Best of the Big Island
With my time on the Big Island now quite definitively limited, I've been thinking about the best establishments it has to offer. Not surprisingly, they're mostly places to eat. They are not in the tour books.
1. Garden Snack Club, Hilo. The Garden Snack Club is ostensibly a Thai restaurant, though "Thai" is an understatement and "restaurant" an overstatement. It is a hole in the wall, maybe 15' by 10', with an electric wok for a kitchen and a tiny window that looks out on a van parking lot. It's not a dive, though -- there are houseplants and Asian chairs and embroidered table cloths, and incongrously, a terrifyingly massive for-sale television that literally takes up most of one wall. The waitstaff consists of one beatifically calm and slow-moving hippie waitress per night, and owner-chef Tina cooks every dish, two at a time, on her tiny counter. It's not the place to go if you're in a hurry. But why hurry? The food is outrageously good. Favorites include a Thai tofu tortilla-pizza covered in about three pounds of some sort of wildly-addictive cheese, peanut-sauce drenched rice noodles (declared "too intense" by Aidan), beautiful fresh veggie salads, and mango sticky rice. Two entrees will run you thirteen bucks and will be more than two of you can eat. The patrons are happy laidback hippie types. And it's BYOB. And it has homemade ice cream. Magnifique.
2. Kawamoto Store, Hilo. Kawamoto closes each day when it runs out of food, sometime right around noon. They've got pretty ridiculous sushi, a rice and seaweed roll covering tuna drenched in sugar, plus 15 or so other variations of fried sugary meat. It's the peak of local (note: not the same as Hawaiian) cuisine. You can order bentos (lunch in a box), costing from $2.50 to $6.00. You just go up and say "I'd like a $4.50 bento, please," and they put in the right amount of food. I like pretending I know exactly what's in a $3 bento and ordering it with supreme confidence. I was quite disappointed to see, last time I was there, the explanations for each one printed up on a menu. It shot a hole in my theory that the incredibly numerous and busy countergirls use a hive mind to figure out how many rice balls to dish out.
3. Bamboo Garden, Hilo. The Bamboo Garden is a bar that's always crowded with locals, though you can't tell, since they're hidden in high-backed brown booths. A after you fruitlessly look for a place to seat yourslf, a massive but genial Hawaiian guy finds you a spot. There's no menu, no beers on tap, and you shouldn't try to order any kind of complicated mixed drink. But the patrons are there to sing karaoke in Japanese and make crazy side-bets when Hawaii football games are on, the Coors Lite is cheap and cold, and best of all they deliver you a staggering plate of pupus with nearly any purchase. If you like free, fried, and unidentifiable meat smothered in thick gravy, this is the place for you.
4. Na'alehu Fruit Stand, Na'alehu. Na'alehu is in the southern-most settlement in the United States, and it's really remote and empty and (I suspect) drug-ridden. We always stop at the Fruit Stand on the way to the nearby Green Sand Beach. It's not really a stand, though it is a big, dusty, wood-panelled room, sort of old-west style. The cakes, cookies, and sandwiches are great, and they now pipe in East Coast NPR on satellite radio. My favorite thing, though, is how empty it is. They have a little bit of decent but quickly-aging fruit, some tofu, maybe three loaves of bread and a bag of chips, their baked goods, and a couple of sodas. That's about it. And I don't think it's ever fully stocked. Probably the least on-hand inventory of any store I've ever been to.
5. Hilo Surplus Store, Hilo. The Surplus store, on the other hand, has an absurd amount of stock on hand. Camouflage, weapons, camping gear, packs, spiked boots, scale-model replica bazookas, bandannas. Obviously, stuff is spilling out into the aisles and you need to sort of forge your own path. A not-so-fine layer of dust coating everything adds to the ambience. This place should be run by a wild-eyed, bushy-bearded white man, but no, the proprietress is a nice little Asian lady.
6. Sauces Propane, Honoka'a. I don't even know what this place is actually called, but they have a big sign out front that says SAUCES PROPANE. They sell sauces, propane, used kayaks, shockingly high-end kitchen appliances, lawnmowers, and yummy ahi jerky. Their dog is very old, is missing a leg, and growls at strangers. It's also perched on an extremely steep hill. Awesome.
