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Hanabi, a closer look
7/2010 Up-Date: Hanabi, regrettably, is now Closed!
Aloha!
4/3/09 - Who'da known? Guess what, gang? Kyo-Ya lives!!!
Whaaaa???
That's right, one of the most respected Japanese restaurants on the island, Kyo-Ya, which closed about two years ago for who knows what reason, lives on in a tiny, humble, very little-known cubby-hole of a place on S. King St., at the former Bamboo Restaurant. They do absolutely no English advertising, so no one really knows about it, not even the big boy'z like the Honolulu Advertiser, Star Bulletin, East Oahu, or even MetroMix! I have a feeling, however, that things'll change real quick, as Hanabi is much too big of a secret to keep, lemme tell ya! It won't be another week before people start catching on, especially since I just posted a small review on Yelp, which reaches millions of internet-savvy folks all around the world - just Google "Hanabi Honolulu Yelp," and you'll see it. Of course, the reviews I post here at Aku Eats .com are much, much more in-depth - this particularly long Closer Look I'm doing today is literally more than 10X larger, both in text and in pics, than I post there, so really now... Nonetheless, Yelp is a great way to find out what a broad variety of regular people like you and I think about ono kine grindz on the island, and a great way to meet like-minded foodies, too. Check it out!
Oh, and also just wanted to give a shout-out to Kirby Fukunaga of Go-Naminori.com, the massive surf/lifestyle site that I have linked on my home and closer look pages. He just did a small story on my site, and considering that Go-Naminori.com has almost a million hits per month, I'd say that's waaay cool! He was actually waiting many months for me to translate the site into Japanese before introducing me, as his site reaches a huuuge Japanese audience. Check out the shout at http://www.go-naminori.com/kirbyfukunaga/index.php?e=1239, along with a really nice pic of himself, Carter, Holli, and Russ, all good friends of mine from high school. Haven't seen much of them recently, but hopefully that'll change soon! Sorry, but I only have the main guide pages translated into Japanese right now, and even those pages are not nearly as up-to-date, so hopefully you all can make-do for now until I find someone who has time to do the translations on a regular basis! (1/12/10 up-date: Sorry, the Japanese translation thing never worked out - oh, well!)
And with that, let's continue on with not one, but two consecutive, fabulous evening's out at this mystery spot called Hanabi. I wrote on my Yelp review that there's not even a sign out on the window, but I was wrong - there actually is, but it's so small you can't even catch it walking by on the sidewalk! To find it, just go to 2700 S. King St. and park in the Sushi King lot, along with that big 'ol paint store in the back, then make your way to the sidewalk area, where TCBY sits right next-door.
Wifey and I heard about this spot from her friend, Kayoko, another genuine foodie who I'll hopefully get to meet one day (I hear she's super-funny!). She (Kayoko), however, hadn't been here yet, so we still had no idea what to expect. We were actually headed for a quickie at Aki-nono, but seeing a place I haven't explored yet is much too big a temptation for me, as curiosity always begs an inquiry. Walking in, there were only three tables, each seating four to six people, along with what looked exactly like a sushi bar, only there were no refrigerated glass enclosures loaded with fresh fish.
Yes, that is the Head Chef/Owner, and he, along with much of his kind and gracious staff, all came over from what was once the undisputed King of authentic Kaiseki cuisine here in the islands, Kyo-Ya (now closed, as stated earlier). Still, as wifey and I sat down, we still had no inkling whatsoever about that fact. From the look and feel of the place, however, we could tell instantly that things were probably going to be ok, as the place was completely filled with Japanese National's. Just as seeing lots of Italian's eating in an Italian restaurant or lots of Chinese eating in a Chinese restaurant is always a positive sign, such was the case here - at least you know it's authentic!
And authentic, it was, as evidenced by not only by the atmosphere, furnishings, and clientele, but also by the biggest reason of all - the eats! Just check out these normally-humble dishes of tsukemono, a broad-based term for a variety of different pickled or salted veggies.
