HOW DO WE DEFINE "BEST"?
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Olive oil slow-poached lamb at Alan Wong's Restaurant is served with special sauces and sides of pancetta lentil ragout, taro hash cake and Asian ratatouille.
REBECCA BREYER | The Honolulu Advertiser
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AS WE GO TO PRESS
• Nobu, an outpost of uber-chef Nobuyuki "Nobu" Matsuhisa, is scheduled to open at the Waikiki Parc Hotel in late 2006.
• Tsukiji Fish Market and Restaurant, a concept that mimics the famed Tokyo fish auction, opens in late 2006 at Ala Moana Center.
• The first P.F. Chang's China Bistro opened at Hokua, a new condominium complex on Ala Moana.
• Señor Frog, the flagship brand of Mexico's largest restaurant company, will open a Honolulu restaurant, likely in November.
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It's not all starchy white tablecloths and formal service. It's not all picture-perfect surroundings. It's not even perfect food; in some cases, a best restaurant may have been chosen for its atmosphere, or even for its execution of a single dish.
In general, restaurants make it into this guide because:
• They are current or past 'Ilima Award winners. The 'Ilima Awards are determined annually, partly by a reader poll and partly by our restaurant critics' choices from among the best restaurants reviewed that year. High vote-
getters in the 'Ilima Award balloting also are considered for the guide. We profile 2006 'Ilima winners in the first chapter, and we have highlighted past 'Ilima honorees with the contest's logo.
• Our in-house food experts — food editor Wanda Adams, deputy features editor Lesa Griffith and former restaurant critic Helen Wu — think highly of them. Each of these restaurants and takeout spots has been visited by one of the three.
• They are Island "classics"; places beloved of Islanders for particular specialties or because they offer volume and value (though not necessarily sophisticated or cutting-edge food). This year, we've identified these "local classics" (beloved second- or third-generation, only in Hawai'i spots) with an icon, a shaka sign that says, "check it out — this is where the locals eat."
• Their location, food style, ethnicity or ambience sets them apart. Some restaurants are here because they're one of a kind, or because they are off the beaten path. We also present a balance of white-tablecloth restaurants to everyday cheap eats. This year, we've identified cheap eats spots — where a full meal is generally less than $10 — with a "cent" sign icon. Because inexpensive takeout is an Island tradition, there's a chapter on plate lunch, okazuya (Japanese delicatessens) and carry-out places.
UNDERSTANDING ISLAND EATS
Hawai'i is both a crossroads and a destination. It also is a place that has tended to soak up outside influences and reframe them in its own context. This has been going on for quite a few generations now, long enough that the origins of many of our customs are murky, confused or lost.
The plate lunch is the obvious example: Its roots include the Japanese bento box, the compartmented metal kaukau tins that plantation workers carried to lunch, the cooks of various ethnic groups who prepared food for multi-ethnic bachelor quarters and for haole plantation managers, indigenous foods, maritime staples and ethnic foods immigrants brought with them.
But who can say when and how, exactly, the formula (hot entree, two scoops rice, macaroni salad) was finalized? And change continues: Today, a plate lunch is just as likely to feature grilled tofu, brown rice and a fresh green salad as it is beef stew, white rice and mac-potato combo.
Hundreds of cooks in thousands of boarding houses, restaurants, lunch wagons and school cafeterias have added to the family of dishes loosely known as "local food": loco moco, hamburger curry, salt meat and watercress, mochiko chicken, gravy burger, chili-rice, saimin with teri-sticks, Portuguese sausage with eggs and rice, and dozens more idiosyncratic combinations.
Even Island food that we think of as closely associated with a particular culture has been so altered that those from the "old country" don't recognize it. Japanese nationals think Spam musubi is hilarious, but they don't think of it as Japanese. And there are no malasadas in Portugal — at least, not by that name.
As the world has become smaller, food trends have leapt oceans, lending an increasing sophistication to the restaurant scene and discrimination to Isle diners. And health is of greater concern. Also important in the late-20th century was the influx of Southeast Asians, as well as Latinos, and the influence on the restaurant scene of Japanese and Korean nationals.
We're still awfully far away from the Mediterranean, the Middle East, South America and Africa. But even a few of these threads are woven into the pattern of Island eating today.
You'll see all of this — our history and our connections — reflected here.
