Clint U.'s Profile

Although you can walk into this establishment wet and sandy from the beach, don't let that fool you.   PP serves some of the best Greek food  on Maui regardless of price....and having low prices is one of the more pleasant bonuses.  I was here 3 years ago have returned this year.....and the quality has not changed.  This place can compete with some really good Greek and Mediterranean restaurants in the Wash DC area.
1. Pita Pizza......white cheese (mozzarella and goat cheese I think, with tomatoes and basil leaves baked on a pita.    Very good taste and cooked well.  Only thing lacking is that I would prefer a crunchier crust and not soft/pliable like a regular pita bread.   4 stars
2.  Lamb Kebob:   I ordered mine rare and it came with a variety of grilled veggiles like zucchini, onions, and tomatoes, rice pilaf, and wedges of buttered and seasoned pita bread.    Fantastic.   The lamb came out more medium rare...which was still great....seasoned well and grilled with a little char and crisp on the outside.   Extremely good preparation.  4.5 stars
3.  Fish Pita Sandwich:   Grilled ahi...seared and rare in the middle with lettuce, tomatoes and spices inside a pita bread.   Excellent preparation and taste.   4.5 stars
4  Chicken teriyaki pita:   Surprisingly for a Greek restaurant....a very good rendition of an asian dish.   Not surprising with it being in Maui where I think every chef has to pass a tourist test in cooking something teriyaki..... 4 stars
5.  Pita bread....I just have to say something about it.....it was buttered and seasoned with a little garlic, toasted slightly and then cut into wedges.....I could have had a whole meal of this pita bread and their yogurt based dipping sauce....5 stars

OVERALL:   I am rating this a 5 star establishment because not only is the food as good as you can get anywhere on the island but the price is incredibly reasonable...$9-14 per entree/dinner in a very informal environment.....

One of the best fried fish tacos I have ever had.  

This establishment is a year old this month and the value they give to the Maui customers is high.   Tuesday this value is especially high when every taco is $1 each.

1.  Chips and salsa.   Chips are freshly fried and hot when served.  Slightly greasy but fresh.  The salsa was tasty and good.  4 stars
2.  Guacamole:   Large chucks of avacado...mild taste but good.   4 stars
3.  Baja Fish Taco:   My favorite on the menu.  The fish had a great batter and was very crispy.  5 stars
4.  Blackened Fish Taco:   Good tasting blackened fish......4 stars
5.  Grilled Fish Taco:   A little too plain for my tastes however the fish was well prepared and not overcooked which is common for these small shops.   4 stars.
6.  Beans:  Whole beans in a very savory sauce.   Tasty and good.   4.5 stars
7.  Rice:   Plain tasting rice.   Good palette cleaner....3 stars

Recommendation:   I told this to the owner.   Serve the tacos disaggregated.....all the ingredients separated and let the customer assemble the taco.   This keeps the Baja fish fresh and crispy and not soggy when everything is added together.  

Also ask for a little larger portion for the rice and beans if you are hungry.   Very small amount served and adding a little more doesn't significantly affect the bottom line in a restaurant...in fact it might attract even more customers)

OVERALL:  5 stars for value on Maui....4.5 stars compared to all the other taco places I have been to in the USA....Wahoo, etc.   The Baja style preparation was the best I have had for fried fish.  Taco Tuesday is a great deal if you are around then....

Back again for another year....and it is still at the top of the list for places to eat.

Poke:   I read some of the reviews of bad poke here.   I never encountered that.   The ahi is clear and free from any fishy odors.   Taste is as mild as I have ever had.  The tako is also free of any off odors, meat is tender but with the characteristic.  Hard for me to say this is the best poke on the island but it ranks with the best on the island.

Maui Potato Chips:   Come here and ask to get a freshly fried batch of potato chips.   Does not get any better than that anywhere in the world.  At $4.99 a pound, one of the best deals around.

