The Stars Align at Maui's Huihui

Too often in the restaurant world, when you get a view like the one that kicks off this post, that's pretty much all you get. How greedy should we be, after all, what with a stunning Maui sunset as you stare at Lanai in the distance, and yes, two talented musicians play and a non-cliched hula dancer prances in the foreground, too? 

Well, Huihui, the newest restaurant to open oceanside in Ka'anapali (it's 13 months or so old), wants to deliver even more. This is a paradise, after all, so might as well pile on the goodnesses. They claim the name means constellation, which is fitting given the star-studded evening skies above Maui, but appropriate in other ways too. For example, the ceiling lights in the interior part of the smartly-designed indoor-outdoor space are arranged irregularly, so the bulbs form patterns themselves. And then there's the constellation of success the spot embraces--location, a crack staff, a yummy cocktail program, and, most importantly, scrumptious food from chef Tom Muromoto. 

I didn't get great photos of the drinks, but be sure to get the Lahaina Smokestack if you like smoky cocktails. Just the name is clever, as the Pioneer Mill smokestack dominates the nearby town. In addition to its base of smoked Casamigos tequila, when they bring you the drink they infuse it with a bit of torched wood chips at the table--alas, given the sylvan breezes the smoke zips away quickly, but it's a fun touch.

We started with the appetizer above, poke holokai, which indeed does look more like a sushi roll cut up with fins of taro chips attached (that also make delicious eating implements). The poke during our visit was ahi (it's mackerel if that fish is in season, and as an oilier fish it would have been fun to taste the difference), mixed with a smidge of mayo (for creaminess more than anything) and crab and avo. The nori worked for more crunchiness and salt. 

We were a bit less impressed by the Makawao avocado and crab salad, but that's for easily fixed reasons. First, the greens were underdressed, and needed more of a punch from the citrus oregano dressing. The avo stuffed with crabmeat was spot on, and they wisely served the avocado a bit under-ripe, to make sure the eating had some integrity. Then we just weren't sure about the breadfruit croutons. Certainly novel, they weren't crunchy as much as chewy, lacking much flavor. At least they bring the local and the sustainable.

The mains kicked on all cylinders, though. Above is the tangy fish lāwalu: grilled banana leaf wrapped daily i‘a (fish), creamy abalone sauce, cilantro, pohole (fiddle fern) & ogo (seaweed) relish. That's a scoop of mashed potato on the side. Lots of local ingredients done quite traditionally, with an almost vinegarish kick, probably partially coming from those odd and wonderful orange-ish fruited lime-looking guys on the plate, the calamansi.

But the absolute winner of the evening was the Seafood Huihui, which makes sense--you name a dish after your restaurant, it better carry that weight. Think of it as some Maui-cross of cioppino and a noodle-less laksa. There's so much seafood in there you can easily split it, although perhaps I shouldn't use the word easily, what with a red sauce and the need to remove flesh from shells making it a bit of a dangerous bowl of food for anyone not sporting a bib (they don't offer any). Fish, scallops, shrimp with heads, lobster, snow peas, king mushroom--somehow each separate ingredient was cooked just to and not beyond its appropriate point, usually one of the failings in a stew presentation like this one. (C'mon, you've had the veggies from a crudité plate alongside the fish hammered to mush dish at less skillful kitchens, haven't you?)

Be sure to order rice to soak up the intoxicating sauce, as you will insist on having every drop of it. Rich but not too spicy, it warms more than burns, so while a cousin to a curry, it's not as much vivid as enveloping. What they admit goes into it is coconut milk, tomato broth (plus some actual stewed tomato), and roasted kukui or candlenut, which sounds like a more exotic and pungent version of macadamia from my research.

