Quick Bites
Hotel celebrating flavors of Puerto Rico
By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Food Editor
Cornmeal sticks with three dipping sauces, pigeon-pea salad with avocado, roasted pork with baby green bananas ... The Ala Moana Hotel is in the midst of a Puerto Rican Festival featuring the creations of guest chef Wanda Pantojas, a chef instructor at the University of Puerto Rico, a chef trainer for the Puerto Rico Tourism Department and veteran of numerous restaurants in Puerto Rico and Florida. Her menu is available at lunch and dinner and Sunday brunch now through Sunday in the hotel's Plantation Cafe. Food and beverage director Keith Koehler said this is another in a series of international food festivals the hotel has put on (previous specialties have included sukiyaki, tonkatsu, tempura, Indonesian and Filipino foods).
All the fixin's, to go
If you'd rather take out than eat in for Thanksgiving, several local restaurants are offering "to go" holiday menus.
Beau Soleil Bistro & Catering Co. is offering both complete meals and a la carte sides dishes from soup to dessert. A complete free-range turkey dinner for 6-8 is $79, for 10-12 $89 and you can buy family-size side dishes, bakery items, pies, cheesecakes and cakes. They also offer their usual pupu menu. Call 988-0967 to get a menu faxed to you or visit Beau Soleil at 2970 East Manoa Road. They'll deliver for a fee, as well. In addition, Beau Soleil is offering a cooking class in Thanksgiving side dishes on Monday; call for details.
The Kahala Mandarin Oriental Hawaii is offering turkey with chestnut stuffing and gravy, Moloka'i sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes and other trimmings, plus pumpkin pie, for $95. The meal serves 4 to 6. Information or orders: 739-8742 (don't be surprised when they answer "Room Service").
Picnic stylishly
Sunset Jazz, a benefit for the La Pietra-Hawaii School for Girls scholarship program, is an opportunity to pack up an elegant picnic, dress in something flowing and visit an elegant estate. On Sunday, the Great Lawn at the school, 2933 Moi Road, will be open for picnicking from 5 p.m.; $26 gets you dessert, wine, coffee and soft drinks to complement your home-packed al fresco meal, plus a 6 p.m. concert by Shari Lynn and Jimmy Borges with Fascinating' Rhythm and special guest saxophonist Gabe Baltazar. An art show and sale by Tagami and Powell Fine Art Gallery takes place from 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday if you want to pop in early to look at some art. Valet parking will be available. Reservations for the benefit: 924-7515.
Prime sake selections
Through the marketing efforts of sake companies both in the United States and Japan, Japanese rice wine is gaining popularity as a beverage not entirely limited to Japanese dining.
Kurado, Honolulu's first bar focusing exclusively on sake, opened at Furusato Restaurant in the Hyatt Regency Waikiki in August. It offers more than 20 sake selections along with a finger-food menu designed to complement sake. A Sake Sampler menu offers three choices of junmai shu (pure rice sake), ginjo shu (premium sake) and daiginjo shu (super-premium sake). The sake selections, some quite rare, are shipped refrigerated from Japan's breweries. Kurado means "door to a sake brewery." The bar is open during restaurant hours, 5:30-11 p.m. daily.
Coffee roasted to order
Strawberry Connection, the specialty foods purveyor at Dole Cannery, has installed a new in-house coffee-roasting operation that can literally roast to order via a new, patented, computerized system developed by Fresh Roast Systems, based in Northern California.
The refrigerator-sized roaster is filled with several varieties of coffee — estate-grown beans from Kaua'i and Kona, in this case — stored in separate bins. Strawberry Connection employees use an ATM-type touch screen to order a batch of fresh-roasted coffee. The roaster is ventless, emitting none of the smoke and acrid smell usually associated with coffee roasting; byproducts that normally produce smoke are consumed inside the roaster.
