Archive by Author | Jenny

Happy Halloween!

I know I know, two weeks too late. I stayed at work until about 6 pm on Halloween to finish up some things and boy was that a mistake. I sat in traffic for almost an hour. It doesn’t sound that bad, but the drive to my place is about 7-10 minutes so it was ridiculous. Every road I turned to was backed up, I should have just taken the freeway. Then I get home and it’s late, I’m cranky from traffic and it’s raining. I promised my brothers I would take them trick or treating but as we walked out – it started to pour. I let out an exasperated sigh and asked if I could just buy them candy and make it a day. They agreed. (THANK YOU LORD). So Longs got a hold of my wallet that night but it was so worth it. Anyway, just wanted to share some Halloween themed items I took part in that weekend!

Centerpiece for a Halloween Party – I thought it was very cute! Creative and cute, I loved it.

Dessert from Little Oven. Here is the graveyard ice cream sandwiches. Cute huh?

Franken Fluff – a chocolate brownie topped with homemade marshmallow fluff. Yum!

Bloody Lemonade

This was a special for the Halloween weekend. I figured it would be strawberry lemonade but it was actually lemonade with grenadine. Pretty right? How was it? Um…SWEET. Like SUPER SWEET. Like I kept adding water upon water to the drink to make it bearable. I think I must have added at least half a cup of water to make it normal.

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Yajima-Ya – Ala Moana, HI

Nov12

My co-worker offered a lunch pick-up from Yajima-Ya and I couldn’t resist. I couldn’t resist trying what Jalna tried either! For once, I didn’t feel like noodles (I must have been crazy that day) so I gave their Samurai Donburi a try!

Samurai Donburi – $8.00

You can’t go wrong with beef and kakiage on top of some great rice. As I mentioned before, their kakiage has chunks of shrimp – it’s awesome. Their meat is thinly sliced but still quite tender. Good quality food – I would get this again!

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Ahi Assassins Fish Co. – Moilili, HI

Nov10

The weather has been lovely this weekend! Last night as I walked out of a store, I actually felt windchill. Wind. Chill. It was great. Last night was positively chilly, I actually had to grab my blanket. This is fantastic. And Sunday? The nice weather continued, nice winds and not too hot temperatures. Please please please continue! So here I am, updating some posts for my blog. Yesterday was lost, there was a Law and Order Special Victims Unit marathon on and I can’t possibly study when that is going on. Today, what have I done so far? I tried to continue my presentation but can’t concentrate. I started my final paper a bit and well here I am updating my blog. Hehe…

Ahi Assassins Fish Co. has been open for less than a month and they are getting stellar reviews on Yelp. I love that they are so close to where I work so I got to give them a try for lunch. Their parking lot is a bit small but I was able to get a spot before it got busy! The most appealing part about this shop is that the owners are fishermen! How much fresher can that be? They also charge quite little to me…all good stuff! Let’s get to the pictures, shall we?

Menu as of October 2014 – Cash only!

Shoyu Garlic Ahi Poke Bowl – $7.00

I just realized I forgot to take a picture of my Spicy Ahi bowl! Good stuff, great slices of fish. The spicy ahi, it’s definitely spicier than other spicy ahi! So when they say spicy at this place, they mean it.

Pan Seared Ahi with Garlic Plate – $8.00

Yes, that’s garlic on top. Garlic garlic garlic.

Very raw inside. I like that so it’s okay.

I originally wanted to get the baked ahi stuffed crab but they were all out, that made me sad. So I settled for this, great piece of fish. Great portion but the taste was unfortunately not there. The ahi was not seasoned and I feel like they just sauteed a bunch of unseasoned garlic and put it on top. I was so disappointed that the ahi had no seasoning – I had to add a dressing to eat this meal. If I get this next time, I will probably try the furikake one.

