Loco Moco at Last

This is loco moco, a Hawaiian special plate lunch including hamburger, rice, gravy, and a fried egg.
For years I've been saying that I wanted to try this local comfort food, invented here.
My loco moco today at Anuinui Cafe was a bit fancied up -- it included mushrooms, and the hamburger was
crumbled to bite-size instead of a patty. I enjoyed it. To the left you can see my lilikoi iced tea.

I haven't been neglecting my favorite flavor lilikoi. Here's a lilikoi
cheesecake from earlier this week. Lilikoi, as I've mentioned, is Hawaiian for passion fruit.

At Merriman's Hamburger and Pizza place I had another lilikoi mousse for lunch Tuesday.
I also had a scoop of lilikoi sorbet after lunch today.

For my main course at Merriman's I had this salad.

As we are getting ready to leave, we're still enjoying the island flavors. I've had quite a few more helpings of fresh local fish at various restaurants, but the pictures would be a bit repetitive!

Lillikoi Mousse

Merriman's Restaurant on the Big Island is one of our favorite places. Peter Merriman hasn't expanded into a huge chain, but he does have several other restaurants, including one delightfully close to the apartment we are renting during our stay on the island of Kauai. We had a delicious dinner, including several favorites from earlier Merriman's meals.

Lilikoi mousse. I posted photos of this Merriman's special in 2007, 2012, and 2015. I've eaten it on other occasions as well.
Lilikoi is the Hawaiian name for passion fruit, one of the greatest flavors I am familiar with.

Before dessert, we began the meal with an appetizer of Merriman's special quesadillas with island-raised pork -- from the menu:

"KALUA PIG & SWEET ONION QUESADILLA

House-Made Kim Chee, Mango Sweet Chili Sauce"

Next came our two main courses. Len had seared ahi. Mine was locally farmed shrimp with kombucha, a mild white fish. This was prepared in very delicious sauce, with vegetables and mashed potatoes.

Shrimp, kombucha, and vegetables.

For all my posts about Merriman's, including this one, click here.

Memorable Meals of 2015

It's about time to celebrate the New Year, and to think about the old year. Here are some favorite meals I had in 2015, all documented in earlier blog posts --

January: Jack's 95th Birthday Dinner at an Italian restaurant in Boynton Beach, Fla.

January: Oysters at Aqua Grill, New York

February: Gatsby's Tavern, Alexandria, VA.
George Washington ate here -- see photo behind Len's head.

March: Tiramisu at Villa Mozart, Fairfax, VA, celebrating our anniversary.

April: Sparky's in Hatch NM for a Green Chili Cheeseburger.

May: Spike's Bar and Grill, Grayling, MI, with our friends Phyllis and Ed who joined us in the

search for the Kirtland's Warbler

June: reindeer barbecue on our cruise to Svalbart on the National Geographic Explorer

July: Miriam enjoying her sandwich at the Coffee Shack, Captain Cook, HI. And my Eggs Benedict with fresh tuna.

August: Delicious fish at Merriman's in Waimea, also on the Big Island of Hawaii.

September: Shrimp raised in an indoor shrimp farm in Indiana, and
cooked at Elaine and Larry's house in West Lafayette.

October: Cape May Scallops at Lobster House, Cape May, NJ

November: Thanksgiving Dinner in Fairfax, VA

December: Celebrating Chanukkah with Elaine and Larry in West Lafayette.

December: So many favorites! We had latkes in Ann Arbor and Indiana,
Bavarian sausage and potato salad for Christmas Eve, and
Polish Christmas Dinner. Here's the sausage!

It's been a wonderful year full of delightful meals with friends and family. We had lots of good meals alone at home, as well as many out. Thanks to everyone who shared with us! And Happy New Year to all.

Merriman's Restaurant, Waimea Hawaii

The open kitchen at Merriman's was an innovation, though now open kitchens are seen frequently.

