Forget grass skirts and tiki bars: the new Honolulu has edgy art and chefs offering innovative, fusion-led menus, says Chloe Cann
IT’S in Chinatown, behind plain white walls, royal blue window frames and frosted glass doors, that you’ll find the real Honolulu. The one that wasn’t dreamed up solely to please tourists’ tastes; the one that isn’t a compound of clichés. The one where you’ll find Hawaii on a plate.
In between sips of my Kaji cocktail, a “hard” plantation tea with cardamominfused vodka and fresh pineapple juice topped with sugarcane, I sample a poké cracker — sweet morsels of raw tuna tossed in house-made ponzu sauce and adorned with local microgreens and tiny turrets of avocado mousse, all planted atop a shrimp and squid-ink rice cracker. It’s followed by the tako — seared, pillow-soft octopus glazed with sticky, spicy sesame. It’s the best tentacle I’ve ever tasted.
Hawaii might conjure up images of hula girls, luaus and tiki bars but downtown Honolulu has long since cut loose from these stereotypes, quietlyy turningg into a cosmopolitan capitaltal that’s home to edgy street art and experimental eateries. Andnd Senia — open since latee 2016 — is just one examplee of this new breed.
A few blocks away, Pai iss one of the new progressivee restaurants to grace thehe city’s streets. The workk of Chinese-American chef Kevin
Lee, it pulls flavours and techniquesechniques from cultures as distinct as India, China, France and Japan. Lee’s signature dish is a turnip cake — a traditional dim sum dish — cooked in the Japanese agedashi style (deep-fried and cubed) and garnished with smoked fish and a