Ethiopian pop-up (Addis Ababa) for the next two weeks!

I've been meaning to try the Ethiopian pop-up restaurant, Addis Ababa, for months now. They used to have a spot every Thursday evening at J2 on Waialae in Kaimuki. That closed down (maybe before Christmas 2011?) though, so I didn't have any chance for the past few months.

When I saw the post on Biting Commentary that AA was opening up at the Pacific Gateway Center in Chinatown for 3 Saturdays only, I booked a table for 6 immediately. I sent it out to all my curious eating/foodie friends and got a group of 8 together for last Saturday.

You can choose a 6 pm or 730 pm seating. When we arrived at 730, all the tables were still full, so we sat at the bar to wait (bonus: it's BYOB!!).

Once we were seated, we perused the prix fixe menu. $25 including appetizer, main course, and dessert/coffee. Main courses included beef (spicy or coriander), lamb, chicken, shrimp, fish or vegetarian.

Appetizer: vegetarian ethiopian spring rolls

 Spring roll innards:

 Main course: injera (spongy fermented crepe), roasted lamb, surrounded by a bunch of veggies, including cabbage, purple cabbage, beets, salad, and kale (or some leafy green). It needed some hot sauce -- we asked our server to bring us 4 servings of it!

 The happy group

 Dessert: chocolate cake and Ethiopian coffee (with something herbal floating in it)

Verdict: a good deal, a unique evening out, and supporting the family who runs the place...but needs some more flavor if I am going to go back.

Quick & easy lunch to make at home: spicy cold tofu

My current favorite quick lunch to make on the weekends:

- cold tofu (soft or firm)

- squirt of shoyu

- dollop of Lao Gan Ma sichuan chili sauce (preferably the crispy chili flavor with sichuan peppercorns)

- chopped green onions or cilantro

Place in bowl. Devour.

Recent sweet treats: Palm d'Or, Bubbies & Bubble tea in Chinatown

Sweet treats

There was a line out the door on a Friday evening after Christmas (this was a few weeks ago...oops!). All the kids were back home for Christmas vacation and wanted to get one last Bubbie's before they headed back to the mainland.

What a classic - it hasn't changed in years.

Fridge case of all their hilarious ice cream cakes.

The mochi ice cream list keeps expanding...with seasonal flavors including candy cane, red velvet, strawberry chocolate chip, chocolate egg nog and cranberry.

The signs haven't changed in 20 years.

Mmmm strawberry cheesecake ice cream.

And some mochi ice cream.

There's a new bubble tea shop at Maunakea Marketplace. Feels like it's straight out of Hong Kong. It's in the center courtyard, right next to my favorite spot for fruity drinks, Thangs. I just realized I don't even know what this place is called. But it's easy to recognize with the poster of drinks, the pot of boiled corn, and the pictures of Chinese waffles.

Left: milk tea with grass jelly (xuan cao nai cha? my mandarin is failing me) and right: soy milk matcha bubble tea. Both were delish. The milk tea was super strong, like only in HK.

And then new to me: Palme d'Or at Ala Moana Shopping Center. Left: strawberry cream drink (tasted like a melted strawberry milkshake). Right: iced tea with pineapple jelly on the bottom. Perfect for a girly tea stop after shopping.

The case of fancy Japanese pastries.

Happy hour at Epic in Chinatown

Happy hour at Epic

I’d read really good things about the happy hour at Epic ($4 mojitos or glasses or wine or beer, pupu menu is mostly $7 or under) from 4:30 – 6 pm. We wandered over one day after work and found it next to empty. We got a table right by the window, and there were a few people sitting at the bar. 1 or 2 other tables came in while we were there.

Started with a mojito, but it was too sweet and not alcoholic enough, so switched over to beer. Also tried the kalua pig spring rolls, the short rib sliders, and the korean tacos...none of them were fantastic enough to entice me back. Which is too bad, because it’s quite a nice atmosphere (newer and nicer than Indigo) but the food and drinks aren’t anything to write home about.

Entrance on Nuuanu and Pauahi

 Kalua pig spring rolls

 Short rib sliders

 Bulgogi tacos

1131 Nuuanu Ave
Honolulu, HI 96805

(808) 587-7877

www.restaurantepichawaii.com

More pho in Chinatown: Golden River

I was on River St for lunch the other day and wanted to get some pho. After finally going to Pho To Chau (the really popular pho restaurant on river street, that always has a line down the block), I wanted to try something different. We went in to Golden River (right on the corner of River and N King) which is always busy, but usually doesn't have the line going out the door.

I actually prefer Golden River because even though the prices are slightly higher than To Chau, the menu offers more variety.

