, but by the end of our stay, the one place I really looked forward to going each week was the Kahala Mall.
   

Nothing like traveling around the world to discover who you really are ;-)

Kahala Mall is so...pleasant.  Parking is easy and there's the perfect mix of stores -- Macy's, Barnes & Noble, Starbucks, Longs Drugs, and Whole Foods -- plus some nice local shops and an independent movie theater.  Cruising the aisles of Whole Foods was such a pleasure, in part because they had an intriguing selection of local goodies.  Even E was seduced...in particular by the exquisite ingots of ahi.

One day E, who never cooks, surprised me.  He showed me how to sear ahi perfectly.  And we had one of the yummiest meals of the trip.  The first course: sesame crusted ahi with ponzu sauce, a salad of local tomatoes, and a bottle of Sonoma-Cutrer chardonnay.  Second course: toasted focaccia smeared with soft cheese and honey, with a side of apple-pear.  Decadent, totally delicious, and so much fun cooking together!

Eventually I came to realize that the only Whole Foods on Oahu wasn't just a grocery store.

One day a woman aggressively pushed in front of me in the cracker aisle.  I noticed her basket was filled with a lot of peculiar items, like several big bags of sugar free lollipops.  Later, I found myself behind her in line and witnessed something strange.  First, she asked the checker to price a bottle of cured goat cheese that was $17 (holy crap) and then acted unconcerned about the price.  When her $300 basket of goods was rung up and bagged, she swiped her credit card and entered her pin.  The checker asked her to do it again.  She did, waiting with visible irritation.  The checker said, "I'm sorry that's the wrong pin."  The woman acted indignant that Whole Foods' system wasn't working.  People behind me in line started grumbling, so I turned away for a minute.  When I turned back, the woman and her children were gone and there sat the abandoned basket of extravagant items.

Did she do that just to have the feeling of going to Whole Foods and buying whatever she wanted?  This made me uncomfortable.  If you live in a big, cosmopolitan city where people come and go, nobody notices if you do something extravagant like shop at Whole Foods.  On an island they might.

Someone apparently noticed that "A young haole woman came and took all of the Honolulu Weekly last Sunday" because they typed it up and taped it to the free newspaper box at the Longs in Kaimuki.

Hmmm.  Complicated world out there.  Maybe too complicated right now.

So I retreated to our beautiful nest and enjoyed the rainbows arcing over the house.