Cabanas: Fine dining with sand between your toes

By Helen Wu
Advertiser Restaurant Critic

Seaword Grant and Gerry Brown celebrate her birthday at Cabanas. The beachside restaurant at the Kahala Mandarin Oriental serves grilled dishes with Mediterranean flavors in large sharable portions. Photos by Gregory Yamamoto • The Honolulu Advertiser

Eriko, left, and Norikuni Fujii of Hiroshima, Japan, celebrate their honeymoon with dinner oceanside at Cabanas Seaside Grill.

Cabanas Seaside Grill Kahala Mandarin Oriental Hawaii 5000 Kahala Ave. mandarinoriental.com 739-8770 Weather permitting, open daily 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Dinner seating from 5:30-6:15 p.m. and from 8-8:45 p.m. Full Bar Reservations strongly recommended $4 self or valet parking in hotel lot 1/2 Good

I felt like a honeymooner during a romantic sunset dinner there recently. I can go to the beach any time, but suddenly it was as though I were on vacation when I heard the peaceful sound of waves lapping onto the shore a few yards away. Instead of looking through a window, I gazed out directly at a boat on the horizon, sandwiched between baby-blue sky and turquoise ocean.

The open-air "dining room" consists of a loose cluster of nine white canvas tents. Best seats are under those closest to the beach. Nearby, a small, Japanese-style water fountain patters softly in the middle of the area while a bamboo wind chime hanging on a tree tinkles in the breeze. If I wanted to, I could rub sand between my toes — an escape better than a Calgon commercial.

Cabanas is just off the main pool and its bar, and we could hear the odd loud splash. People strolled by occasionally on a bordering walkway, which also brought me out of my reveries. But neither the riviera-style chaise longues on the beach nor all of the other resort accouterments diminished that cheerful tourist feeling I was experiencing.

My companion and I were the happy couple dining at the exotic restaurant on some lush travel magazine's cover. A clear, star-lit night soon replaced the sherbet-colored sunset sky, and food arrived at our table completing the picture-perfect sight.

Almost everything at Cabanas is served in large portions designed for sharing. Many plates accommodate two: nicely-grilled skewers of chicken ($10), beef ($13) or shrimp ($15); Waimanalo mixed greens and melons salad ($12); grilled herb and garlic beef with a wild mushroom sauce ($20). Others would be better for parties of three to five; and a bigger party means you can try more dishes. If it's just the two of you, carefully selecting from the menu will prevent you from having to recuperate in a chaise longue.

Cabanas' repertoire falls into the category of fancy summer fare — food you wish you could serve at your own grilling affair if you had the time. Although the food is generally good, not all of the dishes justify their prices (steamed soybeans seemed awfully expensive at $8, even with a sesame and soy-sauce glaze)..

Sunny Mediterranean influences are visible in side dishes (starches are a la carte) of grilled vegetable orzo pasta ($10) and baguette ($6). Saffron aioli and fennel slices intensified an appetizer of steamed Manila clams and chorizo sausage ($13 for a half-pound). Already an old trend, some fresh herb garnishes, such as rosemary and sage, worked adequately here, but I would have preferred tasting their flavors in the food rather than just seeing and smelling them.

Be aware that you will pay luxury-resort prices, even for a simple fresh-fish preparation. These dishes leap off the menu at this seaside spot, not just taste-wise, but also for size and cost. Because most of the selections are in the 1 to 1-1/2-pound range, the whole fishes are probably too much for a couple. Typically, four offerings are available, sold by weight at market price — enough for a party of four or five. For our dinner, choices were 'opakapaka (crimson jobfish, snapper family; $58 per pound), gindai (ornate jobfish, snapper family; $32), moi (sixfinger threadfin, $46) and onaga (flame snapper; $46 per pound).

These fish are grilled slightly, poached in lobster stock and finished off quickly on the grill. Sprinkled with a bit of ogo (seaweed), they are then filleted tableside.

Three sauces accompany the dish: a shoyu-like calamansi citrus-daikon-lime ponzu, a relish-like tomato-caper-Kalamata olive tapenade, and a tomato-flavored sauce made with lobster-stock reduction from the poaching process. The fish tastes as fresh as the sweet salt air.

Chilled spring pea soup poured over blue crab chunks ($16) is another high point, with its blended, verdant flavors and color matching the surroundings in every way.

Equally large desserts seem to be an afterthought at Cabanas —for diners and for the kitchen. Avoid the chocolate mousse stacker ($12), a confusing mound of crushed chocolate macadamia nuts, amaretto-macerated berries and small amaretto-flavored cookies mixed up with something that resembled chocolate-flavored whipped cream. Perfect berries drowned in the fluff.

Light strawberry and vanilla panna cotta ($12) was a better ender.

At lunch, Cabanas functions as a poolside eatery featuring uninspiring, overpriced sandwiches and hot dogs for the kids.

A leisurely dinner at Cabanas Seaside Grill takes advantage of Hawai'i's tranquil environment, but the menu could better match the food to the exceptional environment — more vivid colors and flavors, more fruits and vegetables and more small plates suitable for two.