QUICK BITES
La Pietra benefit will go Italiano
By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Food Editor
Hoopla, a March 15 dinner and auction fund-raiser for La Pietra School for Girls, features an Italian theme, "Up at the Villa" — appropriate because the school is housed in a villa patterned after one in Italy and because one of the co-chairmen, Peggy Fields who has lived in Italy, is giving the evening an Italian flair.
Fields has obtained an auction item that will be coveted by foodies with deep pockets: six days at the Capezzana Wine & Culinary Center on the Tenuta de Capezzana estate in the hills west of Florence. Activities will include learning to prepare pizza in a wood-burning oven; shopping the Florence markets and preparing dinner from the results; one day spent tasting local wines and another learning about olive oils; visits to local culinary artisans; and a closing dinner with the family of Count Ugo Contini Bonacossi, whose home it is. The estate produces fine wines and olive oils, and the culinary center is under the direction of Faith Heller Willinger, author of "Eating in Italy" and "Red, White and Greens: the Italian Way with Vegetables." Prices for the course normally begin at $2,800. Sessions take place in March, May, October and November.
Tickets for the event are $150 per person and include dinner, silent and live auctions, dancing and after-dinner cocktails. Information and reservations: 922-2744.
Aloun Farms onions harvested
Aloun Farms is harvesting 'Ewa sweet onions now; we sampled some of these small, round bulbs last weekend, both in the French onion soup that I tested for this week's Taste section and in a fresh salad. Very nice. Times markets have them on special through March 18 at 89 cents a pound.
Dining updates: desserts, risotto
Meritage at Restaurant Row has introduced a dessert bar Sunday evenings, beginning this Sunday from 5 to 10. Pastry chef Ashley Nakano prepares a variety of selections for this all-your-care-to-indulge-in presentation; the price is $10 and includes a cup of Lavazza French press, espresso or capuccino. Information: 529-8686.
D.K. Kodama, chef-owner of three Sansei Seafood Restaurant & Sushi Bar locations in Hawai'i is taking over Fleming's on the Green (in the Village Course clubhouse in Kapalua), just a short way from his first Sansei restaurant at the Kapalua resort shopping center. The 200-seat restaurant has been renamed the Kapalua Island Grill and will feature casual American food with international touches. It will open in early summer and serve lunches and dinners daily.
Ed Wary's Auntie Pasto's restaurants on Beretania and in Kapahulu are holding a Risotto Festival March 10-30, with daily entree specials featuring side dishes ranging from sweet-potato risotto with balsamic syrup to creamy gorgonzola risotto. Risotto specials also may be ordered with any entree or as a starter course. Information and group reservations: 523-8855, 739-2426.
L'Uraku is hosting another one of chef Hiroshi Fukui's Contemporary Kaiseki dinners March 28, a 10-course Euro-Japanese feast including eight matched wines for $88 ($68 without wines). A highlight will be the debut of farm-raised kahala kampachi (amberjack) grown for the restaurant in the cold ocean waters of the OTEC (ocean thermal energy conversion) operation off the Kohala Coast on the Big Island. Reservations: 955-0552.
Quick Bites is published Wednesdays. Food editor Wanda A. Adams welcomes food news. Write to her at The Honolulu Advertiser, P.O. Box 3110, Honolulu, HI 96802. Call 525-8036. Or e-mail: taste@honoluluadvertiser.com.
