After our usual morning swim, we cruised the streets of Kailua for some serious grub. I’m not picky, my rule of thumb is as long as I’ve never been before, I’m down for the cause, the hunger cause that is. None of us really had much of an opinion, so after no debate we ended up at New Chinese Garden Restaurant.

I wouldn’t expect anything less than red and golden colors at a Chinese restaurant.

Ray likes noodles so when I saw Shanghai Noodles, a noodle dish that I wasn’t familiar with I had no choice but to find out. First I asked the waitress what the Shanghai noodles were like. There was an obvious language barrier there so she held out her pen and said, “big, big.” Alright, I’m assuming that Shanghai noodles are round and as thick as her pen. Sweet, sounds good, we’ll take one of those. It cost $5.75 and came with cabbage, fungus, and really small pieces of pork. We didn’t realize it came with meat until halfway through the plate since the pork pieces were so small. We weren’t expecting any meat so I guess some is better than none. The noodles were a little mushy and it just tasted like everything was slapped together, microwaved, and brought out for our consumption and their profit.

I picked Combination Seafood with Mixed Vegetables on a Sizzling Platter, $8.50. Again, this dish was yet another disappointment. It didn’t taste old, but rather like it was made with no effort or care whatsoever. I mean, really, does this look like a sizzling platter to anyone? No sizzle at all. It was extremely dry for a Chinese dish, no gravy to be found, not even when we cleared the plate was there gravy.

Of course Chinese food just wouldn’t be the same without steamed white rice, .90 cents. These days Ray and I manage to share one bowl.

Overall I was not impressed with this place. Needless to say, I’m not coming back. Now, I don’t want to give off the impression that I had a horrible experience here. I was just disappointed. There’s far too many better places I have been and still yet to go.

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New Chinese Garden Restaurant
426 Uluniu Street
Kailua, HI
(808) 261-9345

My friend Sara is leaving me. She and Justin, her boyfriend, are moving to New York. I don’t know why the hell I bothered investing so much time into our relationship when I knew she was going to leave me anyway. For her going away dinner I was like, “yeah, I’m totally there, but if you can try to keep it affordable.” I should of known better. The Garlic Restaurant is their favorite restaurant in all of Oahu. After my first visit, I now know why.

This place looks like it was once a nice size house turned into a restaurant. There’s seating out front, on what looks like what once was a spacious patio (picture above) and seating inside.

The ambiance is a fusion between Asian and outdoor patio. Somehow they made it work. I think it was the nice mood lighting that made the place seem so charming and pleasantly attractive.

I’m not going to lie to you guys. This place is expensive. It’s very important that everybody knows this and now that you do, lets carry on. Also, it’s important to mention that every dish here contains garlic so if your a garlic whore, you will fill right at home here.
We started off with Garlic Toast, $8.00. The garlic toast here is done differently than I’ve ever seen. It arrives at the table nice and hot with two rolls standing straight up. The server, uses his tools to shove this garlic mix into the roll and once it was stuffed to his liking he cuts it up and places it ever so gently on top of eachother. Very interesting and entertaining I must say.

And there you have it, the end result. How did it taste? Can anyone say salty. Now for the record, I’m extremely sensitive to salt and I’m not one to take advice from when it comes to garlic bread. In my opinion, garlic bread in general is too salty. Now if your a garlic bread whore, don’t deny it, this would blow your fucking mind

Ninniku-Ya Seafood Crab Cakes, $10.00. One word, Orgasmic. If you’ve never had these balls, then you haven’t lived. I don’t care how old you are. As soon as I took a bite, that was it, the first day of my life started. Wow, is this what if feels like to be a born again Christian? This feels good, real good. These crab balls had real actual chunks of crab in it, not just mixed in batter like most crab cakes. Ray, he wont be happy if I tell you this but I’m going to anyway. He dropped a piece of it on the table and picked it up and still ate it. He didn’t think I saw him but I did. Sorry honey, I saw you, that’s disgusting.

We also ordered Fresh Carpaccio, $16.00. This dish was mouth water. It was tender, flavorful, and just simply delectable.

You know I couldn’t wait till dessert to have my dessert. For the last of our pupus I ordered a creme brulee. This was the reject dish and it sucks that it had to be dessert. Does this look like creme brulee to anyone? Creme brulee is suppose to have a hard sugar coating. One of the best parts of this dessert is cracking into it with a spoon. There was no crack because there was not a proper layer of crispy sugar on top. Not only was there not a proper layer of sugar, but it was pretorched and left in the refrigerator until it was ordered. How horrible is that? So what little sugar was there was chewy and stuck like tar on the ends of everyone’s tooth. And the creme brulee itself was lumpy, like it had coagulated from being in the fridge for too long. They really should of saved their good name and reputation and told me they were out. Lie to me, I understand. This was by far the worst creme brulee I have ever encountered.

Time to get down to the nitty gritty, or main course. Everything looked so good that I suggested that we all share, everyone agreed. This is the Garlic Pasta, $16.00, tossed in a garlic butter wine sauce with bacon and chili pepper. This dish was a bit dry, but still really good. If your crazy about bacon you love this because not only does it have lots bacon, but its the real big thick pieces of bacon, not the skinny thin ones.

