Sweet E's Cafe and The Alley

Sweet E's Cafe

So Thursday's lunch took me on a trip to Sweet E's Cafe at the Kilohana Square off of Kapahulu.  We had originally planned to go to Mr. Ojisan but as we pulled in to the parking lot I remembered that Sweet E's had been strongly recommended to me by Ms. F3 so we changed our plans and pulled in for a bite.  At first glance Sweet E's looks like a small hole in the wall until you step thru their front door.  The darn place is actually quite big inside as they look like they've taken out a wall to an adjoining spot and extended their dining room a bit. 

Sweet E's is a breakfast and brunch place but they do have a few lunch items on their menu.  CW#1 chose to eat the blue berry pancakes with a side order of extra crispy bacon.   The pancakes were pretty huge but the center one was overcooked and dry.  They were filled with blueberries and tasted pretty good but were way too large for any normal person to eat.






I chose the pesto club sandwich.  I really wasn't in the mood for a lunch time breakfast so I decided to try out one of the few lunch items they had.  A club sandwich sounded good and, being the good boy that I am, I opted for the tossed green salad instead of the chips.   The sandwich as a whole wasn't bad.  I don't care for pesto in any form but the pesto aioli in this sandwich wasn't bad at all.  It wasn't strong and over powering as some pestos tend to be but there was enough flavor to make the sandwich enjoyable for even me.



The one problem I did have with the sandwich was the avocado.  It was BROWN and not slightly brown, it was brown all the way thru.  If you look it up, research has found that it takes 4-6 hours for an avocado to start to brown.  It tasted fine but it was really hell to look at on my plate as I was trying to eat it.  Umm....  ice water and a little lemon juice???  That's all it would take to keep it from browning if  you need to cut them that early in the morning.  Or just cut them to order with the sandwich.  Why does it have to be so hard.  And chefs, if you see a brown thing in your avocado bin... chuck it out.  AVOCADOS ARE GREEN AND YELLOW NOT BROWN!!!


Oh and for the salad, that was pretty good if you didn't mind the dressing.  It reminded me of a bottle of Girards Champagne Dressing if you poured it out into a serving dish without shaking it.  Lots of oil and not much taste.  If you don't believe me, go buy yourself a bottle and pour out the top 1/4 of the bottle without shaking it.  Almost the exact same taste as what I got as dressing for my salad.


As for me, I will be going back to Sweet E's, hopefully with a crowd.  The stuffed french toast looks wonderful but I'd need an army with me to help me finish the serving size.



The Alley @ Aiea Bowl


On Friday we decided to hit The Alley at Aiea Bowl for lunch.  My wife had been there for a work get together before but it was my first time.  I had heard about the oxtail soup there so I decided to try it.  The Alley is interesting because the owners there are trying to do some upscale type food in a bowling alley setting.  I'm not so sure if I like this idea.  It's a bowling alley people, let's not try to be too fancy here.  The first thing we got was our order of the Mega Crunch Fries.  They're shoe string cut and extremely crispy.  Ours could have used some better seasoning because they were hard to eat without smothering in ketchup.  For those of you who've eaten a bunch of McD's ffs while driving in your car, you can understand what I mean about enough seasoning to eat without the use of extra condiments. 

A short time later my order of oxtail soup arrived.  The oxtail is in a dark brown broth and comes with rice, ginger and cilantro and a ponzu/chili dipping sauce.  I'm a ginger and shoyu type of guy so I tasted the ponzu and sent it on it way, not because it tasted bad, it would have been great on a fish fillet, but because it would take away from the taste of what I was there to eat, OXTAIL. 




 

So at first glance I noticed something very interesting about my oxtail soup...  HOLY SHITake! There were whole shitake mushrooms in my soup.  Not a few of em, 7 of em to be exact.  Considering I had about the same amount of pieces of oxtail I was very disappointed.  They should call it Oxtail/Shitake soup if this is the normal portion because I would have preferred a lot more oxtail and a lot less shitake in my soup.  The other thing I would have liked was more greens.  There was a few pieces of choy sum in the bowl along with a small sprinkling of green onions and cilantro but not enough for my tastes.  BTW, choy sum is nice but my favorite oxtail green is kai choy.  The bitter flavor is a good contrast to the soup and makes it more refreshing to eat.

Now back to the soup.  The soup was dark brown in color and rich to the taste.  It seemed a little over seasoned with things I wouldn't normally put into an oxtail soup, one of which would be shoyu.  I like a light and simple broth and this was well over seasoned for my taste, almost bordering on sweet.  It did have a few peanuts sitting at the bottom of the bowl but I would have liked to see a little piece of dried tangerine peel somewhere floating in my bowl.  This lead me to believe that the base of this soup was more of a fusion of two styles of oxtail soup, Chinese and Okinawan.  As for the meat, it was very tender and fell off the bone in more than one occasion.  Some of the smaller pieces were a little over cooked and had started to get past tender into the realm of mushy.  People, it's beef, you should have to chew at least a few times before swallowing.  I could have fed some of this to my 90 yr old aunt who has no teeth and she'd have no problem putting it down.

The last thing I always look at when eating oxtail soup is the oil slick that's left in the bowl after all the meat is gone.  It shows the care the chef has taken in preparing the meal.  If the slick is too thick then he hasn't skimmed the oil after the first boil.  If it has lots of fat chunks floating in it, he didn't scrub the meat to remove the fat after the first boil.  This soup had a little of both.  It wasn't the worst bowl of oxtail soup I've had but I certainly wasn't the best.  It just didn't fit the expectation I have for what oxtail soup should be.

