Yes, I know. We're here in Balmer. But don't you sometimes wish you were on an island somewhere in the Pacific, inhaling strimps by the bucket full, suckin' on a coconut? Today's post is in a tropical setting, fashioned by Tammy HaQuang from her recent trip to Hawaii with husband Matt DeWolfe.

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Tammy HQ:

We didn’t seek out super-high-end eateries; we just wanted to eat what the locals eat.  After all, we were in Hawaii (AKA “Paradise on Earth”) and we wanted to experience it with our eyes and our stomachs, and it wasn’t hard to find good stuff. The best places and foods were the ones we stumbled upon, like the malasadas (Portuguese donuts) at Leonard’s and the roadside shrimp shacks.

CHE DAU TRANG (coconut rice pudding)
We knew that since Hawaii had such a large and diverse Asian population, it wouldn’t be hard to find good Vietnamese food, which is naturally one of my favorites.  We found a great Vietnamese dessert vendor in Honolulu’s Chinatown and their coconut rice pudding was as good as my mom’s:  sweet, but not too sweet, sticky rice, plump black-eyed peas, all topped with warm coconut milk and made by a true Southern Vietnamese cook (the southern part is important!  Northern Vietnamese cuisine is not as flavorful or robust as Southern Vietnamese food). The best part of this dessert, known as Che Dau Trang, is that it’s completely dairy-free, so Matt could partake.  We ended up going back to this very vendor a few days later, and Matt got his own serving.

LOCO MOCO
The loco moco is the Hawaiian version of the mainland’s burger and fries.  It’s Hawaiian fast food, meant to be fast and cheap, and it sure tasted that way.  A loco moco consists of a scoop(s) of white rice, a hamburger patty, a fried egg, all topped with brown gravy, and served with a side scoop(s) of macaroni salad. And considering the large Asian population, there was a bottle of Sriracha hot sauce at this place, and we added liberal amounts to this local dish. HOLY SMOKES!  Matt and I split this disgustingly satisfying concoction because having one serving each would have sent us into instant cardiac arrest.

SHAVE ICE
I don’t know why it’s called “Shave” Ice and not “Shaved” Ice, but it beats Baltimore’s own snow cone hands down (Blasphemy, perchance? Perhaps this could be another topic for the Baltimore Food Examiner?).  Hawaiian shave ice is soft and fluffy like powered snow, but unlike what we do here in Ballmore, the Hawaiians serve their shave ice on top of ice cream and sweetened red beans!  Matsumoto’s Shave Ice on the North Shore of Oahu is world-renowned and we drove the hour from Waikiki specifically to experience it.  My cone from bottom to top had the following:

1. Vanilla Ice Cream
2. Red Azuki Beans – red beans cooked in sugar syrup, this is a very common dessert ingredient in Japan
3. Shave Ice
4. Mango, Lychee, and Orange syrup.

This was the most perfect frozen treat, and worth the cost of our airfare.  Another popular topping for shave ice is condensed milk. Despite the layers of cavity-inducing ingredients I had in my cone, I drew the line at condensed milk. That was just too much for me, but my husband (who shouldn’t eat dairy) had it on his cone and relished every spoonful.

SHRIMP SHACKS
We could have eaten every meal at a shrimp shack and would have been completely satisfied.  Despite their low-key (translation: sketchy) appearance, these food buses had some high-quality ingredients and ridiculously tasty food.  True to the name, shrimp is the specialty, and comes in “plate lunches” with other grilled meats, rice, and macaroni salad.  The mac salad, as seen with the loco moco, is standard Hawaiian fare.  I don’t know how this stuff became so popular with the natives, but it was everywhere, and was super-mayonnaisy.  Maybe it has something to do with the strong Japanese influence (nearly 17% of the population in Hawaii is Japanese).  While in Japan last year we noticed that mayonnaise was featured in a lot of the food, from fried pork sandwiches to sushi rolls.

What we expected of the foods we sought out in Hawaii probably isn’t too different from what we look for at home in Baltimore.  We wanted tasty food that the locals would wait in line for.  That’s what we do when we go out to dinner at Rocket to Venus or The Golden West, two places where the food (and the people-watching) is worth the wait.  The photographs were our way of capturing how different from our Baltimore existence, the “regular” stuff in Hawaii is.