Mariposa – Ala Moana, HI

Sep22

A delayed birthday celebration but no less special. Chan took me to Mariposa for my birthday dinner and I was quite excited! Mariposa is located in Neiman Marcus and from Friday-Sunday, they have a sunset lounge menu and that’s the only menu you can order from. It’s okay, I could have ordered from either menu and have been happy!

Complimentary Popover with Strawberry Butter

I believe they used to only serve the popovers with their lunch menu but I am happy to report they served it to us at dinner. Am I the only one? I don’t see the big deal with these popovers and everytime I get them, they seem to be raw in the middle. Not a huge fan, I wouldn’t mind just some plain bread. Sorry to be a party pooper. The strawberry jam butter is nice but also nothing special.

Truffle Fries | $18.00
parmesan cheese, rosemary aioli, chives

These fries were it man. So good, fried perfectly and nicely seasoned. The aioli to me is a bit much since the fries are already rich. The ketchup is a good accompaniment to cut into the richness of the cheese, truffle and fried potato! Would order this again.

Braised Pork Belly & Scallops | $26.00
island watercress, lilikoi brown butter, pickled onions

Good, not great. The watercress was awful, super bitter and pretty old looking. Some sad greens. The braised pork was good and the scallops were great! Glad I tried it, probably wouldn’t order it again.

Lion’s Mane Mushroom Bruschetta | $24.00
sauteed “super food” mushrooms, brandy green peppercorn sauce, grilled bread, truffle whipped cream

Big disappointment. And you know what? I got myself mixed up, I thought it was going to be the same lion’s head mushroom I got in Korea, I read it wrong. This dish certainly SOUNDS good but it wasn’t. There was something very sour about this dish, not sour as in gone bad but just a sour taste. It wasn’t good. Do not order this.

Lobster Fra Diavolo | $44.00
maine lobster meat, spicy pomodoro sauce, spaghetti pasta

Our main dish! Chan and I split this pasta so this is my serving of it. They offered to split it into two plates and me being the good Chinese girlfriend I am – I asked if there was a charge for that (there isn’t!). This was a delicious dish. I love pasta and love seafood so I knew we couldn’t go wrong. I probably could have downed the entire entree myself, don’t tell Chan.

While we were stuff with this dinner, I was surprised they didn’t serve a complimentary dessert since we booked it as a birthday reservation. It looks like they used to but we didn’t get anything. It’s okay, the waitress we had was very good so it was a nice dinner.

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Mixed Plate Friday

Sep19

Tangle Bulgogi Alfredo Pasta

This is the newest trend in instant noodles from Korea. It’s pasta but not really cause it looked like ramen noodles to me lol. And man I should have known since it said alfredo that due to my previous experience (anything cheesy or creamy in Korean cuisine is sweet), it was sweet. I did not enjoy it. I also added the exact amount of water they told me to add and it came out as like a soup and not like a pasta dish. They tout high protein in these noodles and get other flavors too, give it a try! They sell it at Don Quijote.

Another trend I saw on TikTok – just combining Kraft Mac and Cheese and Shin Ramyun. I didn’t realize I was making this an instant noodle mixed plate today. But yeah, I bought this mac and cheese thing just to try it.

It was definitely better than I expected but you could just make a regular shin ramyun and add sliced cheese on top. I used to put Kraft’s American Cheese on top – that was good and similar to this.

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Recipe: Banana Bread Mochi

Sep17

I love banana bread and mochi so why not combine them? I found this recipe on TikTok and was crazy curious about it. It came out good! It tastes like banana bread but not…it has the taste of banana bread but not the texture because well, it uses mochiko! The office enjoyed it and the entire pan was destroyed. 🙂 Recipe credit below!

Banana Bread Mochi

  • 4 large, very ripe bananas (I used 5)
  • 3 eggs, room temperature
  • ½ cup salted butter, melted 1 stick
  • 1¼ cup dark brown sugar
  • 1 tbsp vanilla extract
  • 1 cup whole milk
  • 16 oz Mochiko flour (sweet rice flour) generally 1 box
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • ½ tsp salt

Instructions:

  1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit.
  2. In a large mixing bowl, add your ripe bananas and mash. *Note: I prefer when there are still some clumps in your banana mash because it creates small pockets of concentrated banana flavor and helps your mochi stay moist.
  3. Add the rest of your wet ingredients – the eggs, melted butter, brown sugar, vanilla extract, and whole milk.
  4. Whisk your wet ingredients until well incorporated and set aside.
  5. In a medium mixing bowl, add your dry ingredients – the Mochiko flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
  6. Mix until combined.
  7. Add your dry ingredients to your wet ingredients in batches – add in about 1/3 of your flour mixture to your large mixing bowl, whisk to help incorporate, add the second 1/3 of your flour mixture, whisk to incorporate, and then repeat for the last 1/3 of your flour mixture.
  8. Grease a 9 x 13 inch pan and pour your mochi mixture in.
  9. Place in the oven for about 45 to 50 minutes or until the top of your mochi is golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean. *Note: Avoid over baking by keeping an eye on your mochi intermittently, and pull the pan from the oven as soon as your mochi turns golden brown.