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711 Eats

Nov9

As a college student, I have been indulging in eating out way too much. But I’ll be damned if I have time to cook anything these days. So I’ve been getting very familiar with 711’s everchanging assortment of food. I am also super sick of fast food and can’t wait to start cooking again. I can’t wait for this semester to be over…haha. But I do enjoy taking the classes and my classmates are all pretty cool this semester! They look like they are all part of the same starting core group so I would like to continue taking classes with them if I can. You know what that means…

Anyway, quick post about some foods I tried recently.

I’m a sucker for meat in gravy. Loco Moco is one of my favorite dishes. How was this? Not bad. I don’t know what the obsession with putting fried rice in these dishes are. I mean there’s so much going on up top that I don’t see a point in putting a seasoned starch underneath. I’d rather have this with white rice.

I saw this and just had to try it. The pork hash looked a lot like spam which is a bit unnatural…haha. How was it? Well I can say that it was not memorable, not great but not bad. I rather just go for the spam musubi because it’s cheaper anyway.

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Local Boys Cafe – Kalihi, HI

Nov7

Local Boys Cafe is definitely deep within the Kalihi warehouse district. I was picking up some food before heading into work and I was lucky enough to score a parking spot right in front of the shop! Very friendly crew and they definitely have a regular clientele that includes construction workers and cops. How was the experience? Well let’s talk about the food…

This is how menus have to be! So many choices, where do I start?? I spent quite a while standing there because I just didn’t know what to get!

All Meat Breakfast Special for $5.00! Isn’t that crazy? It also comes with fried rice and two eggs. Take a look at this load, luncheon meat, ham, bacon, portuguese sausage, and vienna sausage. Yes, it’s a heart attack waiting to happen but what a way to get there…lol

The fried rice from the special. Eh…the fried rice was very bland. No real flavor or toppings as you can see. I would be okay with just plain white rice.

I was generous and got my cousin lunch that day – he went for the bento. More and more bento shops are using styrofoam boxes, it’s kind of sad to see. Also, what’s gonna happen if they ban those? Wait, did they ban those containers? Anyhow, he liked it but thought the chicken was too salty. I can see why, they pour gravy over already seasoned chicken – other than that, he seemed to like it.

I went for the lau lau and beef stew combo for lunch. I figured what could go wrong?

The beef stew was good! Good flavor, not too salty or too bland.

I don’t know what what I expected with the lau lau. It was just very dry inside and the luau leaves. My gosh, that’s usually my utmost favorite part of this dish and the leaves were just so bland. It just tasted like bland unseasoned leaves. Usually the leaves take on the taste of the ingredients inside and it’s great. I did end up adding hot sauce after to help season the leaves a bit. While this plate was a bit disappointing – I still do wanna give this place one more chance!

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Apple Juice

Nov6

This post is for Jalna. I saw her post about the incredible apple juice she bought from Marukai and it had me salivating. I went to Don Quijote the next day for a usual run and ran to the juice section to look for it. Eureka I thought when I found something that looked very similar…and even more score…it was only $5.99! One dollar off! I bought it and chilled it to try later in the day. It tasted…good. Apple-y. But when I looked back at her post, I realized it was a completely different brand! So I’m thinking we didn’t get the same thing…so now I will have to keep the one she talked about in my sights because she made it sound so good!

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The Pineapple Room – Ala Moana, HI

Nov5

This was my first visit to The Pineapple Room and quite possibly my last, I really wanted it to be better but it really wasn’t. The menu and prices were definitely overrated and overpriced. Not a lot of choices – I think the only good deal would be the Loco Moco but you have to get it as part of a prix fixe menu, I wasn’t hungry enough for that. Anyhow, maybe their lunch menu is a bit better because dinner was a disappointment.

Well this was good. I enjoy this kind of bread, is this a plain focaccia? I could have had more of this…and I think we did.

Shrimp Escargot. Garlic shrimp with salt, pepper and parmesan cheese. It sounds good right? It wasn’t. It was like eating a salt lick. It was incredibly salty, the salt and parmesan cheese is too much.

Here is the bread. Half grilled and half burnt. Obviously half of the bread was inedible, not that I cared for the hard bread anyway. I used the focaccia to eat the dip…hehe.

