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

Grocery shopping in Hawaii is heartbreaking. You see, growing up as a child my sister and I would wake up early in the mornings with our mother just to go grocery shopping. I know it’s weird, but it was like quality time for us with our coupons in hand. We would memorize the prices of each item and compare it to other grocery stores. To this day, I have a habit of memorizing prices on produce because of my mother and I thank her for it. Cartons of strawberries here can easily go for $6.00 on this island. That’s why when I saw in the streets of Chinatown for the special rate of $1.00, I had to buy at least two baskets and write about my new find.

I went home to make a strawberry spinach salad with raspberry vinaigrette dressing but my spinach at home went bad so I ate them as is. Delicious!

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(Around) N King St & Kekaulike St
Honolulu HI 96817

Dim sum here I come. Yeah, I’m sure no one has ever said that before. When it comes to Dim Sum, I consider myself to be pretty darn experienced. Growing up in Pleasanton, California every Sunday our family would drive to San Francisco just to have dim sum. My father would read the Sing Tao Daily the week before in search of what the critics were saying was the newest, flashiest, and most affordable dim sum restaurant in all of San Francisco. Of course they were always in China Town. Thinking about it now I can’t help but miss my family. Golden Place is my first dim sum experience in Hawaii and it brought back fond memories for me.

I say that because like a lot of dim sum places that I went to as a child, from the outside it looks like a standard Chinese restaurant, but you walk in and it’s a little bigger, brighter, and busier than what you’d expect. As soon as we walked in one of the ladies pushing the carts of food stopped everything she was doing and ask, “how many?” We say, “two” and being a small group she points us over to the smallest table at the far corner of the restaurant.

I can’t tell you how aggravating it was to be ignored. Since we were in the corner they would of had to roll out of their usual route to get to us, not hard right. It wasn’t like they couldn’t see us, because the restaurant was a big open rectangular room. They just chose not to see us, probably because we wouldn’t have given them very much business being just two people. The table next to us, of two as well, we’re also getting impatient. Finally after sitting there for about 20 minutes I get up and decide to take it upon myself to get some food. Oh, also, I forgot to mention, that it was our anniversary on this day. August 25th makes it two years since we’ve been together and we’ve been engaged since February. Back to the story, so I go up to an abandoned cart, go through the bamboo trays for something tasty to eat. The lady comes back, I direct her to our table and have her follow me. She’s a total bitch and just stands there instead of showing us what was in the trays, so again I’m like whatever, don’t mind if I do. I get up and start going through all the trays myself showing Ray what was underneath each lid while the lady just stood there next to me. This is what we picked out.

This is sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves flavored with minced meat and sometimes a yolk from an egg. This is one of my favorites at dim sum and very filling.

This is my all time favorite pastry, pineapple bun. I don’t even know why they are called a pineapple bun as there is really no pineapple flavor. Like most pastries they’re best hot. Inside their cavernous walls lies gooey moist egg custard. Here’s some more fun food knowledge for you. I don’t know why, but for some retarded reason they only sell these pineapple buns at dim sum restaurants. Bakeries will sell similar ones, but the inside is usually some kind of dry filling, like coconut or beans and never as good.

I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like Pork Hash. It’s the one of the few things every person new to dim sum must try. These were really good.

Here’s some more fun food facts according to yours truly. Pork hashes are always accompanied in the same cart as these shrimp dumplings.

Maybe it’s because they just go so well together. We got two each of the pork hash and shrimp dumplings.

We decided that next time we eat here we’re going to say, “party of five, they’re meeting us here.” That way, we’ll be seated at a much larger table that is along side of their cart route. The bill came out to just over $12.00 for 6 dishes. Not bad for dim sum, but if you didn’t notice, only 3 items each were given per tray but they were a lot bigger than the usual 4 pieces that are given from most dim sum places so we were o.k. with it. There’s also food being sold just as you walk into the restaurant for to go. So if you want to eat but not dine, that would probably be better.

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Golden Palace Seafood.
111 N. King St.
Honolulu, HI
(808) 521-8268