Big Island Grinds

I found a couple of old photos from Ling’s Chop Suey House back from my starving student days. And as lots of locals know, Ling’s has amazingly massive oyster chicken plates. Howz dis??? Hardly can fit in da plate!

This is so not healthy! But it is sooo good! The chicken is super crisp and moist. The sauce is light and not too sweet. The only thing is I wish it had a bit more oyster flavor. Other than that, it’s awesome and can feed you 3 times. This work of art costs only about $8-$9.

I’m making myself hungry! I have to stop now.

Ling’s Chop Suey House
Puainako Centre
Hilo, HI 96720
(808) 981-1689

What? This place is one of the most popular restaurants in Hilo and I never even covered it yet! I have a backlog of photos of various places so I better start posting more.

Cafe Pesto has always had good food and has a great location in the Historic S. Hata building near the Farmer’s Market in Downtown Hilo. I love how it’s casual yet still fancy… good for a nice dinner date, party or a quick lunch. Ambiance is warm, open, and comfortable. Sounds fill the room with kitchen noises and neighboring conversations.

My three favorite things here are (and they do them very well): Beer, Pizza, and Salad. Yes, I’m a simple guy.

There’s a nice variety of beers on tap from local breweries and this is a Pipeline Porter from Kona Brewing Company which has 100% Kona Coffee in it. You really can taste the sweet coffee flavor. I loved it! Very smooth, dark and frothy.

Chicken Lolla Rosa ($10.95) - Grilled free-range chicken tossed with organic baby greens, local sweet onions, vine-ripened organic tomatoes, dressed with a cilantro-caesar dressing. Wonderful combination of flavors. The chicken was flavorful and perfectly grilled. The cilantro-caesar dressing was the highlight of this dish and had a really refreshing dominant cilantro kick.

Ahhh, the pizzas… the first one is the basic Pizza Margherite with just cheese (12″ for $10.95) and it is a great to have with a salad. The second one is the Pizza Luau, which has kalua pork, local sweet onions and pineapples (9″ for $10.95). Both are excellent. The crust is what makes the pizzas here so good; very bubbly, crusty and chewy. One of my favorite pizzas in Hilo.

Reid from Ono Kine Grindz also went here recently. Service has generally been good the past times I’ve been here, but unfortunately he had a different experience.

Café Pesto
S Hata Building
308 Kamehameha Avenue
Hilo, Hawaii
Telephone: 808.969.6640
www.cafepesto.com

Sorry about the camera-phone pics (I didn’t have my camera with me).

Serving up Italian and Mexican food is a cute little hole-in-the-wall downtown restaurant called Aloha Luigi. The smell of cheese and garlic smelled so good in there walking by, I had to stop by to try a slice of pizza! Service was really friendly; the man serving us may have been the owner (Luigi perhaps?). Nice guy.

Delicious pizza. Super thin foldable crust, very tasty garlicky sauce, generous amount of gooey cheese. Crust had a nice crisp and bite to it, a different style than Pizza Hawaii, which has a chewier bubbly crust. I really loved the sauce on this… tasted kinda like a tomatoey shrimp scampi (I think it was because of the garlic).

I hope to come back soon so that I can try Luigi’s other offerings!

Aloha Luigi
264 Keawe Street, Hilo, HI 96720
Phone: (808) 934-9112, Fax: (808) 934-9113

One of the best things about the weekend is that you can sleep in, wake up late, and cook a big breakfast of eggs, some spam/portuguese sausage, and plenty rice. But this past weekend we never have cooked rice! And we didn’t want to wait for rice to cook. So I phoned in an order for a full order of fried rice from Kuhio Grille and drove over to pick it up while Bev fried up some eggs. Mmmmmm…

I used to live on this when I was a broke college student. $6.50 for at least 2 huge meals. Try finish dis one by yourself! No ways brah. The fried rice comes shaped and compressed in a bowl shape, so when you start eating into it, it falls apart making it look like even more, as if it’s growing. Once you start feeling full, it’s like you never even make a dent!

Lots of finely chopped meat in there with green onions. Tastes like luncheon meat and bacon. It’s not too heavily seasoned, so it’s easy to eat a lot of it, and it tastes great. It also comes with some pickled daikon which is nice to bite on when taking a break. Make sure to have tabasco sauce on the side because for some reason, it tastes really great with it.

Although this is really good fried rice, it’s not really the best I’ve ever had, but it definitely is one of the best bangs for your buck, and goes great with other kinds of foods…

Kuhio Grille offers combo meals with the fried rice. My absolute favorite is their chicken cutlet w/fried rice. The fried rice goes so good with the gravy and chicken! Also try their oyster chicken w/fried rice which I hear is also really good, but never got to try yet.

Kuhio Grille
Prince Kuhio Plaza Suite, Hilo, HI 96720
Phone: (808) 959-2336

Kama’aina Backroads is a new show premiering this Saturday at 9pm on OC16 featuring Hawaii from a local perspective. There should be a short segment featuring Big Island Grinds where I check out Itsu’s with the producer of the show. Be sure to check it out… looks like a great show.

I’m really the camera shy type of person, but I couldn’t pass this opportunity up… and had to share with all of you one of my favorite places to grind!

See http://www.kamaainabackroads.com/ for more information about the show.

UPDATE:

Here is the complete show times for this week (there might be more times late at night/early mornings… check schedule listings).

Sunday @ 2:30am
Wednesday @ 2:30pm
Thursday @ 9:30am, 11:30pm
Friday @ 5am
Saturday @ 9pm

After trying a slice of pepperoni from these guys at the recent Ho’olaulea, we had to come back for more at their restaurant location at the Puainako Town Center (across Mc Donalds). Plus, Bev found one of these coupons…

What a deal! (not my cow clip holder)

It smelled so good inside. There were some guys in the back slicing pizzas while a girl was tossing and spinning pizza dough. Another cool thing about this place is that they have a bunch of board games you can pick up and play with at the table.

These two guys were playing Connect Four as they ate their pizza and enjoyed some beer (I assume this place is BYOB since they don’t offer any liquor).

We ordered 2 pepperoni slices ($0.96 + $0.55topping x 2 = $3.02), an additional “New Yorker” slice ($3.45), and a side salad ($2.95) for take out.

This is New York style pizza with beautiful thin bubbly crusty crust. Unfortunately, I’ve never tried a “real” New York style pizza, but if the pizza here is any representation of what’s in NY, I already know I love it! The crust is what makes a pizza, and it was fantastic with great texture and bite, especially on the outer ends. In the middle, the crust is very thin, which really brings out the sauce (really rich and tasty), generous layering of cheese and pepperoni. The salad was also very good and fresh. The ranch dressing also tasted really nice… homemade maybe? It tasted really creamy… almost yogurty.

I gotta say that this was some of the best pizza I’ve ever had… very likely the best on the Big Island! My other favorite is Cafe Pesto, which is excellent pizza… but it’s just not the same. Big Island Pizza is also good, with a variety of gourmet toppings, but the crust just doesn’t have the same kind of crusty texture as Pizza Hawaii.

I’m so glad Hilo has this place.

Pizza Hawaii
Puainako Town Centre
Hilo, HI 96720
Phone: (808) 959-9932
Fax: (808) 959-9566