There is no better way to antangonize anything than to threaten it’s food, and us humans are no exception. So it was this Saturday evening at Windward Mall IHOP. I had heard rumours of bad service, but I had no idea until experiencing it first hand. This night after a Cruise night found us in need of some food, the IHOP was conveniently located, and pancakes sounded good. We thought there might be a wait, but stepping inside that wasn’t the case. It wasn’t that crowded inside. What we didn’t realize that this also seemed to apply to the staff, there aparently wasn’t enough staff. Or so we would like to hope. It took an hour, at least, from when seated to getting our food. Tell me it takes that long to make a bunch of pancakes, steak & eggs, omlette, and sausage. I actually didn’t have much to complain about the food, it was tasty, the steak was tender, eggs cooked properly, but it took ridiculously long. Five minutes longer and we would halve walked. 
Hana hou? I sure as heck hope not! And I am sure not going to give them another chance! 1 out of 4 raving mad hungry monkeys (Moe “I want some cake” anyone?) because the food was decent for what you expect from a place like this, but the delay was simply unacceptable.
Popped into the newly remodeled and opened Foodland Farms at Aina Haina. It’s kind of a mini “Whole Paycheck” market. They borrowed a lot of aspects with the areas of higher end products, deli, and prepared foods, but not quite as extensive. The beer selection is also pretty good with some items I haven’t seen elsewhere, but again is nowhere as extensive as Whole Foods. What I did spy was this Sierra Nevada Bigfoot Ale. With a name like that I simply could not resist. Pours with a pretty strong head, simply popping the cap produced bubbles in the bottle neck. Color is a medium dark somewhat cloudy amber. Immediate floral aroma without even taking a sip. It is strongly hoppy, the bitter hits you from the begining, it’s no aftertaste here! I guess Bigfoot like drinking flowers? 
It demands to be drunk while eating something hearty and strongly flavored, I had it with a herbed roasted chicken and it worked well. I don’t know if I could handle drinking this by itself. Thankfully it doesn’t have the syrupy sweet that immediately turns me off, although I have to wonder how they achieved the butt kicking 9.6%ABV, and the label does say barleywine style. I only now coming off the buzz from that one bottle. I have a hard time rating this. I enjoyed it with my meal, perhaps the ABV helped, but I had a hard time finishing it after my food was done. I guess go with middle of the road 2 out of 4 bigmonkeys?
Whoa. Just spent $50 USD at Hanamaru for dinner. Oh, it was really good. I’m pretty sure that it is easy to get out of there for less than $20 for a set meal, but if you go the izakaya-style picky dishes route, it can get up there. In depth review to come soon. Definitely a better way to spend $50 than going to tonight’s Bon Jovi concert!
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It was drizzling in town as forecast, so we headed up to Seventh Heaven on Blackcomb to stay above the freezing level. Snow was soft in places, but not “powder”. Sticky and slow. There was a fairly good windchill up top, with a serious headwind heading down the first pitch that combined with the sticky snow to prevent forward motion. Most areas were pretty ridden out, but there were a few stashes here and there. We rode down throught the terrain garden on our last run down, then caught the lift back up to the top and rode PTP over to Whistler then downloaded on the gondola – no point in burning out our legs and wasting time on krappy conditions on the rideout! Are we “snow snobs”? Supposedly there’s more rain overnight and tomorrow with the same 1800 meter freezing level, possibly some high winds, maybe subsiding tomorrow. Whee. Doesn’t look good for tomorrow… To sprinkle powdered sugar on our already dubious day, when we went by Sushi-ya for dinner, the space was dark, and there was what looked like a “this space available” sign in the window. Fabio went upstairs and there was no “we’ve moved to…” sign on the door. Guess our favorite sushi place in Whistler is no more. Boo. Sachi Sushi was our fall-back. Sushi was good except for maybe the BBQ smoked salmon roll, which was a little on the dry side. The beef tataki was ma-ma. Chocolate ice cream at Cows made everything all better. Continue reading ‘First Snowboarding Day of 2010′
Okay, we’re here now. Check-in was as slow as usual in HNL, but security was quick and professional, so we got through in time to go to KBC for some wings, pizzas and beer. The two pizzas were $20 USD each (ouch!), but were excellent. All told, we ended up dropping $31 USD each for everything including a good tip for the cool server dude. We met Kevin and Naomi at the gate, and we were shortly boarded. The center overhead bins in the 767-300-2 (four-door/no overwing exits) were a little small for the Kifaru X-Ray with side pockets, so I had to pull the laptop power supply and ultrapod out and put them inside the pack for the bin to close. On takeoff, a bad baby immediately set to screeching and wailing inconsolably, but after bevvie service, the turbulence set in and I was rocked to sleep. Continue reading ‘In Whistler’
No, I really don’t know. If you know what bread pudding is like, it’s that kind of pudding – not the “wet” kind. If you’re really that curious, go hit up Wikipedia for more information.