YAYYYYY!!!   FINALLY!!!!!   An excellent restaurant on Maui that doesn't break the bank. ($18 - $27 per entree including veggie and starch with good portion size, not Da Kitchen huge but not small)  

Yep.  Like other reviewers said, there was a long line at Sansei....Cuatro had none at 7 pm on a Saturday night.

The owner is the ex head chef at Sansei and wanted to try his hand at his own place with a freedom of expressing his culinary skills in a Mexican Asian fusion cuisine.   Wow....hoisen meeting adobo.  

Taking his friend which is his head waiter, he started his restaurant with 3 people.....adding a hostess at the front.  Cuatro opened its doors in April 2009.

The result is AWESOME.  

1.  Everything starts with freshly fried corn tortilla triangles served with a green chile verde sauce.   The chips were great and tasty.....the sauce was just like the best in New Mexico.....not extraordinary but at the top.
2.  Sushi grade ahi seared but raw on the inside served House style which is a Mexican style (I could taste cumin and chilies) blackened fish with string beans, brown rice pilaf.    EXCELLENT blending of spices...a little saltier than I would prefer but nonetheless great.   A cumin-oregano beurre blanc covered the bottom of the plate with the fish on top.   An avacado pico de gallo relish was placed on top of the whole heap.   What is nice about this dish is that the sauces are at the bottom so you can have it relatively plain or have it very rich by mixing in the sauces.  5 stars
3.  Ono served classic style which is sauteed with lemon caper butter and rock shrimp.   Fish was cooked perfectly....cooked but not a hint of being overcooked.   This was served with mash potatoes and asparagus   Again an excellent dish but not inventive....designed for the really caution tourist who is looking for a Macaroni Grill on the island.  4 stars.
4.  Mahi mahi served mauiterranean style...another restaurant unique blending of flavors.   The fish is served with a tomato-caper relish, basil beurre blanc, a balsalmic syrup with grilled veggies and garlic mashed potatoes.    The fish was cooked perfectly.   5 stars
5.  Chocolate ice cream served on a bed of fresh fruits, drizzled with chocolate syrup and sprinkled with nuts.    How can you go wrong with these ingredients?  4.5 stars
6.  Service:   Very attentive, not in your face  One waiter and hostess had to work the entire restaruant of about a dozen tables but they did it.   4.5 stars

Needless to say, my rants about lousy Maui restaurants has been significantly dampened with Cuatro.  This restaurant could compete with the best restaurants in LA or Wash DC.

OVERALL:   5 solid stars for Maui restaurants.....4.5 against all US restaurants.

This is a hidden gem of a restaurant tucked away in a corner of the Foodland complex.   The bad news is that it will not stay hidden for much longer.   I will probably have a long wait the next time I come here.

Nearly every local Hawaiian (conference attendees, hotel staff, random people on the street) I asked included Cafe O'Lei as one of their recommendations.....soooooooooo I  had to try it.

The restaurant is very clean and well appointed...not elegant or formal, but contemporary nice so you would feel comfortable in a suit, business casual dress or  upgraded shorts and sandals.   Coming off the beach in trunks and sandy go aheads doesnt quite work here.

So here is what we tried....

1. Flatbread appetizer:   Served with a mozzarella blend and their signature marinated short ribs baked on a flatbread like a pizza.   This was excellent.   Crispy crust, stringy cheese and  very tasty shortrib meat on top.   4.5 stars.
2.  Blackened mahi mahi.   This came out more soggy and saltier than I prefer.   A little disappointing considering the hype I got from this place.   3 stars.
3.   Prime rib:   Generous portion of prime rib.   Tender and tasty.   Medium rare is served as warm red center.   Not the best prime rib, but solidly good.   4 stars
4. Baked Pacific Seafood Zarzuella:  Clams, mussels, calamari, jumbo shrimp, roma tomatoes, garlic, saffron, baked in a casserole.   This was a very tasty dish.   The seafood came out cooked very well for seafood an not overcooked.  4 stars
5.  Service:   Absolutely excellent.   Waitress was friendly and engaging   Gave honest opinions about which menu items worked and didnt work.   I really appreciated that.   4.5 stars

Overall:  4 stars.   I just have to get over the fact that Maui does not try to compete with the cuisines in LA, Wash DC or NYC.   4.5 stars in Maui....3 stars in any major city in the USA.