Bun Bo Hue is my 2nd favorite thing to try in a Vietnamese restaurant (after pho, of course). It's Vietnamese "spicy beef soup" with a strong lemongrass and chile pepper flavor. It came with pork knuckle, tofu, and pork sausage.
Bun rieu cua: rice vermicelli soup with crab. This one looks spicy, but it's actually just a tomato based broth that makes it red, not peppers. I saw someone eating this the first time we were there, and went back a 2nd time just to order it. Amazing. The crab is cooked into the egg and is so delish.
3 color jelly drink:
Plate of veggies & herbs for the soup
Golden River Restaurant
198 N King St
Honolulu, HI 96817
531-1185
Yelp (yeah, most people go here if the line is too long for To Chau...but at least it is bringing more business to GR!)

lunch at vietname cafe pho saigon

Vietnam Café Pho Saigon
52 N Hotel St
Corner of Smith and Hotel (Chinatown)
yelp

one of my absolute favorite places to go for pho in chinatown is vietnam cafe. i finally realized this time around that i think it's because the broth is a little sweeter, which somehow makes the pho taste richer and more homemade to me.

a regular size pho ($6.50)

and then spring roll bun ($7.50)

Pho Mai Lan

Yelp

1160 Maunakea St
Honolulu, HI 96817

(808) 528-3663

One of my favorite things to do when I'm at home is to try new pho places in Chinatown. Pho is one of the few foods that are impossible to find in Shanghai (well, there are Vietnamese restaurants, but none of them make a decent bowl of pho. Which makes no sense to me, since all of the ingredients are readily available here. And it's more similar to Chinese food than other foreign cuisines.) So basically I am craving pho every day by the time I get home.

I really liked Mai Lan as a new option downtown. It has a very extensive menu - way more choices than just pho and summer rolls (even though that was all we ordered...will have to try something new next time!)

Dim Sum

Won Kee

100 N Beretania St Ste 106
Honolulu, HI 96817
(808) 524-6877

I haven’t had much dim sum in Hawaii in years, so when we decided to go for Sunday brunch dim sum in Chinatown, I had no idea where to go. After consulting with the parents and Yelp, I narrowed the choices down to two at Cultural Plaza: Won Kee and Lam Fook. Still undecided when we got there, we just picked Won Kee, since it was the first one we saw.

There were 3 of us for brunch, the perfect number for dim sum, since everything comes in orders of 3. Won Kee has the cart ladies, who push around steaming carts of dim sum in bamboo steamers and lift the lids off each type of dim sum as they walk past. Since I can speak mandarin, I ordered most of our dim sum by name, but it was fun also to see what they had available (they kept pushing this one order of seafood in a tofu wrapper on us, it kind of felt like it was the one order they couldn’t get rid of!)

Everything (except for the cha shao su/char siu soo, similar to ma tai soo) was delicious. The cha shao su was mushy (instead of flaky) and had a very congealed (too much cornstarch?) filling.

Char Siu Look Fun

Char Siu Soo

Pineapple Buns

Xia Jiao (har gau?)

Char siu bao and spinach dumplings (bo cai jiao)

Dim sum cart

Hula Boba in Chinatown

Hula Boba

65 N Pauahi St
Honolulu, HI 96817

(808) 521-5213

Yelp Reviews

Brightly colored and super clean, Hula Boba offers Taiwanese style boba drinks and shave ice. You can get all sorts of flavors (lychee, passion fruit, mango) but I went with a basic milk tea boba…and was disappointed by the tapioca balls that were too chewy. But if you like that style, then check this place out. The shave ice comes with fruit syrups or fresh fruit and condensed milk that looks really good, I’m curious how the ice is shaved (fine like Waiola’s or not)…but on Yelp it says that it’s not just ice, it’s soy milk, so I will definitely try that next time…

Happy Garden Dim Sum

So this is a pretty new dim sum place in Chinatown, on Maunakea close to Hotel St. It's a tiny hole-in-the-wall (literally 10 tables) but is run by a bunch of Canto speakers and seems fairly authentic. I haven't eaten dim sum in Hawaii in ages, so I can't compare it to anything, but it seemed like they offered several dim sum outside of the standards, and also had a table in the back where they would fry up the luo bo gao (turnip cake) as an exhibition. No carts, but a steamer table in the window, right in the front of the restaurant, where you can point to the dim sum that you want, or you could order the dim sum off the menu.

Limited selection of dishes & noodles/fried rice aside from the dim sum. Dim sum plates are $2, look fun was $2.88, and our chicken chow mein was $5.50. The dim sum we had were all very good (including one interesting pork-peanut dumpling)...a good find to get your cheap dim sum fix in Chinatown, if you aren''t looking for anything fancy.

Steamer tables in the front window

Boneless chicken chow mein (crispy)

Tofu skin stuffed with meat & bean sprouts

Half moon (chive) and peanut-pork dumplings

Sticky rice with chicken wrapped in lotus leaves

Char siu bao

Review: Royal Kitchen (dim sum)

Royal Kitchen
100 N Beretania St #175

We have 2 places in Chinatown we go to pick-up dim sum: Char Hung Sut and Royal Kitchen. Char Hung Sut is just the basics, but they're stood up over the test of time: steamed char siu bao, pork hash, ma tai soo, and chow fun. Royal Kitchen has more options: char siu bao (steamed or baked), lup cheong, coconut, azuki bean, or curry bao.

I had a baked char siu bao (eh, not very impressed, the bread was a little dry), this excellent sticky rice (with veggies in it and wrapped in a dumpling wrapper), and a white rice cake. Total $2.50.