By now you should know this is a blog about cheap and not so cheap places to eat and not eat in Oahu Hawaii. P.F. Chang’s is at the borderline. I have this love hate relationship with this place. Although it’s a chain, I don’t mind coming here because it’s a fun place to dine. The inside of P.F Chang’s are always dressed up real nice, service is ehh, food is ehhh and prices are ehhh. Well, I guess the main reason to come here is for its ambiance.

I think one great reason why P.F. Chang’s has managed to stay afloat is because there’s no other chain like it. It’s the only big Asian chain that is well known, stylish, fun to dress up for, o.k. if you don’t and not as expensive as fine dinning, but still a nice place to dine. The inside of this one is like an fusion between 70’s and Asian if you ask me.

There’s some outside seating as well.

Another thing that P.F. Chang’s does differently is have the server make this sauce at the table upon greeting you. For as many times as I’ve been to one of these places I still don’t know how I feel about that. Actually, the fact that I’ve been to one of these so many times and still don’t know how I feel about it probably means I would prefer it if they didn’t. The scenario, I imagine is pretty much the same at every table. The server greets you, “hi, how’s everyone doing? My name is Mary Jane, I’ll be your server today. How do you like your sauce, spicy, medium or mild?” And this gives everyone at the table something to converse on, “ohh, I like it spicy, how do you like it? I like it mild. I like it medium. I can’t handle spicy.” Blah, blah blah. Then the server will create a mixture of hot sauce, hot mustard and soy sauce in the center ramekin. The vinegar and hot oil are never used. Everyone stares in awe like the waiter is some big sushi chef. Every once in a while someone idiot will yell out, “ohhh, will you add some hot oil to mine,” or something of that nature. And the server goes, “sure” but she’s really thinking, “Bitch, are you fucking retarded, it’s just sauce, fucking add the shit yourself.” And just so you know, the mixture is usually the same every time, regardless of whether you said hot, medium or mild. All I’m saying is, yeah I get why they do it, it’s fun and different, but I could make my own sauce, spank you very much. It’s not the way I want it and I never see anyone use it. Not to mention, now that we have this amazing sauce, we’re expecting you to give us something to dip it in? Oh, what, you mean there’s nothing. The sauce you just made is for nothing. So that was basically a waist of my time and a complete waste of yours. Sweet. Anyway, lets move on.

We start off with these crab won tons served with a spicy plum sauce for $5.95. I use to make these everyday at our family restaurant so just being able to eat them with out any of my labor involved made these fritters even more special. It came with 5 pieces. The sauce for me was salty. I would of preferred the traditional sweet and sour sauce.

Just so you know, this is probably the easiest thing to make if you have a deep fryer. It’s a mixture of mainly cream cheese and minced crab meat.

What ever happen to the days when you could expect rice to accommodate your order? At P.F. Chang’s they still uphold that tradition. Not only that but you get a choice of white or brown rice. I always pick brown since I don’t get to eat it much.

We shared a Combination Chow Mein, $10.95. It was tasty. Ray could of done without the bean sprouts and celery. He said vegetables should never be bigger than the meat. I guess that’s a good point, not because I like meat, but I don’t like big chunks of vegetables. However, the size of the celery didn’t bother me. If you prefer your chow mein with some kind of sauce or gravy, then request it or order something else. This chow mein was dry.

Overall my response is still, ehh. The flavor, like it’s decor is very contemporary. It’s Chinese food but modern American-Chinese. They lack true authentic flavor. P.F. Chang’s is like Panda Express Food in a really nice restaurant. Sometimes Panda Express isn’t so bad, at least it wasn’t this day. By the way did you hear Bill Gates, now the second richest man in the world, bought 1 million shares in P.F. Chang’s stock. If he believes in their food, well then so do I.

Lies, all lies!

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P.F. Chang’s
1288 Ala Moana Blvd.
Honolulu, HI 96814
(808) 596-4710

Before you judge me on going to another corporate chain, give this place a try if you have not already. California Pizza Kitchen has to be one of my favorite corporate chain restaurants. From what I’ve seen, there’s five California Pizza Kitchens in Oahu: Waikiki, Kahala Mall, Ala Moana Mall, Aiea and Kailua. I’ve been to all but one and every time the food is great. This one is located at Kahala Mall.

It’s not the best picture, but you get the point.

We were asked if we wanted bread after ordering, which we all did. The bread was really nothing special, just plain white bread at room temperature on a white plate with butter. My mom use to give me sandwiches with sugar and butter when I was a little girl and that’s the only way I’ll have plain white bread now, with butter and white granulated sugar. Oh, how buttery sweetness can transform boring to spectacular.

Now I know this place isn’t really cheap, but if you want to eat out all the time, as I do, you really need to find ways to be nicer to your wallet. Ray and I do this by sharing. When we come here we share an appetizer, usually this Avocado Club Egg Rolls and we’ll get one other dish to share. It’s always enough and doesn’t break us. If you like avocado, chicken and bacon, you’ll want to try these. Avocado, chicken, and bacon just go so well together, and in these rolls you can taste each flavor so distinctly. Ray and I love these things, we could eat 8 plates each and be content.

Don’t you want to reach through the screen and grab one? My only conpaint is that we only got four pieces for $9.99, which really is two small rolls cut in half. That blows. That’s really expensive and a rip off. Why, do they have to be so good?

This time we decided to share a pizza. This one is the Wild Mushroom Pizza with cremini, shiitake, portobello, white mushrooms, fontina, mozzarella cheeses, coated with a wild mushroom pesto sauce and garnished with chopped Italian parsley, $12.99. It was available with chicken as well, but instead of that we got sausage. It was plenty and really good. We had one slice left over, which we volunteered Shane to consume.

Yeah, I know, this is a horrible picture. In my previous posts I mentioned that Shane is crazy about the Spinach and Artichoke Dip, $9.99 at CPK. Every time we come here he goes through the menu and then closes it only to order what we all knew he came here for. I had to take a picture as fast as I could since Shane wanted to devour this dish the second it landed on the table. Patience Shanie, patience.

This is suppose to be the Chocolate Souffle Cake ala mode $9.99. I hate it when restaurants loosely names their dishes just because it sounds catchy. Does this look like a souffle to anyone? It looks deflated, like a round chocolate brownie. A proper souffle is enriched with egg yolks and then folded over with whisked egg whites, baked and served in a proper ramekin. When the egg whites expand during baking, it causes the souffle to puff up. A proper souffle should be light, fluffy puffy. The word souffle is the past particle of the French verb souffler which means “to blow up” or more loosely “puff up” — an apt description of what happens to this combination of custard and egg whites.

Here are some pictures of what a proper souffle should look like.

Anyhow, it was still good.

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California Pizza Kitchen
4211 Waialae Avenue
Honolulu, HI 96816
(808) 737-9446

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