As we do just about every trip to Kona, we ate dinner tonight at Merriman's Restaurant in Waimea, around an hour's drive from where we're staying. The owner, Peter Merriman, founded the restaurant in 1988. He was one of several innovators who developed the Pacific Rim style of cuisine and various other innovations that have now become almost standard. Fortunately the restaurant has stayed true to its origins and is still wonderful, despite many imitators.

Merriman encouraged a number of farmers in the area to grow excellent produce and special meat for his restaurant. The results of his efforts and those of his cohort are still available in the restaurant as well as at farmers' markets and even supermarkets throughout the island. He worked with small-scale fishermen and created a number of dishes to use the local fish in the most delicious possible ways. He was an early promotor of small-scale local produce along with Alice Waters and several others in Hawaii and California. I've written about this restaurant before, and still love to eat there.

Dinner begins with in-house bread and butter from a local dairy.

Among the six of us, we tried several fish dishes. The special (top) included local farm-raised prawns, polenta, and broccoli. Manchong (lower left) and ahi tuna (right) were also on the menu.

My dessert: lilikoi mousse with macadamia nut shortbread.

Of course we don't spend all day eating -- though we did have lunch at the most highly recommended hamburger place
in Hilo. We spent the afternoon at the Hawaiian Tropical Botanical Garden, which is in a beautiful seaside setting.

Light and shadow in the garden today were stunning.

The waves were very high and breaking up on the rocky shore.

A Few Great Restaurants

Last week in Hawaii, we ate out several times, using the kitchen in our condo the remainder of the time. The photo above is a visual summary of the foods we ate and the presentations of food we enjoyed. To see the individual photos at full size, check out my Flickr site here: Kona Dining Out 2012.

Over the years, the food in Hawaii has developed in a most wonderful way. On our early visits around 20 years ago, most restaurants served vegetables and salads made from Mainland produce -- neglecting the possibilities of local farmers. Meat was probably frozen, and the food was typical of big hotels, or was the fake Trader Vic's type of Pacific made-up exotica including overly sweet cocktails etc. Even restaurants that served fresh fish didn't pay much attention to the side dishes or create very exciting results with the remarkable ocean products they could easily obtain.

Back then, local farming wasn't very noticeable -- maybe a farm stand with a few bananas and papayas from the tree. Farmer's markets were maybe just getting started, but they aren't my topic today.

The exception to this sad situation, beginning in the late 1980s, was Merriman's Restaurant in the upland community of Waimaea, where Peter Merriman had worked with local farmers to develop the types of high-quality produce that were in fact natural to grow in the wonderful Hawaiian climate. He contracted for lettuce, tomatoes, corn, and many other kitchen-garden crops, as well as special pork, lamb, beef, and fresh local fish, and the result was then and continues to be highly satisfying.

Merriman also was a founding member of an association of Hawaiian restaurants from other islands that was developing its own style, originally called Pacific Rim Cuisine. (The term has been misused and appropriated since then, I'm afraid.) As the current Merriman restaurant website says: "In a time when a typical restaurant's fresh ingredients were sourced only from large distributors, and local producers were forced to sell at the same price points as their imported counterparts, Merriman went against the grain. He was the first in Hawaii to go directly to local farmers and ranchers to source his menu, and was happy to pay a higher cost."

On our first trip, Merriman's was still unusual, though it had one direct competitor called The Palm Cafe, which closed a few years later.* Our lunch at Merriman's last week demonstrated the continued quality of the restaurant -- despite the fact that it's now one of several Merriman's restaurants on other Hawaiian islands.

The influence of Merriman's and of the local produce movement is highly visible in other restaurants where we enjoyed a variety of dishes. For example, Island Lava Java was originally a cafe and bakery, and is now serving locally sourced lunches and dinners -- I don't know when they expanded their menu, but the cafe has been in business for a long time. I had a really good Salade Niçoise with seared ahi tuna, local greens, and other local vegetables when we ate there. I also had Salade Niçoise at Merriman's a couple of days before: the Lava Java one was comparable, and Merriman's does not include tuna, only anchovies, alas.

