Hawaii Food Tours' "Hole in the Wall Restaurant Tour"

On the advice of a friend of ours who grew up in Honolulu, we went on Hawaii Food Tours' "Hole in the Wall Restaurant Tour" (www.hawaiifoodtours.com/).  The entire tour, from start to end, was a blast!

The tour was hosted by Matthew and Keira.  Matthew is a former chef-turned-food-critic.  Keira, Matthew's fiance, is a Honolulu native.  The two of them are a light-hearted duo whose passion for food and enthusiasm for what they do is obvious from the moment that the tour starts.

The tour took us through a number of spots in Chinatown and other neighborhoods around Honolulu.  At each stop, Matthew or Keira would explain the significance of the food that we were eating: how it came to be popular in Hawaii, how it's made, or where it's grown.  The entire tour was very well organized and well paced.

We started out at Royal Kitchen where we ate baked manupua, a fluffy dough stuffed with sweet or savory meat.  It reminded me of fleischkuekle, which is a German meat pie (popular in North Dakota); fleischkuekle is fried instead of baked...  manupua is tastier.  This is a truly terrible picture of me, but I wanted to include it because this is also a scene from Lost where Sun is making a pay-off to Jin's mother by a canal in "Japan".  It's taken directly across the sidewalk from Royal Kitchen:



I don't want to give away all of Matthew and Keira's secrets, so I won't elaborate on every stop that we made, but...  We eventually made a stop in Chinatown at a shaded marketplace filled with the aroma of freshly prepared foods, the clatter of conversations in unknown languages, and sidewalk tables with vendors peddling fresh fruits, vegetables and othe treats.  We were treated to exotic foods that I would have never dared to eat; having a confident guide makes exploring new foods easy.  For example, this fruit is a rambutan:

 

As you can see, the exterior is bright red with red-fading-to-yellow "hairs".  It looks like something you'd expect to see on a snorkling trip mated with a poisonous caterpillar... it's not.  After the tough skin has been removed, the interior looks like a pear-colored white grape; it's semi-translucent, and yellow-ish.  Once in your mouth it feels - and tastes - like a ripe plum.

Honolulu's Chinatown is very similar to Seattle's International District (and I suspect similar to most city's similar neighborhoods).  For example, there was a butcher/sandwhich shop with this little critter hanging in the window:



Seattle's International District has similar shops with similar creatures hanging in the window for passers-by to ponder.  I left this tour with a newly-found curiosity about my own back-yard and the hidden treats that need only a bit of searching.

If you're planning a trip to Oahu, this tour should be at the top of your to-do list.  We booked our tour 6 weeks before our vacation and there was only one day that was available for the week that we were there, so sign up early!