Maile "Moo" N.'s Profile

We saw Full Fathom Five and Zoo Station here on 11/20.  Good place with some seats and tables, bar in easy access, good drinks, good sound, balcony standing room up above.  I don't know if I'm crazy about the stage kind of tucked in the corner, but we had a good vantage point from the side floor.

Yay for Stone Roses and U2 cover bands!  Woot!

I finally went to dinner at Absinthe last night - and YUM!  Hayes Valley is such a great neighborhood and Absinthe is in prime location on Hayes -- loved the ambiance.  And the service was great!  

We ordered the spicy fried chickpeas as our appetizer -- it comes in a tiny bowl but they also come with some punch (spicy) -- loved them!  For my entree, I had the scallops with wild mushrooms - the scallops were so tender and tasty and the wild mushrooms (I love mushrooms!) were a perfect compliment (my entree was gone in minutes).  I accompanied my meal with a nice pino gris (their wine by the glass prices are very reasonable).  My friend had the beef cheeks (also known as "beef butter") -- I had a taste and it was soooo tender and very tasty.

I wrote "Hi Jamie! :)" on my receipt - I wonder if she'll see it (Jamie Lauren is the chef as seen on 'Top Chef')??  Hee hee.  I met her at SF Chefs earlier this year and she is funny & down-to-earth.    

I'd definitely come back!  :)

Dinner with Geraldine # 19

App+dinner+wine+tax+tip = $55

*Review of breakfast only* -- We love this place!  They serve a generous breakfast (eggs, bacon and pancakes) for $3.75 and orange juice at 2-for-1 -- and that's an everyday special!  On a different day, I even got the local style breakfast for a few bucks more with scrambled eggs, Portuguese sausage and rice, and it was yummy!  

If you want a filling, yummy breakfast in Honolulu for a very reasonable price, come to Seaside Bar & Grill.  We have come here for breakfast on two separate trips and we will come back again and again.

The ocean view of Jameson's gets 5 stars!  The food was a-ok for an early lunch on a weekday.  I had the grilled cheese and my bf had the Asian chicken salad.  Decent, 'nough said.

We were trolling around Kailua looking for a good place for dinner and saw the Yelp sticker on Sushi Shiono's front door.  Ok, that did it, that was our place.  

Honestly, it wasn't quite memorable to warrant a 4-1/2 star average on Yelp.  The sushi rolls were pretty good and my bf's dish (fish dinner w/ rice and salad) was pretty good, not stellar, not 4-1/2 stars, but decent.  Maybe we needed to try more dishes on the menu.

Brian Tanger is THE best real estate agent in the San Jose area - he is a lifesaver!  He sold my boyfriend's renovated house in San Jose in a little over a week through his high tech skills (website, email, electronic postings) and esteemed real estate agent contacts.  The open houses had lots of foot traffic, and the house was sold in no time!  I was completely amazed!!  The sale of this house allowed us to move on with our lives, and I am completely *grateful* for Brian - thank goodness we found him!

Brian Tanger is personable, easy to talk to, flexible and gives sound advice, especially regarding housing market and trends.  I would highly recommend Brian as your agent - he will represent you well and will take care of you while buying or selling a house in a quick, professional manner no matter how challenging the housing market may be.  Thank you, Brian!

We completely enjoyed our stay at the Royal Kona Resort!  We got a nice corner room with a huge lanai that wrapped around the corner, and we could see both the ocean and the mountain side and tennis courts.  Plus, they have luau on Monday, Wednesday and Friday that we could actually watch for free (it's about $70/person) from our lanai!  :)  Lovely, just lovely - but I wish we could've eaten the luau food because it was a little tortuous smelling all that yummy lau lau and lomi lomi (poi, ah, I could pass).  

The room was lovely and spacious, beds were comfy (we slept so well).  Cool dark wood, sliding doors give you lots of privacy and blocks out the bright morning sun.  

The pool was lovely and we watched a couple gorgeous Hawaii sunsets, lots of orange, pink and purple - I would never get tired of these sunsets!  The lagoon on the other side is lovely from above with lots of fish swimming around, but it needs to be dredged or the water needs to be circulated because the water surface was a little oily and the rocks were covered with seaweed - eww.  

The hotel restaurant (forgot the name) was pretty decent for lunch.  We had Chinese chicken salad (my stand-by) and we had the breakfast buffet one morning, which was yummy and decent.  

The location of the resort is awesome because you can just walk over to the main (touristy) part of Alii Drive where all the shops and restaurants are - perfect location if you don't want to hop in your car all the time!  Thank you Royal Kona for a lovely stay!

~ $100/night

If you get a room on a higher floor with an ocean view, you'll have a great experience at the Sheraton Princess Kaiulani - the furniture is nicer and the view is spectacular!  But if you get a room on a lower floor with the "other" view, it will feel like any other Waikiki hotel, not so nice furniture, sterile feeling (we stayed on a lower floor but we could smell cigarette smoke thus we requested a room change and got a higher room with the better view).  Every other floor is a smoking floor so the likelihood that you would breathe in second hand smoke is pretty high...

But we loved the location so close to the ocean and so close to the International Marketplace and all the shops, restaurants and coffee shops.  And I loved all of the Hawaiian cultural activities they have at the hotel: hula lessons, Hawaiian quilting by cute older Hawaiian ladies, local arts and crafts sales.  And their breakfast and dinner buffets looked pretty decent (we didn't get around to trying it).  

They have free internet stations you can use in the lobby area but for 15 minutes at a time, and a lot of the websites (Facebook) are blocked for security reasons.  

Decent stay, but I'm not sure I would give a stellar recommendation to anyone to stay here.

~$110/night

We went here for breakfast one day, and it was healthy and nourishing to start off our day.  We shared a local style breakfast with scrambled eggs, Portuguese sausage and rice (missing some soy sauce, didn't notice if they had any).  I had the yogurt and full bowl of granola (a bit too much granola, but I liked the yogurt).  The organic Peruvian coffee (why not Kona coffee?) was good, but I would rather drink local Kona coffee (investing in local coffee farms would be so awesome!).

The service was a-ok, but they need to be more warm and friendly - more smiles, more Aloha spirit.  Other than that, the food was pretty decent.  They need to get in touch with the local spirit more.  And it's a bit price-y, but mostly tourists come here.  Loved the ocean views from the outside seating (please make sure the chairs are bird poop free though).  

Breakfast for 2 = $30

A great way to feed a big group for dinner.  We filled up at the buffet: fried chicken, wontons, orange chicken, green beans w/ chicken, broccoli beef, chow mein, rice, fried rice, dumplings, eggplant, and the fried dough topped with sugar was our favorite (especially my aunty's - she kept going back for seconds, thirds and fourths of those!).  

It's not high class fine dining, but it gets the job done.  

And dinner for 6 was about $90 with tax and tip - not bad, not bad at all!