 |
 |
Oceanarium, a closer look
 Official Oceanarium Page! |
 Yelper's on Oceanarium Waikiki! |
 Lots of Oceanarium reviews! |
Aloha!
11/23/10 - Upon our last visit to Iron Chef Morimoto's posh pad, an experience of which I won't be releasing until the first of the month, I made the possibly heretic and treasonous statement that a typical Wagyu steak is often a bit on the chewy, tough side. Whaaat??? The finest steaks in the world, much finer and more expensive than USDA Prime, and they're a bit tough??? Well, you're gonna have to wait for a fuller explanation there. As for now, I'm gonna upset you all once again, right here and now, with another another possibly offensive statement - king crab is not the king of crabs, but is vastly less superior than snow, or opelio, crab!
Double whaaattt??? Of course, I'm just one man, but in my haughty opinion (I'd say humble opinion, but you wouldn't believe me), it's absolutely true. Not only do I consider it better than king, but better than Samoan (mud), Hawaiian, white, dungeness, Kona, or any other clawed creature crawling on the sea floor, including lobster!
The reason I bring it up is that when I'm on a buffet line at the Pacific Beach Hotel's Oceanarium restaurant, I'll normally dispense with shrimp tempura, teriyaki chicken, wood-planked salmon, seafood newburg, the sushi station, the prime rib carver, and just about everything else available and make a bee-line towards the succulent, steamed legs of the highly crackable variety. There are special menu variations here every night of the week, such as seafood pasta in lobster cream sauce on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and bbq shrimp pasta and dim sum on Sundays, but by far, I believe the most popular evenings are Mondays and Thursdays, when not only will you find snow crab and dungeness crab, which are available every night, but king crab, the big ticket everyone mistakenly thinks is better! Ooops, now I know I'm making you even more mad. All in fun, allright?!
But we'll get back to crab soon enough. I mean, you can find good crab at a few other places around town, but there's one thing that sets the Oceanarium apart from any other restaurant on the island. Descending from the second floor down the curved stairs, you'll immediately see what I'm talking about:
Occupying three stories, coming with 280,000 gallons of Pacific Ocean water, and filled with hundreds of fish and sealife of over 70 different species, this aquarium is even larger than the main tank at nearby Waikiki Aquarium! And we're talking about an Ilima Award winner both for favorite breakfast and for favorite place to bring out-of-towners. I'm not sure about the first title, but the second, yes, I'd have to say it's a really great place to entertain visitors. Being that Shogun and Neptune's have now closed, leaving only the very casual, out-door Aloha Center Cafe as the lone other eatery in the hotel, the Oceanarium is busier than ever! It's also pretty darn cavernous, with a mellow but surreal atmosphere due to the aquatic wonderworld casting a soft shadow upon the dining room.
You can order meals off the menu, but most choose the buffet. The $36.95 price tag for dinner is right about in-line with other better Waikiki buffets, but us locals score with a charge of $28, so long as you arrive (don't forget!) promptly by 5:30pm. I can eat $28 of crab in a single plate!
A small bar sits between the huge dining room and the buffet area, from which we were extremely disappointed to find that there is no draft, but only bottle beer. Here's a quick view of the buffet area, while seated at the bar:
You can always tell locals from visitors here, and not just by race or skin color, but by sheer girth. Just kidding! Visitors are inclined to see so many different types of interesting foods that they tend to try a wide variety of items. Locals, on the other hand, like myself, are the only ones in the entire place with the audacity to fill an entire full-sized plate with nothing but crab legs, and not just once, but again and again and again!!!
Since it wasn't Monday or Thursday night, there were only two varieties of crab, dungeness and snow, but who cares, as they were both amazing, coming tender, juicy, plump, and best of all - huuuge! Quite honestly, I think one of the big reasons lots of people don't care for snow crab is that they often show up on a buffet line as tiny, dried-out, salty pieces with shells that, in the worst cases, don't crack but bend, making them even tougher to break open. Having been to the Oceanarium and now-closed Shogun many times before, and although the dungeness is sometimes slightly on the dry side, the snow crab is always fabulous. The freshness factor has always been good to amazing, the size is always impressive, and the shells crack easily in your fingers.
Getting back to my original crabby premise, there are sooo many differences between snow and king crab. First of all, king crabs carry shells with sharp spines everywhere, so you've gotta be careful. Snow crab, on the other hand, have a mostly smooth shell, and as long as they are fresh enough, crack-open easily in your hands. And there's a trick to cracking them, too, one I learned in Japan many years ago. After separating a single leg, begin with the smaller side. Leaving the tiny, pointy-tipped digit on the end, instead break the bottom two digits off (there are four digits). From there, crack the second digit carefully, at roughly a third of its length on the smaller side. Assuming your left hand is carrying the smaller, pointy-tipped side, your right hand will then remove the separated shell on the larger side. The now-exposed meat should remain with your left hand. This process is then repeated on the next two remaining digits. Here's a shot at the most coveted and largest of the digits, its meat intact and ready to go!
