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

Bev and I went camping recently at Volcano National park to celebrate her birthday. At 4000′ elevation, campground Namakanipaio is so beautiful and peaceful, not to mention super duper cold! There are tall eucalyptus and ohi’a trees on this large, grassy campground.

One night of camping is pretty much the max we can do, and afterwards, all we want is a good shower and a nice hot sit-down meal. We went to check out the Volcano House, where they had a lunch buffet which looked and smelled yummy. They also have a regular sit-down and order menu for dinner time.

Here’s their menu for the day:

Generally, I try to stay away from buffets since quality usually suffers (like the Hilo Hawaiian Hotel Buffet), and there was a huge line of tourists getting into the restaurant. Make sure not to go right after a tour bus arrives. We both felt like we were the only “locals”, and I think we were. No matters, anything hot sounds great right now, and their menu didn’t look too bad.

After paying, you split into two lines and go directly to the food.

We were sandwiched by two groups: Japanese and Canadians. It was easy to tell which group their from just by looking at their plates… the Canadians didn’t have rice. Both groups seem to pick up a lot of pineapple from their fresh fruit platter.

Here’s my plate:

Yes, we just spent one night freezing in a tent and skipped breakfast, so anything may have tasted good, but this food was delicious! The pot roast beef was amazingly tender, juicy, perfectly seasoned and had nice pieces of fat. The fried chicken had a great crunchy crust with really juicy tasty meat. The mahi was not bad at all and was not overcooked. Mac salad was winnas, and the green salad was fresh. This really didn’t taste like mass produced buffet food — I was truly impressed.

I went for seconds and totally got my $16.50 worth. Even comes with drinks, coffee, and dessert (tasted like haupia cake - was just ok).

This was a great deal if you already payed park admission (10 bucks), and what makes it even better is the view you get, overlooking the Kilauea Caldera. After eating, we went for a very slow walk along one of the crater trails.

Volcano House
Crater Rim Drive
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park
Hawaii, HI 96718

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

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