Notes:

  • I used 5 bananas because I had 5 bananas haha
  • I added the mashed bananas at the very end (right before pouring batter into the pan) and folded them in so I could keep the lumps.
  • I add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients in 2-3 batches.
  • Did not grease the pan, I also used a glass pan
  • Mine was done at 50 minutes

Full Recipe Credit: Kristi’s Kitchen

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Hong Yeon – Moilili, HI

Sep15

Hong Yeon just opened last week and I am shocked I am making this post before social media shares it out. The main rush of why I wanted to share this now is because through the month of September for their grand opening, they are selling bowls of jjajangmyeon for only $10 each. Hong Yeon is located on Isenberg and took over the Maple Garden restaurant spot. Parking is HORRENDOUS. Small lot that is hard to maneuver around, street parking exists but was barely available when I went.

My coworker was nice enough to offer a ride here for lunch one day. I write this with a bit of shame because I should have come here with Chan first since he’s the one that told me about it! But shoot, I couldn’t resist $10 noodles and a free ride. Besides! I gotta report back to you folks right? If you go to their yelp page, I uploaded the entire menu in pictures so you can check that out.

Must have sides for jjajangmyeon! No other banchans by the way…maybe for now?

Sweet and Sour Pork | $32.00 (!)

The price is a bit shocking (a lot not a bit). It’s a nice sized serving but is it worth $32? I don’t know…we enjoyed it a lot. The pork was fried perfectly crisp, not a thick batter and not hard crunchy – light and crispy! We enjoyed it very much. They do have lunch combos that combine noodle and sweet sour pork for $24 – that’s a much better deal in my eyes.

Jjajangmyeon | $9.99 (Opening Special)

Sprinkle on that gochugaru! I like that they serve up the fine gochugaru – I didn’t want the coarse powder to affect the texture of this dish.

Noodle Pull!

So it was super busy when we were there during peak lunch hours but they were able to move us customers into seats very quickly. And I assume they just had them all ready because our jjajangmyeon came out basically right when we ordered it. The noodles were perfectly cooked, a nice bounce to them! Lovely sauce, mild in taste but delicious. Pretty sure it’s chock full of MSG but that’s okay, I will suffer for delicious food! We all enjoyed this meal very much. Service was also very good but it was the grand opening so I will have to judge service on when they’ve been open for a while. If you want to get the special price, I highly suggest you go early and during lunch. I’m just so glad we have another northern chinese restaurant to eat at!

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Mixed Plate Friday

Sep12

Left: Sesame Garlic Chicken (3rd Pan 2#) | $37.50
fried boneless chicken, sesame garlic glaze, ginger scallion
Right: Fried Noodles (3rd Pan 2.5#) | $27.50

Chan had a lunch order with his office from Alii Fish Market and this was part of the order. I thought the pans were so cute (lol), I never seen this size before. The food was all good, as usual! And I finally tried the yaki onigiri and yes, I now know what the hype is all about. Highly recommend!

Doesn’t this picture look almost like it’s from Japan or something? We were driving down Kapiolani and I glanced out the window while we sat in traffic and saw this. Just felt very Japanese-y, it was really cool to see. Oh! And we’re going to Japan in November! There’s my announcement lol, I’m so excited!!

Happy belated birthday to me! Of course I gotta show off the beautiful flowers and balloons that Chan got me for my birthday. He always makes me feel so special even though I don’t like getting older…especially at this age. I am at Auntie age but I am a-okay with that. I earned that badge. Have a great weekend everyone!

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Recipe: Gandule Rice

Sep10

Gandule Rice and Pastele Stew go together like bread and butter but I don’t know how to make pastele and I don’t think I would ever have the ingredients or patience to make it. I’ll leave that to the pros. But one week, we were having Hispanic foods for a party so I decided to try my hand at making gandule rice. I found a recipe online and tried it out…and oh boy, did it turn out well! Full credit goes to Keeping it Relle, she made the recipe look so easy that I made it! The funniest thing is, I didn’t realize one of my students was Puerto Rican so I was a bit nervous for her to try it but she liked it a lot! She gave me some tips for the future which includes using long grain rice instead. I would definitely make this again!

Annatto Seeds

Have you used this before? Before this recipe, I had never heard of it but I must have been crazy to want to make my own annatto oil but here I am.

I followed the instructions on the package, it’s so fast! And you get this deep red oil from it. Definitely helps add color to the dish.

