Sunday, July 09, 2006

Review: Green Door

Green Door
1145 Maunakea St (entrance on Pauahi)



Green Door is a tiny hole-in-the-wall in Chinatown on Pauahi St (same block as Char Hung Sut). It is owned by Betty, a Malaysian-Chinese woman who grew up in Singapore and has lived in Hawaii for over 20 years.

For being a hole-in-the-wall, it’s a very cute one. Like its namesake, you can recognize the restaurant by it’s ‘green door’ (duh) and some red lanterns hanging outside.

We ordered the special-of-the-day, oyster mushrooms stir-fried with shrimp in a ‘black pepper and wine sauce.’ Not very Malaysian sounding to me, but they did a great job with it. Real fresh mushrooms, shrimp and onions stir-fried in the rich sauce. The mushrooms were great.

We also ordered a vegetable curry (carrots, onions, cabbage, tomato and long beans in a very spicy red curry) and the ‘Singapore spicy longbeans.’ The curry was amazing; that is the dish I’d order next time, but the beans were nothing memorable (not very spicy or fresh).

For starches, we had (so many carbs!) the coconut rice, jasmine rice, and 2 roti (flatbreads). The coconut rice ($2.75) was the highlight: a molded mound of jasmine rice cooked in coconut milk. Not too sweet, went perfectly with the curry. (I wish I had a picture of it, but my camera flash doesn't work very well indoors, and none of my food photos came out)

Our total bill was $33 without tip. Green Door is BYOB so we ran over to the new wine market Hsir, also on Pauahi St, and picked up a bottle of wine to go with dinner.

There are only 4 tables; we were lucky arriving at 7 pm that we didn’t have to wait at all.

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