My wife's plate was a mix of their kal bi and "Award winning" tasty chicken.  And yes, the chicken is tasty.  Probably one of the better things we ate that day.  It's fried crispy and then doused with a sweet shoyu sauce.  I had a bite and it sort of reminded me of a chicken I've had at Side Street a while ago.  A little on the sweet side but enough taste to permeate the chicken as you eat it. The kal bi was on the darker side but had a pretty good flavor to it.  The kal bi from Alonzo's at the Mililani Golf Course is just as dark but has a better overall flavor to it, and is more tender then the one we had at the Alley. 



I probably will be back to The Alley at some point.  It's not on my short list of places to eat but the food was promising enough for me to want to go back and try something different from their menu.  Parking and the noise from the bowling alley make it a little difficult to enjoy your meal thoroughly but I would give it another chance. 

Mini Garden and Kit N Kitchen

So back to the blogging...

MINI GARDEN

shredded chicken vegetable on crispy noodle

On Monday  my co-workers and I went out to lunch.  We chose Mini Garden on Beretania Street since it had been a while since most of us had been there.  Co-Worker #1 chose the shredded chicken and vegetables over crispy noodle, Co-Worker #2 and I decided to share a beef bitter melon black bean and a steamed sea bass with ginger and green onions.  CW1 received a huge plate of noodles smothered in shredded chicken and veggies.  The veggies were mostly beansprouts which was good because CW#1 doesn't like too many green things on her plate. 

Our dishes came to the table after CW#1 had started eating.  I had originally asked for pork bittermelon with black bean but we ended up with beef instead.  The beef was nice and tender and the black bean sauce was just right, not too salty and not very smelly at all.  The bittermelon were not very  bitter at all and was still slightly  crispy which is the way I prefer to eat it.  The steamed sea bass with ginger and green onion is one of my most favorite seafood dishes at a Chinese restaurant.  ***Yes, I do love the shellfish dishes too but I have GOUT so I do my best to stay away from them.*** 

steamed sea bass with ginger and green onion

For those of you who have had this dish, I have tried this at many different places around town.  The sauce at Mini Garden is a little on the sweet side unlike Asia Manoa which is more salty to taste.  I've had the dish at On On at McCully but prefer their sea bass with g&go gravy style so I don't order this there.  I've also had it at a few places in Chinatown but none were spectacular enough to talk about.

On a side note, I heard yesterday that the owner of Panda Cuisine on Keeaumoku has changed and the food isn't as good.   Anyone have any ideas if they've opened up shop somewhere else.  I did enjoy their food although I haven't been there in a few years.


PS... The food in the pictures were piping hot when I snapped the photos, thus the steam on the lens made it a bit blurry.


These last 3 pictures are from the last time I was at Mini Garden, about a year or so ago. 

soft gau gee cake noodle...

pork bittermelon black bean

honey garlic chicken

KIT N KITCHEN

creamy chicken and spinach spaghetti

Today CW#1 and I decided on a quick lunch down the road from work at Kit N Kitchen.  Kit N Kitchen was a frequent stop on my radar when I used to live in town but now I may get there about once every other month.  The good thing about starting this food blog is that I can go revisit restaurants that I've previously been to if only to get new pictures and re-sample a bunch of my faves.


CW#1 ordered the creamy chicken and spinach spaghetti.  It was a hefty portion and I'm not a big fan on cream sauces unless I make them myself so I decided not to take a bite.  Instead I opted for the grilled pork with chimichurri sauce and fried egg over the top.  I've eaten their chimichurri sauce many times before but this was a great batch.  I'm not sure if it was the bottom of the tub or if one of the chefs spilled some extra chili peppers into the sauce as they were preparing it but it was much hotter thank I had remembered and gave the sauce a much richer flavor and quite a kick.  For those of you who have never tried chimichurri sauce, it's from South America.  There are many different ways of making it but most inlcude... parsley, garlic, shallots, chili peppers and some type of sour citrus.  I personally make mine with a mix of flat leaf and Chinese parsley, shallots, chili peppers, lots of garlic and a mix of lemon and lime juices. 

grilled pork with chimichurri sauce and egg

The pork in the dish was very tender and complimented well by the sauce.  The rice is jasmine rice which I often have a craving for since I don't make it at home.  The egg on top of the rice was a little too over done for me as I wanted it to run all over my dish to create and added sauce to my pork and rice.  The plate also came with a little salad on it which is funny because the lunch special comes with a house salad that I had finished off just before they set my plate in front of me.  BTW, the house salad comes with carrot sticks, cucumber sticks and daikon radish sticks along with a miso/ginger dressing which is heavy on the ginger.  I like it but I love ginger...

With your entree you can also order their garlic pillow toast which we opted not to do this time because we were trying to stay on the healthier side.  I believe it cost under $3 and is a must have if you love garlic.  Again, I have pictures of it from a previous visit so you can see what it looks like.  I also have a picture of the sloppy eggplant which has to be one of my most favorite dishes at Kit N Kitchen.  I order it medium spicy just because I like a little heat in what I eat.  You can get it on a bed of spaghetti noodles or jasmine rice and it's under $10 for almost all of the lunch specials.  I also recommend the red wine oxtail soup and the sandy wing appetizer.  My wife also likes the spicy ground beef spaghetti with broccoli and will drink a pineapple squash whenever we get a chance to eat there.

sloppy eggplant (medium spicy)

garlic pillow toast