Maui restaurants better start realizing in these harsher economic times, when tourist spend between 8 to 17 hours travelling to the islands, they should step up their game and don't take the tourist business for granted.   The food should be as good as they can make and the servers should be appreciative they are getting any business.  

Big Wave flunked big time.

One person in our party wasn't that hungry and ordered the soup and salad for $10.   What a pathetic mess.
1.  Salad:   Small and exactly like the one served with entrees.   Lettuce, a slice of tomato, and a few shards of carrots.   I complained to the server about the size of the salad for the price and was told "That's how we serve it now."    One star
2.  Onion Soup:   Severed in a cup and only filled 2/3 full.   Soup was worse than Lipton onion soup mix.  One star
3.   Baked penne pasta:  Looked promising on the menu and presented well.....but the taste was disappointing.   The description of parmesean, mozzarella, bleu cheese, garlic and sundried tomato cream sauce sounded appetizing....the execution was downright poor.   The penne dish was tasteless.  The sauce was watery....no thickness of cheese of any kind.   Very disappointing.  2 stars.
4.  Crispy Pan Seared Salmon:  Crispy salmon with spinach, sweet potato in a lemon grass broth sounded really good.   Again the execution was poor.   The salmon was pan seared but sat in the broth so the texture was more like poached.   The cooked spinach, purple sweet potato in the lemon broth tasted pretty good mixed together.   3 stars but not enough to save this review.
5.  Service:  Barely adequate, distant and I felt like I stood in her way between work and going home.

OVERALL:  2 stars for the quality.   However I will give it 3 stars if you are able to take advantage of the 2 for 1 early bird special before 6:30 pm and carefully pick through the menu.  

With harder economic times coming, people have to try harder to say in business.   But I guess some aren't getting the wake up call yet...

The hardest part of reviewing and rating highly ethnic food is trying to stay unbiased with your own biases and paradigms and to go with the flow with the new food.  

Most of the employees are from Tibet except for a couple of servers.   The busboy just arrived from Tibet and commented that this chef (the matriarch) cooks just like his mom did back home.   So I asked what he likes to eat at home and after a few minutes of investigative culinary questioning this is what I had......

Green salad:  Standard green salad with slivers of carrots and a slice of cucumber.  An interesting sesame/soy/vinegar based dressing.   Tasty dressing.   3 stars.

Curry soup:   Thin curry yellowish soup.   Bits of vegetables in the soup.   Interesting soup...3.5 stars

Kham Amdo Thukpa:   I was told this is homestyle Tibetan beef stew.   This is not like a Western, thick beef stew but more like a beef soup.   The noodles are short  and thick...sorta like a cross between a wide egg noodle and gnocchi.  The beef is thinly sliced and boiled in the soup.   Diced green onions are in the soup and hot red pepper flakes accompany the stew.   Overall a dish on the light side....very tasty.   4 stars

MoMo:   This is the Tibetan comfort food and served in the home.   Much like pancaked/flattened pot stickers...the taste and texture is very similar.   Two dipping sauces were included....a soy based and a hot red pepper based ones.  The outer dough was thicker and tougher than most pot sticker skins.     The beef was finely ground and had a mildly seasoned (garlic/onion) taste to it.  Overall a very enjoyable dish...4 stars.

Tibetan food to me was both  novel but yet familar.  Their cuisine reflects a lot upon their culture....the food is basic but with enough variation to be interesting.  

Overall this is 4 star cuisine.

The conference brochure said.....
"Welcome Reception:  Food and drink at the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History"  

YIKES!!!!!!!    Are they sure they want to serve food there????  Would Les Stroud or Bear Grylls even drink the water here in a survival situation?   Didn't Zimmern film one of his Bizarre Food episodes here???  Doesn't the EPA put places named like this on their Superfund list?

