Cascada has awe-inspiring setting, mediocre food
By Matthew Gray
Advertiser Restaurant Critic
The tranquil setting of Cascada hasn't changed much over the past few years.
Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser • • • Cascada in the Royal Garden at Waikiki Hotel 440 Olohana St. 5:30-9:30 p.m. daily 945-0270 Mediocre
The man-made waterfall and pool area create a liquid liaison for a romantic tryst or an intimate meal.
The restaurant in the Royal Garden at Waikiki Hotel features such dishes as this pesto-grilled salmon steak with pasta, grilled Japanese eggplant and sweet-and-sour tomato vinaigrette.
1/2
The light shimmers and bounces around the place — a set designer's dream — whether you're seated indoors under a hand-painted ceiling, or al fresco on the terrace beneath an aging canopy.
With such a special ambience, you'd think that everyone would know about this place. But this restaurant's history is checkered.
The original Cascada, with chef Don Maruyama, talented and well-traveled in Honolulu's kitchens, packed a one-two culinary punch with several standout dishes that showed a lot of creative flair. But the restaurant failed to live up to its potential and closed a couple of years ago.
Last year around this time, Cafe Du Monde opened with a whisper and vanished in a blink.
Now comes Cascada. The new chef is Jean-Pierre Marharibatcha, formerly of Orchids at the Halekulani Hotel; before that he was with the Ritz-Carlton for about 14 years.
Despite Marharibatcha's credentials, many of the choices I sampled at the restaurant seemed uninspired.
An olive tapenade is offered as an accompaniment to the bread — an interesting idea, but not quite good enough; we wished for the standard olive oil or butter. The appetizer list is only four items deep and doesn't do the job. These are first-impression dishes with which a restaurant can really wow the audience.
Cajun-spiced seared 'ahi ($11.50) was mediocre and came in a much smaller portion than you receive at most other restaurants. I enjoyed the green zebra tomato slices on the side, but the sambal-honey sauce didn't harmonize with the Cajun spices or the fish.
Other appetizer choices are the chilled poached jumbo shrimp cocktail ($9); pan-seared diver scallops ($8) (overpowered, in my opinion, with curry); and an oddball choice of spring rolls ($9) filled with shrimp mousse, with Asian vegetables and a dipping sauce heavily flavored with nuoc mam, the Vietnamese fish sauce.
The Hawaiian blue-crab chowder ($7.95), however, was particularly good, a delicate cream-based reduction. The addition of sweet potato and Kahuku corn kernels added a welcome textural contrast. Bravo!
Entrees lean strongly on seafood choices, although on a second visit a decent herb-crusted rack of lamb ($32) in a port wine reduction, and a tasty veal chop ($32.50), sauced with a wild mushroom madeira sauce, were offered.
On my first visit, there was an inordinate delay in getting the entrees to the table. I had ordered roasted double Tristan lobster tails ($28) , named for Tristan da Cunha, a remote island group in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, about halfway between South Africa and South America. When the entrees finally arrived, the lobster tails were still quite cool, and the other plate with the filet mignon ($28.95) displayed a mangled piece of meat.
At this point, we'd begun to look forward to dessert. However, the Toblerone chocolate mousse cake ($7.50) didn't live up to its buildup as "a chocolate lover's delight," primarily because the cake layers were grainy and dry, and not enough bits of the Toblerone candy were evident in the mousse. The caramel apple bread pudding ($6.50) was only slightly better.
On both visits, the restaurant was almost empty.
I long for the old days at Cascada.
Reach Matthew Gray at mgray@honoluluadvertiser.com.
