Ruscello – Ala Moana, HI

Ruscello is the restaurant in the new Nordstrom Ala Moana location. I would describe their cuisine as nouveau American cuisine, does that make sense? A mix of different cuisines all on one menu, maybe the pictures will help me in explaining!

Fried Calamari • $11.95
sweet and spicy peppers, jalapeño basil aïoli

This dish was okay, a bit over-fried for my taste. I wouldn’t order it again.

Complimentary Bread with Olive Oil infused with…more olives.

Basil Cucumber Cooler • $11.00
junipero gin, muddled cucumber and basil, fresh lime juice, soda splash

This wasn’t my drink but boy did it look refreshing! My friend enjoyed it quite a bit.

Lanai Cooler • $11.00
chopin vodka, passion fruit, pineapple and fresh lemon juices, vanilla syrup, angostura bitters

My drink! It was delicious and refreshing! Did I question how clean the pineapple leaf was? Yes. Did I still drink it? Yes.

Penne Bolognese • $14.25
spicy italian sausage, roasted red pepper and tomato cream sauce, parmesan cheese

Ginger Crusted Ahi Tuna • $17.95
organic baby greens, cabbage, blistered green beans, red pepper, seasoned wontons, candied ginger, soy glaze, spicy thai basil vinaigrette

I don’t usually order salads but I felt like a salad this day. It was delicious, I loved the freshness of the ahi and how well they seared it. Great dressing too, I would recommend this!

Creme Brulee • $5.75
vanilla bean, caramelized sugar crust, fresh raspberries

Pineapple Brown Butter Cake • $8.25
sweet brown butter glaze, roasted pineapple, buttermilk vanilla sauce, fresh basil

This was my dessert and doesn’t the name and description sounds absolutely delicious? It was awful. This was one of my least favorite desserts in my life, the cake was incredibly dry and dense. The sauce did nothing to help the cake and I left most of it uneaten. It’s such a shame, I would not recommend this dish.

9 3/4 Cafe – Mong Kok, Hong Kong

You best believe that before I went to Hong Kong, I did my fair share of research for places to grind. Well, as you can guess, 9 3/4 Cafe was definitely a non-traditional Hong Kong restaurant to go to. I got really excited because it was pretty new and I love Harry Potter. Well, this place was very hard to find. While we had internet in Hong Kong, the connection was not strong enough and always lagged when we were on Google Maps. It was beyond frustrating…here we are thinking we are going the right direction and suddenly we were so far off the path. Ugh!

This was a late afternoon meal and we both weren’t too hungry so we didn’t order too much. It was a super cute and small restaurant, the only other customers were some high school kids. They were having a ball! I felt too old to play with the props they had available, ah, the regrets!

Gosh, I wish had the drink names available. The first drink was like a blueberry soda type deal and the second one was a neon apple drink! Well I got the blueberry soda because I thought it would be delicious (it wasn’t). I didn’t get to try the apple drink, but I was told it was good. You’re definitely paying for the novelty, it wasn’t great.

Great appetizer. Chicken wings! I thought the preparation, batter and frying was done perfectly. I really wish I had more of an appetite that day to enjoy it!

Salmon Pasta. We shared an entree. It wasn’t terrible but definitely wasn’t great. Would I suggest this restaurant? Maybe to really hardcore Harry Potter fans…but if you’re looking for a great meal, I wouldn’t count on it from this place.

Gotta give it up to them with the decorations though! They really went for it! And another good note, they have English menus available!