Well the food was good...BBQ Tri-Tip....cocktail shrimp...grilled veggies....etc....but this review isn't about the food but the museum.   As part of the reception we toured the museum for free (normally $8) for a couple of hours.

I have been to the Oak Ridge nuclear museum and this  one isn't in the same league.   This one is a little more campy....clearly on a shoestring budget especially because it recently opened in April 2009.

There are a few educational games for the kids.....nowhere near like the Smithsonian.....but it will occupy your kids for a few minutes.   The educational tour of the different aspects of the nuclear industry...from it's beginnings to environmental impacts was just average.

The museum has an eclectic collection of odds and ends of anything nuclear from kids toys to big kids toys like replicas of Little Boy and  Fat Man.  

A highlight of the museum is the electrolysis machine where you generate oxygen and hydrogen....then set it off with a spark.   The bang is equivalent to a small firecracker....so it gets your attention no matter where you are in the museum.

Overall, it is an OK 2 to 3 hour stop for $8.  

And no...I don't glow in the dark.....however i was able to get to the bathroom in the middle of the night without turning on any lights.....

Ut oh.  A conference in Hawaii.   Although it sounds exotic, a three day conference where you need 15 hours on each side of the trip to travel doesnt quite make this relaxing trip.  Also looking forward to three days of rubber chicken, dry donuts, over brewed coffee, and the universal green/yellow/orange colored fruit salad conference food...

After getting my rental car, my trusty Garmin guides me right to my destination.  

Too busy not getting lost, I finally arrive and look around at my surroundings......GASP!!!  I think I went back in time 30 years.   Overall, the Hilton HV grounds just looks kinda dingy and dated, that 60's Hawaiian village look.   Stark, sparse vegetation.  I guess I was spoiled on Maui and Kawai.   Honolulu/Waikiki is definately a city.

However things started to look up.   I was in the Kalia Tower.  This building is both hotel and timeshare apartments mixed together.   The lobby was well appointed and staff attentive and sharp.   (I guess this down economy is making people appreciate their jobs more these days...)   Here is how it went...

The Room:

It was one of the better Hilton rooms I have been in.   Hilton has a high standard of excellence and this room doesn't disappoint.   Ok...it's not  the Broadmoor or Ritz, but it is quite decent for $177 a night.  

Appointments are nice, room very clean, furniture good condition and not worn.    
Very convenient to the beach which is on the property.  Many shops on the premises hence the Village part of the name, albeit a little pricey.  4 stars

The Food:

A SURPRISE!!!   It was actually pretty good considering they had to feed over 300 people in one sitting.  
1.  The one lunch was buffet style.   The teriyaki chicken and soy sauce based fish were not overcooked but were right on the money.  
2. Sushi was served as an afternoon snack they it was superb.   The tuna was clear and fresh, the smoked eel was done perfectly.  
3.  Green tea somen in a soy based sauce.   Quite a surprise to see this at a conference but it was pretty good.   I had four bowls of the stuff.

Overall, the food was a solid 4 stars.

If in Honolulu you dont want to drive or walk far, but just want to relax and hang near  both a pool and beach, this Hilton is a pretty good choice.

This review pertains to the banquet facilities for about 200 people.

Ok.  Here we go.  A company banquet.  I braced myself for rubber chicken and shoe leather steak.  

WRONG!

1.  Bread:  Fresh and hot.   Unusual for a banquet  4 stars
2.  Salad:  Good mixture of field greens, veggies and tasty cream dressing.   4 stars
3.  Beef Filet:   Amazingly, it was better than a steak I had a better know Baltimore restaurant a few weeks earlier.   Tender, done medium.   Not overdone.   4.5 stars
4.  Grilled shrimp:  Done just right.   Moist but cooked through.   There is a 20 second cooking window to get it right.   4.5 stars

Overall 4.5 stars.   I was extremely surprised how good the food was.  
Never pass up the chance of a banquet meal at the Westin.