Annatto oil ready to go for the dish…

Half pack of bacon sizzling away…

Add the pork shoulder…

Add your veggies and herbs…rice and broth and ready to cook! My rice cooker wasn’t big enough so I cooked this in my wok on the stove top. Worked perfectly fine! It takes about 30 minutes to cook through.

Gandule Rice

  • 3 cups uncooked white rice
  • 1 tablespoon achiote oil (annatto oil)
  • ½ pound bacon
  • ½ pound pork tenderloin sliced into thin, short, narrow strips
  • 4 cloves garlic finely minced
  • ½ green bell pepper diced
  • 1 small onion diced
  • 1 bunch cilantro finely chopped
  • 5 stalks green onion thinly sliced
  • 3 cups chicken broth
  • 2 packets Sazon Goya
  • 1 can 8 ounces tomato sauce
  • 1 can 15 ounces gandules verdes, drained
  • 1 can 6 ounces pitted black olives, drained

Instructions 

  • Rinse rice in cool running water until water runs clear. Drain and set aside.
  • Set a large pan over medium high heat. Add achiote oil, bacon, and pork. Cook until browned, about 5-10 minutes.
  • Next add garlic, bell pepper, and onion. Cook until fragrant and the onions become translucent, about 2-3 minutes.
  • Then add cilantro and green onion. Stir to combine and heat through. Remove from the heat and set aside.
  • Pour drained rice into the rice cooker (gotta be at least 10 cup rice cooker). Add chicken broth, Sazon Goya packets, tomato sauce, gandule beans, and olives.
  • Strain oil from pork mixture and discard. Add pork to the rice pot. Stir until well combined. 
  • Set the rice cooker to cook. Once the rice cooker has finished, open and fluff the rice by stirring with a fork.

Full Recipe Credit: Keeping it Relle

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Okayama Kobo Bakery & Cafe – Ward, HI

Sep8

Okayama Kobo Bakery & Cafe is one of the most popular bakeries in Hawaii right now. They are located downstairs of the Ward Theaters and since Chan and I were in the area for another errand, we decided to line up for when they opened! Yup, even before they opened their doors, they had a line forming – a mix of tourists and locals. Was it worth the hype? Let’s see…

Bakery Box | $1.00 per box

I wasn’t a fan of this. If you want to order a lot of pastries, the only choice in boxes is this option. The box is cute as all heck but you have to pay $1.00 for this box. They do not have plain white boxes for you to load up on. I asked what the other option is and it’s either single pastry size white bags or single serve plastic clear clamshell packages. What?? That was crazy to me. Then he asks if I want a bag at the end of the transaction, that probably means more money so I am good lol.

Top Left: Mentai Salt & Butter Roll | $4.60 each
Right, Salt & Butter Roll | $3.35 each
Bottom Left: Everything Salt & Butter Roll | $3.75 each

The mentai salt and butter roll was one of my favorites of this outing. Though, while I can’t prove it, might have gotten me sick that same day but I’ll just say it didn’t. Good taste, nice balance of salt and butter in the bread. The mentaiko is not only on top of the bread, it’s inside the bread too! Yum, I would get this again.

Matcha Mochi Anpan | $4.95 each
Bottom right: Spicy Curry Pan | $4.95 each
Top Center: Fish Panini
Top Right: Japanini | $4.25 each

Spicy Curry Pan
baked, panko-crusted bread filled with original Japanese style vegetable curry, chili flakes

Curry Pan is one of my favorite pastries of all time. Was it spicy? Yes. Will I admit that it was spicy? No. Chan is too satisfied when I cannot handle spicy because I keep saying I am the spice queen. So yeah, spicy for me, not for him.

Matcha Mochi An-Pan
matcha flavored bun filled with chunky red bean and mochi

I love an-pan and was intrigued by the mochi filling too. How was it? Ehh…I can just eat regular an-pan. The mochi adds nothing but too much carbs – and there was no matcha flavor in the bun (not that I wanted matcha flavor).

Japanini
original panini with shiso leaf, basil pesto, bacon, cheese and tomato

Chan super enjoyed this panini! At first I thought they didn’t give us this pastry because the girl helping us was constantly mishearing all the customers. It was a bit frustrating as we were ordering.

Fish Filet Panini

Another favorite of mine. Well, if you like filet-o-fish from McDonald’s, you would like this. I liked it! I don’t have the price for it because they charged me for two japaninis but I’m thinking maybe I made out in that mistake.

All in all, I enjoyed the pastries we got but it was just a bit too pricey for me. Maybe I’ll bring my own big Tupperware next time cause buying each box was wasteful – not like they’re reusable. Would return again but maybe if I’m in the area.