I was cleaning out my wallet today at lunchtime, and found the receipt from the time I went to Good to Grill after the Honolulu Marathon. $8 USD for the Surfer Special (2 pancakes, 2 eggs, bacon or SPAM) and $2.50 USD for a cup of coffee. The food was fine, and they actually had real butter instead of margerine for the pancakes, but all the service items were third-party prepacks from like Y. Hata or somewhere like that. The service was excellent. One of our group even knew the owner, and we got to meet him when he came by before just we left, but we had attentive service before any of the staff knew this. I would have to drop by for lunch or dinner to really pass judgement, but from this breakfast experience, I’d say that I was underwhelmed, in particular value wise. The Euro Illy coffee was just coffee – there are so many good locally-produced coffees that the rationale of bringing in a supposed premium European brand feels like pompous name-dropping.
Ambivalent – give them a try and see what you think
Two-and-a-half out of four breakfast scarfing monkeys.
So I got this annoying cough. I thought I was getting hit with allergies starting a number of days ago. Itchy eyes, sinus pressure. Now this cough and somewhat general melaise. Might be a cold. Just popped a giant guaifenesin expectorant tablet. Damn that thing was a horse pill, wasn’t quite expecting that! Almost gagged it up! Hoping that will loosen things up and make the coughs a bit more productive. This particular one is max strength, hugest dose I’ve seen, 1200mg.
To calm the cough, here’s an interesting one, dark chocolate. Seems the cacao has stuff that in some research has shown to be more effective than codeine in suppressing coughs. Of course I don’t know if it’s been studied wide enough to be reliable, but what the heck, it’s was an excuse to go buy bars of Godiva dark chocolate that was on sale at Longs. And who needs an excuse to have some good dark chocolate anyway! So some hot steaming and spicy pho for dinner certainly loosened up some of that mucous, followed by lots of water, and a 43g bar of dark chocolate, and you know what, hardly a cough. Is it placebo? I dunno, but I’m not complaining. If I plan to continue trying this, it might be better to look for higher cacao concentration bars with less sugar and fats though. In any case, it sure puts me in a better mood, chocolate is good for you!
Oh, and don’t bother with milk or white cholocate. Milk chocolate is barely chocolate, and white chocolate is an insult.
Went by 7-11 in search of some refreshing fruit drink. I saw this and remembered a couple weeks back all the talk of citrus and this fruit mentioned. I had to buy it. I can report it is quite yummy and refreshing. Fragrant. Not quite like yuzu, it’s a different hybrid, supposedly mandarin and kumquat, but still a very nice aroma. Wonder where fresh fruit can be found, I’m sure whereever you go for your Philippino shopping.
3.5 out of 4 vitamin C’d monkeys, I’m sure a fresh squeezed version would be great, but this still brings back “Sweet Memories Of Cebu”!
I won a ticket to tonight’s Awamori Festival fundraiser from the JCCH. I was anticipating a learning experience about Awamori, but I learned more beforehand from Wikipedia, since all they had was “Z” and various fruity cocktails made from it. I even brought a notebook and pen so I could write stuff down and write a really informative post! I got three drinky tickets with my entrance ticket, so the first thing I had was a shot shaken with ice. Whatever “Z” was wasn’t top shelf, and the shot was seriously on the short side. At least the Asian sister who poured my second shot on the rocks gave the yellow brother a long pour. Mitch came late, so they didn’t give him any drinly tickets, so I gave him my third, although he used it for a soda. The food was pedestrain buffet fare, and none of it of a Ryukyu bent. WTF?! At least there was a good Okinawan dance performance, and I got to hang out with Mitch, Melissa, and a bunch of really nice people. The skies were dark and ominous on the way ofer to ATM after work, and sure as shingles, the sky opened up with wind whipped rain and lightning as soon as the event was underway. Everyone had to crowd under whatever shelter they could find at the open-air venue. I ran into Derrick from the JCCH whose friends were performing. Sorry – I’d write more, but I’m really tired (Fabio, you didn’t miss much).
Here are some pictures