And we're not talking about the supermarket-variety of small-cut vegetables that pucker your lips like a li hing mui or leave you reaching for a mouthful of white rice, either! These little servings are all house-made, fresh, and super-crisp, yet delicate at the same time. They even look different (better) than most tsukemono served elsewhere, right?
Remembering back to the first pic of the Chef and the bar area... instead of refrigerated cases of fish, there were plates of different dishes lining the top of the entire wrap-around counter. All of them were filled with several types of fresh vegetables, along with plates of house-made fishcake, potato salad, nitsuke, and other such items. I'm gonna let a lot of the pics speak for themselves today, since there are so many of them to cover - the next few all came from the counter, beginning with a set of veggies waiting to be grilled and continuing on with dashi-maki tamago (egg scrambled with dashi and other flavors), a super-silky fish cake, and an order of buri/daikon nitsuke (yellow-tail/white radish poached in a soy/dashi/sake or mirin base).
Chef here calls the fish in this last dish buri (yellow-tail, in English), although I'm not exactly sure if he uses the name for a specific reason or not - meaning that some say buri and others say hamachi. Heck, there's even more confusing names used like wakashi, mejiro, and inada! Whaaa? Generally, buri is considered the adult and/or wild version of the fish, while hamachi is usually considered farm-raised, but hey, I'm not gonna make a claim because these terms can differ depending on such things as the actual size of the fish and whether you're from Tokyo, Osaka, or Waimanalo. In Hawaii, the most common name used is hamachi, but whatever you wanna call it, just know that it's one of the fattiest and best fishes out there!
One of the biggest sections of the menu at Hanabi features charcoal-grilled items, many coming as kushiyaki (kushi means on-a-stick; yaki means grilled). An absolute must-try from this section are the chicken wings, opened-up and flavored simply with natural salt and a sprinkle of lemon. On the second night we came, wifey and I brought along a few really good friends, Kirk and Jan Matsumoto and Jeff Benik, and they were all surprised at how tender, how delectable, and how absolutely delicious a piece of grilled chicken could be!
I don't know if the great taste came from the kind of chicken they use, a special other seasoning I don't know anything at all about, or just extremely talented preparation and cooking, but it's probably a combination of everything, is all. I mean, what else could it be? Charcoal?
Uuuh.....
Yeah!!!
To tell you the truth, I have no idea exactly how big a part it actually plays, but at Hanabi they use a special charcoal called Kishu bincho-tan, which utilizes a type of oak harvested in the Kishu area of Japan. Being a white coal, it is super-hard, burning long and hot, and emits much more far infra-red rays than other coals, especially the normal black coals, which basically means a stronger, better heat, is all. It is widely regarded as the best coal anywhere, even in quality-obsessed Japan!
A few other fabulous grilled items on-a-stick were a plate of mixed vegetables, including baby bell peppers, giant Japan green onion, and fresh shiitake mushrooms, all lightly roasted to the point of perfection, along with tsukune, which is a type of ground chicken meatball, often mixed with green onion, yama-imo, and other items. You can get them seasoned with salt or in a sweetened soy glaze, our group choosing the latter.
Perhaps the latest foodie fad hitting Japan right now is kashira, or grilled pork head meat and fat. Don't ask me why this thing is so popular... It may seem all the rage, but will it still be around in a couple of years? Who knows? The only reason I ask is that even though wifey loved it, I really didn't care too much for it. I guess I was hoping and thinking it'd come super-soft, as I knew it contained lots of fat, along with those little pockets of meat surrounding the head. However, this one was, in fact, a bit chewy and tough, even in the fatty areas! The taste itself was excellent, as is all meat coming so close the the bone (or skull, in this case!), but I was looking for more of a melt-in-the-mouth experience than a gnaw-on-sinew type of deal.
The first shot comes as-was, while the second is with a small sprinkling of recommended shichimi togarashii, a Japanese chili pepper with seven different ingredients - chili pepper, mandarin orange peel, sansho pepper, nori, and sesame, poppy, and hemp seed.
The last two grilled items for the evening, over those special coals, began with sticks but were soon removed and presented without. The first was a healthy slab of hamachi, or is it buri? Who knows? And who cares?