Another restaurant that's been around a while serving fantastic local foods is the Keei Café, in one of the small towns going south out of Kona. We've been there on several recent trips, and again found it very enjoyable. After several fish dinners, I ordered rack of lamb, and found it delectable. Their desserts are most tempting, but I always seem to order the mango cobbler, which I love.

On our early trips we ate at a small Indonesian place in town called Sibu in a picturesque old shopping area under a gigantic Banyan tree. A few years ago, this went out of business and was replaced by Rapanui, a sort of general New Zealand and Polynesian restaurant. Wonderful fresh fish! You can get lots of Asian-style vegetables and flavored rice, OR for the really lazy eater, you can do what I did and order fish and chips. Also a delightful coconut cream pie in an individual tart shell all covered with whipped cream, which I seem to order every vacation.

Two other restaurants I like are Kenichi Pacific and The Coffee Shack. Kenichi Pacific is oddly located in the same shopping center with our main grocery store, Long's Drugs, and a movie theater. But it has really nice but pricy sushi, beautifully presented, as well as elegant and quite delicious fish entrees.

The famous Coffee Shack -- mainly a breakfast or brunch place -- is most of the way to the Pu'uhonua o Honaunau National Historical Park and to one of the world's best snorkeling beaches. We stopped there on the way from snorkeling over the most amazing yellow, purple, and greenish coral and seeing every type of fish we could imagine. It's a very nice life in Kona!

* As I wrote in 1999: Our favorite restaurant has been replaced by a Hard Rock Cafe. This lamented location was called the Palm Cafe (upstairs) with a less formal version Under the Palm below, in Kona. It featured Pacific Rim or fusion cooking, very delicate. I had delicious ravioli filled with chicken and ricotta in a vinegary sauce, followed by local swordfish. For dessert, the creme brulee (3 little dishes, coffee, coconut, and chocolate) is marvelous, as is the ginger creme caramel. Between 1993 and 1996, I think the Palm Cafe improved on an already good thing. But I guess it wasn't really making it.

We're not in Hawaii any more

But we had a couple of treats during our last 24 hours on the island. A last dinner at the Kona Brewing Company:


A last lunch at Merriman's Cafe during a leisurely ride up the coast. Dessert: pineapple-papaya crisp with brown sugar ice cream:

Aloha!

Merriman's Kitchen

Merriman's in Waimea is probably the most famous restaurant here on the Big Island of Hawaii.

We've eaten here almost every time we have visited this island. Today, we drove up for lunch -- it's around an hour from the condo we are renting. On the way there and back, we stopped at several breathtaking beaches which I'll post later.

I took photos of Merriman's kitchen and our desserts today. My choice was perfect Waimea strawberries in a tapioca pudding. Len had the chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream and espresso sauce. We started with salad -- local red and yellow tomatoes, local goat cheese -- and soup, and both had fish for the main course, garnished with other local vegetables.

Lilikoi tastes of the day: I had lilikoi iced tea. Len's fish came with a lilikoi-flavored dipping sauce. As I recall, I had the lilikoi mousse last year, but it's still on the menu.

A little background: Peter Merriman, the restaurant's founder, was one of the inventors of Pacific Rim cuisine, and developed a whole local gourmet food-growing industry here. Since the climate is diverse, local food includes beef, lamb, herbs, tomatoes, lettuce, tropical fruit, goat cheese, mac nuts, and probably other items as well. Fresh ocean fish complements the farm offerings. The restaurant has been in business for over 20 years, and there are now additional Merriman's on other islands -- but this is the original, in the heart of the farm country where the produce grows. For more on Merriman's, see their website.

More of Merriman's Beautiful Food

We had lamb, veal, and steak dinners, all fantastically prepared. For children they make plain pasta. Besides the ice cream and mousse, Evelyn tried the "chocolate purse" which is filo dough around a brownie-type center, and Tom had the creme brulee selection.

Merriman's First Courses

Alice is especially fond of caesar salad, so she and Tom shared one; Miriam had a small one of her own. Lenny had the famous local tomatoes. I had the local avocado, bacon, and lettuce salad. Evelyn had the beet and mixed vegetable salad with blue cheese.