Seared Ahi served puttanesca style over spaghetti. This dish includes portuguese sausage, tomatoes, olives, capers in a light tomato broth. Kristian enjoyed this dish a lot and the fish looks like it it was cooked on point!

Miso Garlic Butterfish – this was my entree. I enjoyed the root salad a lot, the rice was pretty good. The fish was good too. Pricey though.

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Win-Spuntino – Kaimuki, HI

Oct27

I’m still around! I think it’s time for a little break so I can focus on staying alive…lol. Last week was another whopper but I got through it, yay! Once this semester is over, I will go back to regular blogging again. I don’t know if I can take two classes in the same semester again. Or if I do, I should do it in Spring semester rather than Fall. I hope you are all doing great! I’ll do quick updates here and there as I can.

Here is one of them! A recent lunch I had from Win-Spuntino. Still a good deal but this dish is still way too rich. There’s a lot of oil so I spent my time trying to eat it…while also draining it. The amount of garlic is awesome and I love garlic. They usually serve their dishes with linguine which is what I prefer but this is the second time they ran out of linguine. I don’t get how – it’s their primary noodle and I was one of the first customers of the day.

Shrimp Scampi – $11.25

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Candi’s Cafe – Kalihi, HI

Oct16

I am alive! I had two papers due this week so I really had to hunker down and get them done. I am happy to say I got both of them in and on time. I still have papers and presentations to prep for but I am going to give myself a little free time tonight. I’ll get down and dirty again tomorrow. Work is also nuts! It’s not a good combination. I’ve been told I look tired and I believe it. I hope you folks are prepared for the potential storm! This one felt like it really crept on us yeah? I think I’m pretty prepared. I do have to fill up gas but I’m afraid to check out the lines. I wish there were cameras all over so I coud look before leaving the house. I hope Hawaii doesn’t have much damage from this storm like the last two we were preparing for. Anyway, just wanted to share a review of Candi’s Cafe today. I’ve been dying to try them out, now that I have, I’m good. The staff there are super nice but the food was mediocre. Let me explain…

Burger and Fries. My friend had this plate, she was not impressed. It was nice to see a hand formed patty but it was dry and not flavorful. What a shame…

Shrimp Scampi with Pasta

This was my dish. Meh, it wasn’t great. The sauce was a bit rich. The shrimp had a bit of a freezer burn taste and they cut it into small chunks which I thought was hiding how little shrimp they give. What made it worst was the long wait we had! It was almost 30 minutes. I highly suggest you phone in orders early if you don’t want to wait. Limited parking too.

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Liliha Bakery – Liliha, HI

Oct11

I still haven’t checked out the Nimitz location and I’m not sure if I plan to anytime soon. I guess I’m gonna try to stay loyal to the original. I hardly get to eat at their diner but when I do, it’s always so nice. They just serve very simple comfort food. Nothing fancy but something about it is just so nice. One night, after running a ton of errands, I had very little options of what I could eat for dinner. I stumbled upon Liliha Bakery and they had just enough seats for us! It was fate. I didn’t get too many pictures but I will share my meal here!

Famous Butter Rolls with their own jelly. This is the famous neon jelly I see in all the pictures. I don’t know if I was starving or what…but this tasted SO GOOD. I don’t even usually like jelly/jam but this was so ono. The freshly toasted buttery roll with the sweet (but not crazy sweet) jelly, I am salivating as we speak. I want to return back just to order a bunch of these to gobble down at home.

Here is what I got for dinner. Meat loaf with gravy, rice and tomato salad. Um, for those who go to Liliha Bakery – do they just throw a glob of mayonnaise onto the salad? Hahaha I know it wasn’t ranch but I’m a bit afraid to think it really was just a glob of mayonnaise (it was huh?).

How was the meat loaf? I thought it was all right. Tasted very home cooked – nothing spectacular but edible. Do you know what I mean? I would definitely come back again! Wish I knew when their slow times for the diner was…

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maybeitsjenny

Hawaii based food blog with foodie travels!