Nicos Breakfast Lunch & Seafood

I was looking forward to trying Nicos after hearing so many good things about it. Nicos is an ‘upscale plate lunch’ place, meaning that he offers high-end restaurant quality fish at plate lunch prices.

Nicos opens early in the morning (when the fish market opens!) and closes at 5 pm. I’m not sure what they serve for breakfast, but at lunch it’s fish, fish and fish! (Oh, and I guess they have burgers too).

The day we went, I ordered the furikake crusted seared ahi, and Jennie had the beer battered fish sandwich with French fries. The ahi was excellent; it was completely black with furikake on the outside which went nicely with the rice. The meal came with a mesclun greens salad on the side.

*Seared Ahi*


*Fish Sandwich*


I’m not such a huge fish fan, so I wouldn’t head specially out to Pier 38 for Nicols but I would eat here again. Especially since I haven’t tried the desserts (they only had the chocolate ones left the day we were there, and I hate chocolate.) which I’ve heard are amazing.

Ode to the lilikoi

Smooth round golden globes
Cut open dripping with juice and orange-yellow pulp
Black crunchy seeds
Sweeter than candy
Like sunshine on a summer day

My aunty has one bumper crop of lilikoi this summer. Her vines drop literally at least 20 fruit a day on the grass. It was my job to pick them up while she was on vacation, and I had to go to her yard everyday otherwise the neighborhood pets would prey on the fruit. It was like an easter egg hunt since her garden is on a small hill, tracking down the fruit and seeing where the had rolled.

I tried to make lilikoi butter mochi one day (regular butter mochi, replacing one cup water with one cup lilikoi juice). Here’s a photo. The lilikoi flavor unfortunately did not stand out very well.