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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Friday, July 3, 2009

At Your Kitchen, food melts in the mouth


by MARTHA CHENG
Special to The Advertiser

Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser

The azuki shave ice bowl arrives literally overflowing with ice and azuki beans.

Martha Cheng

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YOUR KITCHEN

1423 10th Ave.

203-7685

Hours: 10:30 a.m.-8 p.m. Tuesdays-Sundays

Prices: $5.25-$9.50; $2-$4.50 desserts/shave ice

Other details: Street parking only; might have to walk a few blocks.

Food: 4 stars

Service: 4 stars

Ambience: 3 stars

Value: 5 stars

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Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser

The salad comes with chewy udon noodles in a bowl of greens, with chilled, poached chicken and a generous side of sesame dressing.

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Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser

The broiled miso pork comes caramelized with miso and tossed with veggies for a bit of texture.

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Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser

While the syrups for the rainbow shave ice at Your Kitchen aren’t homemade, the flavors are vibrant.

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Your Kitchen is the epitome of Honolulu's famous hole-in-the-walls. It exists in a residential neighborhood on 10th Avenue in Palolo, keeping company with random businesses like an art gallery and a place that turns out wholesale lau lau and smoked fish, but the area is still primarily residential. On our first visit, we already understand the plight of Your Kitchen's neighbors — with good food and terrific shave ice so close, the good news is it's easy to come back, anytime, and the bad news is that it's too easy to come back, all the time.

The food at Your Kitchen is contemporary Japanese, but the biggest draw is the shave ice, a legacy bequeathed by Samira's Country Market, which used to occupy the space. Yasuyuki and Yukiko Asakura, the husband-and-wife team that run this tiny place, seem a bit bewildered by the popularity of the shave ice, but they smile under their matching red caps and cheerfully welcome the steady business. Yasuyuki and Yukiko moved from Tokyo to Honolulu only a year ago, but have already developed an intuition into local food tastes that lean toward sweet sauces and abundant quantities of meat. Before opening Your Kitchen, Yasuyuki cooked at Tokyo-Tokyo at The Kahala Hotel & Resort, a far cry from this small kitchen — indeed, probably not much bigger than your kitchen — where food either comes off the six-burner stove, the shave ice machine, or from the dessert display case in front. But he mans the stove adeptly, while Yukiko takes care of the shave ice.

Like a true hole-in-the-wall, seating at Your Kitchen is limited. It comprises of a single table, two chairs, and a bench, where adults behave like children with their shave ice — making noises of ecstasy and longing for a second serving when it's over too fast. Because it's irresistible, we start with the shave ice first, as our palate cleanser. We're instantly refreshed. The ice is soft and fine. There are a few homemade flavors — green tea, mango, coffee and haupia. Mango turns out to be our favorite; it's pulpy with real mango and tastes of fruit, rather than sugar syrup. But the non-homemade flavors are vibrant as well. With the rainbow shave ice, the red tastes "red" and the green tastes "green."

With shave ice this good, it's easy to think we can make a meal out of frozen water and sugar syrup. But we move on to real food and find that Your Kitchen does savory well, too. The beef steak bowl comes with thick slices of steak fanned out over rice, drizzled with a butter soy sauce and topped with a spiral of thinly sliced potatoes that are deep-fried, but soft rather than crisp. The sauce is salty-sweet, the generous portion of steak tender and flavorful, and there's a dab of cheesy potato mash under it all.

While we order the beef steak bowl because it sounds good, we try the boiled pork bowl because we're curious, unsure of what to expect. The fuzzy little photograph next to the menu description doesn't do the bowl justice — it's pork braised in a ginger soy sauce, so soft and yielding it's like velvet in the mouth. It's an extremely fatty cut (we're guessing the belly), so throw your calorie counter away for this one. What's especially unique about this bowl is the deep-fried egg. It's a soft-boiled egg, marinated in slightly sweet shoyu, crusted in panko and quickly deep-fried so that the yolk is still runny.

The broiled miso pork appears to use the same soft pork in the boiled pork bowl, but it's caramelized with miso and tossed with veggies for a bit of texture. All the sauces (which are homemade) we've tried at Your Kitchen are sweet, but this one seems to be the sweetest. It's still good, but not our favorite.

Our piggy meat-fest continues with the grilled pork spareribs. My friend's a meat-on-the-bone connoisseur. She says it's the combination of the extra flavor of the bone, the fat, and the bits of cartilage that make her pass on filet mignon anytime there are ribs on the menu. So it's a good sign when she makes short work of the spareribs glazed with apple soy sauce, leaving behind a pile of immaculate bones. The scoop of cheese potato salad on the side is more like mashed potatoes, with just a hint of cheese.

For lighter, cooler fare, the salads (choice of somen or udon) are refreshing. The chewy udon noodles come in a bowl of greens, with slices of chilled, poached chicken and a generous side of sesame dressing.

After our salad, we eagerly return to the shave ice, like kids who have been promised dessert after eating all their vegetables, or in this case, meat and a little bit of vegetables.

This time, we go for the ice cream sundae of shave ice: the azuki bowl, which comes literally overflowing with ice and azuki beans. It's topped with condensed milk, and at the bottom are two scoops of green tea ice cream that develop a wonderfully icy crust from being under all the ice.

As if we didn't have enough desserts melting all over the place, we also grab a melting pudding from the display case. It holds up like a panna cotta, but it dissolves in the heat of your mouth. Your Kitchen's really good at this texture: with the shave ice, the pork, now this. The syrup they pour on top is a dark, clear syrup with an edge of bitter caramel.

In the end, if we had to pick favorites at Your Kitchen, it would be anything that comes in a bowl (or plastic flower cup). The food warrants repeat visits, but we'll go so far to say that this is the best shave ice we've ever had (for now ... we never know what other hidden gem awaits on another corner). There are other places we'll go for nostalgia, but this is where we'll go for the best shave ice in taste and texture.