Rush Hour in Paradise

Our last evening in Honolulu and we are heading out to meet important people and do insignificant things.



The view from out hotel hallway window is beautiful and strange.



I don't know why, but I always love taking pics of sundown rush hour in Honolulu. Maybe it's the juxtaposition of the Hawaiian landscape against the familiarity of the taillights ahead.



People play soccer in fields along the Ala Wai Canal.



With Waikiki blocks and blocks to the south and Punahou on our immediate right, we are almost there.

Alan Wong's Pineapple Room

During my trip to Honolulu, I desperately wanted to visit Alan Wong's on King Street and sit at the chef's counter. However, busy happy family things took precedence over decadent meals. As a substitute, on our last day there we ate at the more casual Alan Wong's Pineapple Room at the Ala Moana mall. The food was shockingly delicious. Maybe even better than the food at Mariposa. It didn't have the same atmosphere or view as Mariposa, but yes, I think I agree with myself, the food kicked ass.



D started with this amazing tomato soup. I have no idea what the exact enticing and very savory ingredients were in this, aside from tomato and the big shrimp on top, but we seriously scraped the sides of the bowl.



We shared this unusual preperation of eda mame. These were sauteed Chinese style, the way long beans are done at one of my favorite Chinese places in Los Angeles, Mandarette. It was nice to have soy beans done this way. They were very garlicky, and worth every moment of compromised breath.



For an entree I ate the shrimp & crab Caesar. Again, emphasis on garlic but this time balanced nicely with anchovies. Here, like several other of the restaurants on this trip, the menu explicitly listed the provenance of much of the local flora and fauna featured on the menu. The menu had a nice balance of surf and turf, something not always seen in Hawaii with the obvious typical emphasis on seafood.



On the way back to the car I stopped to say hello to the beautiful koi. Hello fishies!

Saturday Night Lights, Wahiawa, Hawaii

High school football. The fanfare, the pageantry, the excitement, suspense and adolescent intention is a weekly autumnal event that is commonly staged across the green athletic fields of Iowa, Kansas, and Oklahoma. Americana plays itself out in common ways in the stands and at the sidelines in New Mexico, Florida and Maine. Quarterbacks, cheerleaders, the waterboy, the pig skin, and the omniprescent stage parent screaming out directives to the coach from the first row of the bleachers.

Watching these archetypes skew themselves in Wahiawa, Hawaii has made my week, maybe even my trip. Natives take for granted that their version of this play is not unique, giving themselves credit for their mimicry but failing to note the stark juxtapositions between the paradigm of American high school football mainland style and the simulacrum of high school football Hawaii style.



Wahiawa, Hawaii is a small rural town of 16,000 people, about halfway between the south shore tourist mecca of Waikiki and the north shore town of Kahuku, a famous surfing destination reknowned for big waves and anti-hale sentiment. The view from the stands is stunningly beautiful, to start with. From where I sit, I see rain forest trees, mountains built from the lava rock of a hot spot volcano, and the threat of mercurial tropical skies overhead. The kids are a dazzling mix of ethnicities. Hawaaian, Japanese, Samoan, African American, Phillippino, and even the occasional Caucasian face thrown in to the mix. But the majority of the students stem from a medley of genetic combinations of all the above and more. The culture of the game and the island is in perfectly aligned to the harmonious mosaic on the field. A true diversity of people, ideas and habits that astounds the senses of someone who was raised in suburban middle class unexotic Northern California.

Food? What would 2 hours of football be without snacks? Hot dogs? Cotton candy? Popcorn? Um, no. There are no hot dogs at the football game. They serve egg rolls, lumpia and fried rice at the food stand. My dad treated us to a snack from his favorite deli in town. Again, a mixing of Hawaiian & Japanese in the form of poki sushi. Anywhere else I might just call it spicy tuna sushi, but this is poki. The nicely textured chunks of square cut ahi tuna, mixed with a generous portion of tobiko and whatever else makes it hot and savory. It comes in two forms of spiciness, "mild" and "creeps up on you and make you breathe fire".





"Creeps up on you" is at the top, and "mild is on the bottom. We ate every morsel and it was delicious. Our team lost, but have you ever seen a cuter receiver?