You can also ask the staff anything and they've got answers, about the food or the history of the restaurant nestled in the Ka'anapali Beach Hotel, almost all the way to the famous Black Rock, a distinctive outcrop that catches the last of the sun's rays and then is romantically lit by torches after dark. Timing melded Hawaii laid back--we never felt pressured to eat up--but we also never wound up sitting around waiting for a course. Plus any non-eating time was pleasantly occupied listening to the two musicians, blessedly under-amplified if anything. There's never a need to shout in this comfortable space.

But we all might scream for a banana bread ice cream sandwich. That's macadamia nut ice cream made in house amidst the perfectly moist yet integrally sound banana bread that will make you feel you're having something homemade at a stop on the road to Hana. Sure, why not drizzle some caramel, too.

Or end with another respectful take on a Hawaiian classic--pineapple upside-down bread pudding, suffused with a tequila sauce for some boozy oomph (no, it didn't remind of over-soaked rum cakes from my New Jersey youth--this was sophisticated). The bread pudding had a perfect sweet-savory, crunchy outside--creamy inside yin yang thing going.

Huihui ends up pretty much as magical as Maui itself.

Corazón Cocina Gets Its Just Desserts

(photo: Paul Wellman)

While you or I might find nothing wrong with the Foodie Award–winning Corazón Cocina, Eileen Randall did have an issue with Chef Ramón Velazquez’s delightful spot in the Santa Barbara Public Market: no dessert. She’s been a fan for years — her partner used to scold her for going to Velazquez’s original pop-up at Three Pickles every week, as it busted their budget — and always told Velazquez that the one thing he needed was sweets.

Want to read the rest then do so at the Independent's site.

Eat This: Tres Leches Cake @ Julienne

It’s entirely possible the best dessert in town is the most deceptively simple. Tres leches cake has gone from a mysterious origin — practically every Latin American country claims its creation, and then there’s an ugly possibility a condensed milk company came up with it to sell its product — to a blanded-out cliché. Chef Justin West rescues it from both its murky and over-familiar history by paring it down to its core delights.

Want to read the rest then do so at the Independent's site.

A Lament for Things No Longer Rosie

Santa Barbara is getting a little less sweet now that pastry chef Rosie Moot is moving on from the Wine Cask and Intermezzo, eventually heading back east where she's originally from. This was her last weekend. She had been at Wine Cask long enough to make me crave desserts when I usually don't, as I don't have a sweet tooth that needs a 12-step program. Then again, as sweet as she is as a person, she knows enough to make her desserts hew to the savory line as much as possible. The classic example of that might be her butterscotch pudding so snowed with fleur de sel it could almost seem a pretzel, the sweet and salty edging each others' pleasures further and further up. It was seemingly simple and complexly delicious.

And then there was the miracle of what she could do frying things, which generally sounds like a dessert disaster--that risk of dropping a little cannonball of dough into your gullet atop a fine meal. Rosie never did that, somehow frying to perfect crispiness and not beyond, her dough ever feathery, yet substantial enough to please. There where those pumpkin beignets that were a dream place where New Orleans and Dia de los Muertos met in a culinary tango on your tongue. On the menu now there are lemon-lavender beignets, crisp pocket pillows full of zippy citrus cream with just a hint of lavender lift--they're not perfumy in the least--sitting atop a bit more of the lemon cream, some miracle of the market halved blackberries, and aside a black currant sorbet that adds yet a whole nother palette to your palate. Never fussy in the least, it's something you feel you should be able to do at home, but you know you never could.

Like, say, a market crisp, currently with the first of the season nectarines (which perhaps bake even better as they're a bit firmer than those who get more heat on the tree). Something this simple shouldn't be this good, but it is, both crunchy from the dough and ripe from the stone fruit, and then topped with a honey gelato that sounds much more sweet than it is.

Rosie Moot, you will be missed. My one consolation is I will have to run a bit less without your end of the meal temptations beckoning.

A Plate with a View

I've discovered there actually is a way that New Jersey is similar to Santa Barbara. Both suffer from being so close to a true power player--New York City in NJ's case, LA in SB's--so it's easy to remain the provincial cousin, the country mouse, the place with too many Italian restaurants and not enough creativity. If you've got a bit of chefly gumption in Jersey or Santa Barbara, you just move to where the real action is.