All I know, is that dis buggah was ono! The fat on this, uh, fish, is legendary, whether cooked or raw. A light soy-based glaze over special coals was all it took to send this order over-the-top! If this doesn't make you hungry, nothing will! Ain't it a beautiful thing?
Actually, I take that back. There are yet other dishes that will push you right out the door and into your car as we speak, if you haven't left already. Unless, that is, your taste buds have completely lost any sense of stimulation, or you're as sick as a dog, or you're totally hanging after a night so fun you completely forgot what happened...
One of those dishes that just may send you packing was another grilled order of, get this, a fresh unagi that didn't come pre-sauced, pre-cooked, and vacuum-packed in plastic from China or Southeast Asia! I know we all think that unagi is a dark-meat fish, but it's actually not! The only reason for that is because it sits in the dark sauce and plastic for so long it soaks the white right out! The Chef here actually brings his in from Japan fresh, than proceeds to kabayaki-glaze and grill it right there at the store! The difference is huge, with a sweet, white flesh clearly visible and a more delicate, yet fuller, more rounded taste in general.
The first shot comes to you as-was, while the second is with a sprinkling of recommended sansho pepper, and also with a better shot of that pure, white meat inside.
Are you ready to get wild? Are you ready'da get nuts? Leaving all these relatively safe, fully-cooked dishes, wifey's evening ain't ever complete without a healthy heapin' of raaaw - bloody, slimy, cold, sometimes still-slithering raaaw!!!
Many moon's ago wifey turned me on to beef liver, and it was, in all honesty, without a doubt, and unequivocably - the absolute worst thing I'd ever had in my life! Of course, it was at an inexpensive Korean hole-in-the-wall that didn't exactly specialize in sashimi or raw foods in general, but the memory was seared into my brain so strongly, I don't think anything could possibly ever be worse, ever! Nevertheless, knowing that we sat in the capable hands of a Chef who could probably make a caterpillar or praying mantis taste good, I had to give it another go! Beef liver, along with beef heart, are brought in from Kulana Farms on the Big Island every Wed, Thurs, Fri, and Saturday, so at least we knew it was fresh, the magical key to opening every door in the exotic world of sashimi!
It was served not with a dip of shoyu/wasabi, but a salt/sesame mix. Sitting on-edge, I was more than gladly relieved that the same rancid, other-worldly, horrific taste I still remembered from the last experience was nowhere to be found! Don't get me wrong - it's not that I actually enjoyed it, but it wasn't really all that bad. A kind of wild sense of gaminess was still there, but like a good lamb, just enough to make it work, with the salt and sesame providing a bold seasoning to further mask the less palatable spectrums of this moody dish - meaning, I've already tasted how nasty this guy can be when not acquired, prepared, and presented right! So yeah, very moody! Good thing he was happy today...
Moving right along were two more dishes that were my absolute favorite's for the evening, the first being a couple of also-fresh orders of baby Big Island abalone. Plucked right out the tank while still moving, the first couple of shells were sliced pure and raw into sashimi, then placed back in the shell for presentation, while the other two were cooked lightly, butter-yaki-style.
Hmmm... The purist side of me wanted to say the super-duper-clean taste of the sashimi was better, as this one was surprisingly more tender than the much-tougher versions I've had elsewhere, and seemed to soft-snap between my teeth with a delicate, smooth touch. The brutish, more excitable side of me, however, pleaded with my affections, coaxing and taunting me to fall prey to its even more-tender, warm, just-slightly-cooked taste that came with perfect amounts of that proven seafood accentuator, butter, and an even smaller hint of shoyu. After all, buttah is bettah, most times...
But I think the one presentation that really stole the cake for everyone was the hon-maguro, or bluefin tuna sashimi. Not just any bluefin tuna, but a bluefin tuna of a certain size, usually over 200 lbs. Now, you can argue about grades and sizes and freshness, but the fact of the matter is, that there's simply no better, no more expensive, no more valued cut of sashimi than that which comes from a giant bluefin tuna.
Check out this beautiful presentation.