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Mixed Plate Friday

Aug29

Strawberry Jam and Butter Sauce Packets

Yes oh yes, I was able to snag a few packets when Don Q had it in stock. Of course it was posted on social media and sold out like crazy. One of my favorite things to eat in Japan is the strawberry and butter sandwiches from the convenience store. It’s made like an uncrustable but it’s not easy to find and not at every combini. This will have to suffice until I find it in Japan again! Pretty good! I would definitely get more if I see it in stock again.

Fin’s Bagel with House-cured Salmon | $17.95
choice of house-cured fish: salmon, ahi, mahi, ono, or smoked fish salad with tomato, onion, cucumber dill, local sprouts, capers and cream cheese (we got roasted garlic cream cheese)

Thank you Chan for treating lol! This was for a meet-up with Kat, it was so nice seeing her and spending some time with her. I know her trips to Hawaii are always busy so I am happy she tries to schedule some time with us! Fin’s Bagels just opened up in downtown a few weeks ago so we wanted to try! We ordered our sandwiches with everything bagel and wow, they are HUGE. I could barely finish half for lunch. So how was it? While they are super generous with the ingredients and cream cheese – I thought it was just okay. I actually found the bagel itself to be too big and too chewy. I also don’t love sprouts so I would get it without the sprouts next time.

Fat Cheeks Hawaii Fish and Fries | $18.50
flaky white fish, battered with our house seasoning and fried crispy on top of fries. served with lemons, tartar sauce, and hot sauce on the side.

I joined in with Chan’s office order one day and finally got to try their version of fish and chips. Oh my gosh, it was SO GOOD. And it was a HUGE portion. 4 big pieces of fish fried to perfection and the fries are good too! Of course I couldn’t finish this, shared with Chan too. I didn’t even realize it came with a container of hot sauce on the side so I didn’t even use it! Ugh! They did find the hot sauce in the bag and thought it belonged to the hot chicken sandwich order but I guess it was for mine! It’s great that they have online ordering and they keep to the time you request. It won’t be ready earlier than that which is a good thing, you’re getting your food fresh!

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Stadium Pho – Salt Lake, HI

Aug27

Stadium Pho was a main stay for me when I would venture out to Salt Lake Target, they are located in the same lot as Ice Palace. During the pandemic, they switched to take-out orders only which I took full advantage of. I noticed that even after everything died down, they continued doing take-out only orders for a very long time. In fact, they only reopened for dine in very recently. We came for a lunch a while ago and this meal was a nice surprise because my baby brother treated all of us. Oh yes, all three brothers being employed finally is earning some perks.

Lemon Beef Salad | $13.25

Good dish, not great. I’ve had this salad better at other restaurants and actually prefer when the beef is raw. They usually serve it with the raw thin slices of beef that “cooks” in their lemon/fish sauce dressing. Tasted good but I prefer the beef prepared another way.

Culantro! Gotta have culantro, restaurants that don’t serve culantro with pho should not be serving food!

Special Combination Pho (Small) | $15.95
Special Combination Pho (Large) | $17.95

Steaming hot bowl of pho, one of the most comforting dishes. This is definitely what I would want if I was feeling under the weather. Either pho or jook. Delicious!

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Recipe: Steamed Pork Patty

Aug25

Another recipe that helps me cook to my roots. My mom used to cook this dish for us all the time and I hated making it when I learned how. You could technically use ground pork but that wouldn’t be the same. She would use pork shoulder and chop it down by hand which I hated but now that I’m older and wiser, I realized that having chunks of the pork makes all the different in this dish.

I didn’t have a recipe written for this but can recall certain details. I noticed that online sources have all kinds of variations but I went the super simple route. Remember when I posted this the other week?

Yup, it was to make this dish! I tried to use this recipe as inspiration for my dish but I ended up just improvising. My mom didn’t use water chestnut so I didn’t use that and I wanted shiitake mushrooms in it, so I added that.

I don’t really have a recipe to type up, I used two pounds of pork shoulder that I chopped up. I added about 8 shiitake mushrooms. I rinsed off the salted turnip and minced that small but boy I messed that up. I should have rinsed and soaked the turnip overnight because bugga is SALTY. So salty.

I seasoned the patty with some oyster sauce, sugar, cornstarch, sesame oil, chicken bouillon and white pepper. No salt or shoyu cause it’s so dang salty. I also drizzled some vegetable oil on top before steaming it for about 20 minutes.

If it wasn’t so salty, this dish would have been perfect. Luckily I ate this with rice and some squash soup. I don’t know how traditional this is but when we had leftovers of this pork patty, my mom added eggs to make another meal out of it (almost like a meat chawan mushi).

I added a few eggs and some water (I don’t even measure, just eyeball it myself) – topped it with fresh green onions and steamed it for about 10 minutes or just until it is set. And boom, another entree! Ah this was a good dish. I had enough pork mixture to make two pie platters so I froze half for later. If you want a recipe, let me know and I’ll try to type one out next time I make it.

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