So it's great to run into some truly fine dining in NJ, as we did on a recent trip back east. What's even more surprising is the spot was the Highlawn Pavilion, nestled atop a ridge of the Watchung Mountains in the Eagle Rock Reservation about 15 miles out of Manhattan; it's the last tallest thing around. So, yes, the views are stunning (even if it's surprising how much a November day can smog up in NY--or maybe they were just trying to make us Californians feel at home). Somehow Highlawn Pavilion beats that old saw "the better the view the more meh the food."

We opted to do it for lunch as it costs a bit less--you do pay for that fine food and view--plus there's that trade-off: the glamor of glittery skyline at night or the day's cool clear views. We did keep largely focused on our plates, though, all put together with an artisan's skill of pretty precision. For example, here's the tuna tartare we shared:

On the menu it's listed simply as Yellowfin Tuna Tartare, Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Fleur de Sel, but as you can see Chef Mitchell Altholz does a bit more, pushing it towards salad Nicoise with the perfect haricots vert, a few olive halves, the bus-colored pear tomatoes (that equally popped with sweet-acidity), There's also the finest slice of cucumber helping the fish hold its shape, both functional and delicious and something you'd never bother to do at home.

I'm going to skip the entrees, although they were delicious too--a mushroom risotto, a perfectly turned piece of Arctic char. Because I want to write about the dessert we didn't want but had to have. It's this:

Which is New Jersey Blueberry Crunch: Crunchy Blueberry Cake, Popcorn Ice Cream, Fresh Blueberry Sauce, and Hazelnut Tuile. That I had never had let alone heard of popcorn ice cream is a tragedy--of course something that's salty and buttery makes for perfect creaming. Then that cake, almost more fruit than dough, but it held together and had just enough crisp to it to make it crunch. Oh, and the ice cream was perfectly smooth, so having that tuile, aka gussied-up brittle, atop, with those three perfectly popped kernels attached....a kind of simple, thought-through brilliance, both fancy and not at all all at once. Now that's fine dining.

Up the Downey's Showcase

So that's a bad iPhone photo of a very good dish, round one at Downey's recent Celebration of Summer dinner.The rest of the meal was magnificent too--this is Downey's after all--and I'll jump to dessert in a bit, but right now I'd like to linger with this scallop. Yep, just one, but round as a Kennedy dollar (remember those?), and perfectly cooked--this is Downey's after all--translucent but done in the center and completely, evenly seared tan on the outside, but then cleverly sliced across its middle to make two perfect discs and divvy up that delicious sear into more bites. You will bite small, as you want it to last, as you want to taste, as you want to get a bit of the watercress, exactly dressed so each leaf is moist not dripping, and perhaps a sliver of endive too. The sprinkling of pine nuts, and how do they get each one toasted so similarly?, adds something crunchier plus that lovely, wispy forest floor flavor. And then there are the peaches--what a summer for peaches it's been here in Santa Barbara, and these, semi-dried, fight back a bit more with their chewiness, and therefore last more. Wash all that down with some Dragonette rose and you could go home after one dish sated with the essence of edible summer.

Let's then skip ahead to dessert, and the joy that is Persian mulberries. I've had some mulberries that seem, well, muddled--a bit more about the taste of the land than bursting fruity goodness. That's not the case with any John Downey ever serves, though. Here's they are made into an ice cream that's part of the world's most elegant ice cream sandwich, with the cookie part an almond dacquoise, surprisingly firm yet flaky and pleasingly crunchy. More crushed almonds are toasted around the circumference of this puck-a-licious blast of not-too-sweetness. I want another.