Claw legs, of course, are a little different, its shells being much thicker and thus tougher to break. You're on your own there!
Another reason many prefer king crab is that they are usually much larger, oftentimes in single-leg sections equaling a pound or more each! That's great consolation for those who shun crab on the count of being too much work, but when you get better at the one-third rule explained above, I'm sure you'll find snow crab much, much easier to eat than king.
Taste-wise, I also find snow crab, when fresh and large, much sweeter and much more delicate. It is juicier, more tender, and tears easily on the tongue, unlike the much denser, clump-like meat of a king. Unless they are small and over-cooked, which you'll often find, snow crab seems to me a much more refined and exquisite product, both in texture and taste. But that's just me, of course.
And yes, in case you're wondering, I have tasted king fresh from the ocean in Alaska, Norway, and Japan, not just the frozen stuff we mostly get here in Hawaii! Here's a steamer of king crab cooked at our place. Notice the small, but very sharp spines throughout?
Like most local kids, I grew-up catching crab all my life, but while other kids were busy cracking-open the blue pincher, Hawaiian, Haole, and Samoan crab varieties, I'd usually just sit and play with the discarded pinchers, opening and closing them by pulling on the strong tendon inside. It wasn't until snow crab that I actually became hooked!
As long as we're checking out crabs, may as well show you some of the other popular crab types found here in the islands.
| Blue Pincher crab - Not your normal Mainland blue's! Found mostly in brackish, muddy inlets, they are small but with large, menacing pinchers and a really nasty attitude! Thanks Keoki and Yuko Stender's excellent site marinelifephotography.com. |  |
| 7-Eleven crab - large, bright, colorful crabs of the ocean-going variety. Thanks to Kona Scuba Diving blogspot. |  |
| Hawaiian crab - small and with only tiny morsels of meat! Usually the least-esteemed of edible, locally-caught crabs. Found mostly in brackish inlets. |  |
| Kona crab - Ocean-going crabs with very little leg, but lots of sweet, tender, white meat found in pockets throughout its body. |  |
| White, or haole crab - found in the ocean or brackish inlets, its sweet meat is also coveted in the islands, oftentimes in raw, poke or kimchee-style form. |  |
| Samoan crab (called mud crab elsewhere) - don't get too close! This guy was nearing four pounds, and its bat-like pincers will take a finger if you're not careful! |  |
Though a buffet line at the Pacific Beach Hotel's Oceanarium restaurant may be only about crab for me, that may not be the case for you! No worries, as there's prime rib, teri chicken, braised beef, catch of the day, and a seafood newburg, all shown in the next shot. Note: I only grabbed the following items to show you all, not because I would've done so on a normal basis!
And that's not nearly all there is. Here's a few more items, mostly from the Japanese side - shrimp tempura, tamago sushi, ahi sushi, shrimp tempura roll, spicy ahi roll, swordfish sashimi, shrimp cocktail, raw oysters, mussels, and poke. Though small, the shrimp tempura is not too shabby, and a sushi chef works busily nearby to keep his section stocked:
A pause amidst all that crab and beef might come something like Kumi's refresher course:
Or even a fruit course:
For dessert, you know that any good hotel will carry all manner of cakes, pies, bread puddings, and other such goodies. Here at the Pacific Beach Hotel, they take it a step further with the only after-crab dessert I'll ever touch, for some reason, soft-serve ice cream! There's also also a continuously-flowing chocolate fountain with lots of bbq sticks for easy impaling's:
A few weeks ago, Kumi and I had the pleasure of a Waikiki Weekend right here at the Pacific Beach Hotel. Being that the Oceanarium restaurant is open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, we sampled their early-morning offerings as well, where Kumi's plate reflected Waikiki's ability in catering to the many Japanese tourists around. Typical items like salmon, sanma, pickled vegetables, nimono, daikon suri, and miso soup are available:
But there's no shortage of local and American-style grinds, either - French toast, pancakes, link sausage, Portuguese sausage, country-fried potatoes, scrambled eggs, fried rice, and more!
I dunno, I just love it here at the Oceanarium, and the Pacific Beach Hotel, too, actually! The food is respectable, the crab is outstanding, and the vibe is mellow and laid-back, without the haughty air of some of the fancier hotels in Waikiki. And the prices also help!
The only thing that really bites is that Kumi and I can no longer visit 24 Hour Fitness, located on the second floor of the hotel. Can you believe these guys? We both own lifetime memberships for ALL 24 Hour Fitness locations, even around the world, but somehow, then they go ahead and name some of their locations 24 Hour Fitness "Sport" facilities, and all of a sudden, we can't get in without paying an extra $15... Per month!!! What's the deal with these crooks?!
On the brighter side... Hope you're all having a great and wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday week! I luuuv this time of year! I have a feeling it's gonna be a great Christmas this year!
Take care, and Aloha till next time!
Aku
Post a Comment or just say hello! Don't worry about leaving REAL names if you don't want to! No e-mails will be posted without consent, last names will be abbreviated, and if you don't want me to post all or any part of your correspondence, please state so! Hope to hear from you all!