There were four different cuts from this fish, all having their own personal traits and character's. Beginning with that chopped ball of fish at about 2 o'clock, we had a negi toro, which was finely-diced and mixed with green onion. And then, going not clock-wise, nor counter-clockwise, but straight across (just because I like to be different), to the bright-red, large slabs closest to you - those are the classic sashimi pieces that come from the top areas, or back, of the fish. There's more of this stuff than any other, so it's by far the most commonly found and reasonably-priced. And with all that bright-red, probably the prettiest, too, at least when only considering color.
Knowing that toro is simply the fatty, belly area of the fish, at the very top of the dish we have a chu toro, considered highly fatty but not quite so much as o toro, the absolute pinnacle of sushi/sashimi, which we'll see on another outing. Ey, just joking, brah! Right there on the plate, as the two whitest-colored slices, are two unbelievable slices of o toro sashimi! I could only druel and salivate, however, since as host to my friends on this particularly lovely night, wifey and I were more than happy to offer them both one piece each, especially since Jan wasn't really high on raw fish (although after tonight, she's definitely beginning to see the light!). And boy, you shoulda seen the look on their faces when these super-delicate, soft-as-buttah slices went sliding down their throat's! Aaah, priceless!!!
Here's another shot at the platter, with a better look of that beautiful o toro!
Pretty unbelievable stuff, huh? Our first night here, after everyone else left, wifey and I stuck around for a while as the Chef explained to us a few insights into his philosophy and thinking, with wifey translating for me. A complete and total passion surrounded his every word, as he spoke with great pride about bringing in only the very best items and preparing them in the time-honored, old-school Japanese way where taste and quality is of the essence, and without the flashiness and glitz often found in modern izakaya's or sushi houses. With his long history at such a place as Kyo-Ya, you better believe he brings in only the best ingredients, whether it be white coals from Kishu, fuka mushi cha (green tea) from Shizuoka, or Kishu ume, aged for three years, from Wakayama-ken, all specialties in themselves!
Heck, even besides more-expensive items like those just mentioned, along with treats like hon maguro and abalone (which won't come cheap anywhere!), there are plenty of other, seemingly humble dishes to choose from, only, not-so-humble, actually. As stated earlier, a seemingly placid, un-amazing order of chicken wings, which I highly recommend here, were enough to have us all in amazement at how such a once-thought ordinary dish could turn out so extra-ordinary! Same goes for the house-made korokke, fish cake, tsukemono, potato salad, and on and on!
It doesn't matter that the sign out-front is so small that it's basically useless to passers-by on the sidewalk. Chef knows that the right clientele will always find him. In fact, as I state on Yelp, if your thing is plate lunch, okazuya, and fast-foods, please don't come here. You just may not enjoy yourself quite as much. But, if you can appreciate finely-crafted, exquisite dishes and traditional Japanese cuisine, all at reasonable prices and in a relaxed atmosphere, then by all means, please do come-on down! Hey, sometimes I like McDonald's, and sometimes La Mer, as I enjoy them both. Others, however, prefer only one or the other. What can I say? To each his own, that's all!
In parting, I'll leave you with one final dish, one that's always a great way to close-out an evening, chawanmushi. And by the way, it was, hands-down, the best chawanmushi I've ever had. Nuff said...
Take care and Aloha till next time!
Aku
Feedback for Hanabi:
K.I. - Oh, that review was awesome. Gotta try it out right away. Now I'm hungry!
J.B. - Aku speaks the truth, it was a wonderful dinner. What he failed to mention was his choice of sake, on par with everything else served that night... in other words, excellent.
Soos Yu - Looks yum, but I'm sure I can't afford this.
Aku - Actually Soos, the only things that were expensive were the items that'll be expensive anywhere, like toro and abalone, which you will never find cheap! The other menu items are mostly very affordable, especially when considering quality. For example, I believe the chicken sticks were $3 each. Get a couple of those, a yaki-musubi or two, their delicious potato salad, and perhaps even something else, and you're probably looking at around $20 or so. Yeah, it ain't plate lunch prices, but compared to sushi or izakaya spots, it really is not bad at all. And hey, thanks for the feedback!
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