The Apple of My Eye

Downey's always leaves me thinking the old adage: Simple is not always best but the best is always simple.* And so, somehow after their Autumn Chef's Dinner earlier this month, and after all the other fine courses (including a homemade pasta with a light--yes, really--cream sauce and chanterelles, the pasta rung by kale, well, I could have had plates of that), I keep thinking of the dessert above, for which my iPhone photo does little justice.

Basically it's apple pie a la mode, isn't it? Well, I love my mom, but she sure didn't do this. For every element seems to have been labored over as if it were the only element, and you add all that care up and you get an apple dessert that will ruin you for any other. That crust, flaky and crisp, buttery but not so much it seems to ooze from your pores afterwards. Balance. Same with the apples, halved, perhaps, and then baked to the point you chew through without problem, but they still hold together--it's fruit, not sauce you're enjoying. That ice cream, vanilla and cream and enough (nothing worse than a la mode that a-la's away too soon). And then the caramel sauce, here importantly not too much--it's like a spice for the other elements that shine enough they only need a wisp of burnt sugar.

There is a reason we gave John Downey the 2011 Independent "Izzy" Award for Lifetime Achievement. The man can cook.

*Note: I do not always believe this, no way, nohow, as a lover of the Bradbury Building, Ulysses, and Phil Spector (producer, not murderer).

A Chip Off the Old Choc

It's not perhaps the best karma to have to taste seven chocolate-related food items while staring across the street at the conscientious few conducting Occupy Santa Barbara. But that was the unfortunate geography of an event at which I was a judge Thursday night, as the Downtown Organization and First Thursday hosted a Chocolate Taste Off as a way to celebrate epicure.sb. Let them eat chocolate, I guess. Sorry protesters--promise I'm usually part of the 99%. But afterward, there's no doubt I occupied more of Santa Barbara then when I began.

I'm not going to run through all the entries, but the participants were Seagrass, Aldo's, Chocolate Opulence, Pierre La Fond, Wine Cask, Viva Oliva, and Adama. What people offered us was all over the board, too, if true to their businesses, but let's just admit that when somebody's baked you a whole dessert, a single raspberry in balsamic infused with three chocolates just can't compare. It's got a zen purity, sure, but this is about chocolate, and beyond spellcheck wanting to turn Opulence into Corpulence when I originally mistyped it above, it hits me now that "chocolate opulence" is pretty near redundant. Unless you're eating the wrong chocolate.

I am a bit chastened to add my winning choice came in second overall (I was one of four judges), but that might just prove that if you work the word doughnut into your dessert's name, I'm suddenly Homer Simpson. That's what Rosie Gerard at the Wine Cask did, serving up one of their regular menu items I've somehow so far resisted (mostly because I can't get past her amazing butterscotch pudding): chocolate & chevre doughnuts, crème anglaise, cappuccino ice cream. The goat cheese really works, so don't crinkle up your nose like an actual goat just stuck its horns through your monitor--it adds a creamier texture, cuts the chocolate's sweet a tad, gives it a bit of deeper dairiness. And the doughnuts were perfectly cooked all the way through, so there's no raw dough surprise or anything. Wonderful and elegant, especially with the cappuccino ice cream adding its coffee kick.

As for the winner, I had it as a close runner up, and would gladly eat one right now, especially since there might be time to have a second one before the day's end. Chef Nathan Heil from Pierre Lafond Wine Bistro prepared for us a salted caramel chocolate tart with Chantilly and caramel Oreo popcorn. Starting with the dessert's side...and, well, why don't more desserts have sides? If you're going to keep eating after a perfectly good dinner, there's no point in being a little pregnant, as the old joke goes. As for this popcorn, Heil could no doubt bag it and sell it on its own (his restaurant is close to the movie theaters, after all). Chocolate and caramel and popcorn and salt--that's four food groups. The tart itself beckons like any good tart, with its slip of salt, its crisp and flaky crust, its mix of luscious chocolate and caramel creaminess. I have no problem with it winning at all, beyond it's hard to beat a doughnut all gussied up.