1. Garden Snack Club, Hilo. The Garden Snack Club is ostensibly a Thai restaurant, though "Thai" is an understatement and "restaurant" an overstatement. It is a hole in the wall, maybe 15' by 10', with an electric wok for a kitchen and a tiny window that looks out on a van parking lot. It's not a dive, though -- there are houseplants and Asian chairs and embroidered table cloths, and incongrously, a terrifyingly massive for-sale television that literally takes up most of one wall. The waitstaff consists of one beatifically calm and slow-moving hippie waitress per night, and owner-chef Tina cooks every dish, two at a time, on her tiny counter. It's not the place to go if you're in a hurry. But why hurry? The food is outrageously good. Favorites include a Thai tofu tortilla-pizza covered in about three pounds of some sort of wildly-addictive cheese, peanut-sauce drenched rice noodles (declared "too intense" by Aidan), beautiful fresh veggie salads, and mango sticky rice. Two entrees will run you thirteen bucks and will be more than two of you can eat. The patrons are happy laidback hippie types. And it's BYOB. And it has homemade ice cream. Magnifique.
2. Kawamoto Store, Hilo. Kawamoto closes each day when it runs out of food, sometime right around noon. They've got pretty ridiculous sushi, a rice and seaweed roll covering tuna drenched in sugar, plus 15 or so other variations of fried sugary meat. It's the peak of local (note: not the same as Hawaiian) cuisine. You can order bentos (lunch in a box), costing from $2.50 to $6.00. You just go up and say "I'd like a $4.50 bento, please," and they put in the right amount of food. I like pretending I know exactly what's in a $3 bento and ordering it with supreme confidence. I was quite disappointed to see, last time I was there, the explanations for each one printed up on a menu. It shot a hole in my theory that the incredibly numerous and busy countergirls use a hive mind to figure out how many rice balls to dish out.
3. Bamboo Garden, Hilo. The Bamboo Garden is a bar that's always crowded with locals, though you can't tell, since they're hidden in high-backed brown booths. A after you fruitlessly look for a place to seat yourslf, a massive but genial Hawaiian guy finds you a spot. There's no menu, no beers on tap, and you shouldn't try to order any kind of complicated mixed drink. But the patrons are there to sing karaoke in Japanese and make crazy side-bets when Hawaii football games are on, the Coors Lite is cheap and cold, and best of all they deliver you a staggering plate of pupus with nearly any purchase. If you like free, fried, and unidentifiable meat smothered in thick gravy, this is the place for you.
4. Na'alehu Fruit Stand, Na'alehu. Na'alehu is in the southern-most settlement in the United States, and it's really remote and empty and (I suspect) drug-ridden. We always stop at the Fruit Stand on the way to the nearby Green Sand Beach. It's not really a stand, though it is a big, dusty, wood-panelled room, sort of old-west style. The cakes, cookies, and sandwiches are great, and they now pipe in East Coast NPR on satellite radio. My favorite thing, though, is how empty it is. They have a little bit of decent but quickly-aging fruit, some tofu, maybe three loaves of bread and a bag of chips, their baked goods, and a couple of sodas. That's about it. And I don't think it's ever fully stocked. Probably the least on-hand inventory of any store I've ever been to.
5. Hilo Surplus Store, Hilo. The Surplus store, on the other hand, has an absurd amount of stock on hand. Camouflage, weapons, camping gear, packs, spiked boots, scale-model replica bazookas, bandannas. Obviously, stuff is spilling out into the aisles and you need to sort of forge your own path. A not-so-fine layer of dust coating everything adds to the ambience. This place should be run by a wild-eyed, bushy-bearded white man, but no, the proprietress is a nice little Asian lady.
6. Sauces Propane, Honoka'a. I don't even know what this place is actually called, but they have a big sign out front that says SAUCES PROPANE. They sell sauces, propane, used kayaks, shockingly high-end kitchen appliances, lawnmowers, and yummy ahi jerky. Their dog is very old, is missing a leg, and growls at strangers. It's also perched on an extremely steep hill. Awesome.
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