Seafood Risotto, $28.00, a mixture of tiger shrimp, mussels, scallops, calamari, and salmon with a choice of saffron or gorgonzola risotto. This was a winner in everyone’s eyes. This dish had a creamy classy style that stayed hot to the very last bite.

First off I want to apologize for the horrible picture. There was a lot of movement going on, and a lot of pressure weighed on me to take a picture before the waiter finish slicing up the rack of lamb. It came on a piping hot sizzling platter. The lamb chops were accompanied with a scoop of mash potato and three slices of squash with half a cherry tomato on top. The waiter sliced up the chops right before my eyes and then placed the mash potato and squash on a separate plate. Again, very entertaining.

Did I mention the massive load of whole garlic pieces that came along with the rack of lamb? Hope you love garlic because it made up for the sorry amount of lamb we got. Sara and Justin said that they ordered this dish before and it was always bigger. So I guess this time was just a fluke. However, the the four pieces of lamb we did get was delicious. If your in the mood for meat order the rib eye steak or New York Steak, both 16 oz each, and looked massive as we all stared in awe at the table next to us that ordered the dish.

Here’s the mashed potato and squash after the sizzle. The mash potatoes had a crispy bottom that slightly cracked with each bite. I wasn’t expecting it, but it was pleasantly welcomed.

A trio of spices came with the lamb for some added flavor and variety.

Overall I have to say, despite the creme brule I was thrilled with this place. Services was professional, ambiance was elegant, food was amazing, and prices were, lets say challenging.

You guys ready for a quick story? So after dinner we walk out front to take pictures of the front of the place for this food blog. As were walking to the back where our car is parked I peeked my camera over the fence between some plants to take a picture of the front dinning patio. Well, I guess some customers there thought that I was being rude taking pictures of them so while we were driving out of the parking lot we were stopped by some young little Asian female that stood right in the middle of our path. Never underestimate the powder of little Asian females. She calls out, “there they are!” And who comes to her rescue, an old Caucasian man who looks just like a pedophile I seen on Dateline with Chris Hansen. He gives us a wave and sarcasticly goes, “hey, how you guys doing? Having a nice night?” as he flashes pictures of us with his camera. We wave back, smile for the camera and run them over, at least that’s what I want and encourage Ray to do, because I’m a little Asian female too. “Run them over honey, thats an easy 20 points!” But instead, we smile, drive off as we laugh our asses off and think, “what the fuck?” No one ever said food blogging was an easy job. Here’s the shitty picture I got for all that trouble.

Does anyone see the little gecko in the bottom left hand corner?

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Garlic Restaurant Ninniku-Ya

3196 Waialae Ave,
Honolulu, HI

(808) 735-0784

O.k so I got this fan mail via e-mail the other day from Travis. And I say fan mail because It makes me feel like a celebrity. He was telling me how hilarious I am, that my food blog is the high light of his day and that he digs through my garbage at night. And then he gives me this list of restaurants that are his favorite and suggest that I give them a try if I haven’t already. Just so you all know, I love suggestions. I have the boys pick a place off the list and of course being the sandwich whores that they are they pick A Taste of New York. As soon as we cruise up to this place I start to get really excited because I recognized it as one of the many places that I made a mental note to try. This is the view from the street.

This is what it looks like when you walk up to the entrance.

Cute right? As soon as we walk in we see Lei Melket. She’s a bigger celebrity than I am here on the island and is known for the song Falling, at least that’s how I know her. I really haven’t heard any of her other songs. It’s crazy because this is like the 4th time Ray and I have ran into her so this time I was like, I’m just gonna go up to her, introduce myself, tell her that I listen to her C.D. first thing when I wake up every morning, have every song memorized, ask to take a picture with her and hope that stardom hasn’t turned her into a total biznatch. But before I was able to the host goes, “this way please.” Oh, well. I know fate will bring me to her again. Back to food.

The inside is small but totally adorable. The waiter goes up to us and goes, “who wants to start off with a Dr. Browns cream soda?” I’m not a soda drinker, actually, I’m not a carbonation drinker at all. But I do enjoy a good cream soda from time to time, not to mention I just love his intro so of course I say, “I do.” The boys don’t want to make any hasty decisions and get water.

We start to skim the menu and can’t believe what we see. The classic sandwiches are $13.59, famous triple decker sandwiches are around $17.00, lox bagel was $12.75. I thought the lox bagel was expensive at Bogarts and that was $7.75. So of course when all else fails get dessert right? Wrong, $9.95 for a cheesecake slice and only $80.00 for the whole cake. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, your cool, fuck you. I’m outta here. Now, for those of you that love this place, I’m sure they have great food and it’s worth every penny, but there are places that have great food and don’t feel like ass raping customers in exchange for it. I love those places. I want to take my money there always. It’s my way of saying, “thank you, thank you so much for not riping me a new hole, take my money, give me good food.” I think Travis failed to read the part of my blog that says, “cheap places to eat,” but thanks for the suggestion Travis. We paid for the cream soda and left. On our way out was a very adorable Japanese couple that also left after they scanned the menu. They go, “that place is kinda pricey, yeah?” Shane goes, “I’m glad you said that because that’s exactly what we we’re thinking.”

They do give you free pickles though, all you can eat, right on the table.

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A Taste of New York
1137 11Th Ave. #103
Honolulu, HI 96816
(808) 737-3354