Opihi versus wagyu
continuing the meditation on luxury ingredients
‘Opihi or limpets aren’t easy to find these days, and I only reliably get to eat them when I go to Helena’s Hawaiian Food, where they’re served with a pinch of limu or seaweed. A tiny little plate costs about $8. Helena’s doesn’t always have them and I’ve asked for them far more often than I’ve successfully got them. Earlier this week, my Kauai family spent a good hour gushing over ‘opihi to Ari, who hadn’t tried them before. They’re notoriously difficult to harvest. Fishermen risk their lives to pry their little ridged cone shells off craggy rocks along the coastline in between waves smashing against the rocks. I learnt to sing the Opihi Man song long before I got to eat ‘opihi. They taste rather like abalone, but more tender and silkier, and you can grill the bigger ones. The little ones are best eaten raw with a bit of shoyu and chili peppah water.
All that to say, ‘opihi is to me the ultimate luxury. I encounter a lot of truffles, caviar, and wagyu in my line of work and as I question constantly, are these still luxuries when any restaurant anywhere can get them?
I think that’s why I was so enamored by Provenance in Philly, where they don’t necessarily rely on those luxuries (though they do have some) and get their hands on really special local produce. I got into a heated and published discussion about it with my co-workers at the Inquirer:
A 23-course discussion on Philly’s most acrobatic restaurant, November 2024
Wagyu has factored pretty heavily in our lives recently, given Ari’s stint at the fanciest of steakhouses. Last month he demoed wagyu with Poi Dog sauces at Drexel and I was shocked at the time to see him handling the steaks, with absolute zero reverence, treating them just like any old piece of meat. He flung the wagyu around like it was Spam. The steak came out utterly perfectly cooked. His casualness in handling it wasn’t a result of lack of skill but extreme skill, but it was still jarring to see, after being inundated with wagyu propaganda about its provenance.
And yes, it was delicious with Huli and Guava Katsu, as both cut through the meat’s extreme fattiness. Ari maintains that fine dining these days is essentially finding different ways of consuming fat.
Back in Hawai’i
I set my alarm and woke up early this morning to get reservations to snorkel at Hanauma Bay for Friday — it was like trying to get Taylor Swift tickets or a reservation for Royal Omakase in Philly, next to impossible.
We lived in Hawaii Kai, a few minutes drive from Hanauma Bay in the late 80’s and 90’s, and my parents would take me and Lani to Long’s Drugs on weekends to pick up dissolvable tubes of fish food to feed the fish at Hanauma Bay. If you tried that now, you’d definitely get arrested. Now entrances are heavily restricted and timed, cost money ($25 per person — I just said this out loud to Auntie Myra who of course gets a kama’aina discount and she just yelled at me, “NO WAY! Go somewhere else!” and proceeded to plot how I could impersonate her to use her ID), and you have to watch an instructional video before touching the water. These are all good things. The Hanauma Bay of my youth had murky water and a lot of fish that circled your ankles and nipped at you and that you could sort of see, but now it’s so clean, with a stunning variety of colorful fish.
I came down with pneumonia a couple weeks ago (right after the most spectacular of birthday blowouts) and was in active denial of it for the first few days, even while it felt like someone was standing on my chest, choking me, and tickling the back of my throat with a feisty beetle. I spent a week sequestered in our DC apartment, only moving between the bed and the couch, struggling to focus on watching Netflix. I still don’t sound quite like myself. I lose my breath easily and I have a smoker’s voice.
Somewhere in that time, Thanksgiving happened and then Black Friday, and an absolute avalanche of gift guides, some of which I had contributed to. I snuck my own sauces into these: The Best Gifts for Vegans and The Best Gifts for Pantry Nerds. Poi Dog had a Black Friday sale on Amazon, giving discounts we couldn’t afford to, but also couldn’t afford not to, in efforts to reach a wider audience. I meant to write a newsletter to tell everyone about it, but that was one of the things I was too sick to accomplish. (By the way, we desperately need reviews on the sauces on Amazon, if you’ve purchased them! Please, I implore you.) As a consumer, I never really shop Black Friday deals. I always felt like they propel me to purchase things I don’t really need. Food is the great exception. Always give food gifts.
Right now I’m sitting in my Uncle Joe and Auntie Myra’s dining room, drinking coffee from a 24 oz ceramic cup with the words “it’s not the journey but who you travel with” printed on it, while my uncle watches morning shows and tells me about the last time he caught a cold on a cruise ship, and to me this is the ultimate luxury. Staying with my aunt and uncle is one of the two closest approximations that I have to home. I’m spending the week retracing my favorite hiking trails in the morning, cramming as much Hawaiian food into my cheeks in the afternoon, and rotting on their couch watching Bond movies at night. The Inquirer said I had to use my vacation days or lose them before the end of the year, so here I am taking a real vacation.
I’ve also been strong-arming my family members into starring in content for Poi Dog (since our ad budget is um, zero). My cousin Keane went above and beyond. I’m absolutely tickled by this video we made on the Makapu’u Trail yesterday:
We were on Kauai for a couple days before this, and it was my first time taking the direct flight from Denver to Lihue (remember when to get to any neighbor island you had to fly to HNL first?). We had a hell of a time getting out of Philly. I was touch and go health wise and up until the day before our flight, not convinced I was well enough to get on a plane. When we got to the airport at 4am, Terminal D had a power outage and it was like an apocalyptic scene at check in. Long lines of passengers illuminated only by emergency lights, silence from airline representatives. Once past security, we ran through dark corridors from D to A when announcements were made by frantic gate agents ushering crowds to gates that did have power. We made it to Kauai (our luggage didn’t, until later), and got to see most of my extended family. Uncle Tommy drove us from house to house along the southern part of the island, to visit with each auntie for 30 minutes at a time. I think we went to eight houses.
My Kauai family is very different from my Oahu family. There you drop in on people unannounced, wake them up from naps, root through their fridges without invitation, and this is all perfectly normal. My grandparents were both from Kauai, but my grandpa, after moving to Oahu somewhere during high school, I think, was much less connected to Kauai. My grandma’s family still occasionally refers to him as “That Honolulu Bum.” Meanwhile, my grandma’s family consists about roughly half the island. Where my Oahu family is soft-spoken and gentle and hopelessly polite, my Kauai family members are loud and they immediately start teasing me upon laying eyes on me, and never stop making fun of one another. There’s another Kiki in the family so they have to distinguish me by calling me “The One with the Lunchwagon, Gloria’s Granddaughter.”
Days there never end, even though the island shuts down at 7pm (we got saimin at Hamura Saimin which is open “late night,” until 9:30pm). In the morning, I pack the car with snacks, towels, several different pairs of shoes and changes of clothes, because you could be hanging out with a 95 year old aunt one minute and the next minute be headed up a mountain. With Kauai, you just never know where the day is going to take you. On this trip, one minute we were on the Great Auntie Tour 2024 and the next Uncle Tommy and Ari were in the backyard trying to shoot chickens with air guns.
Recent writings:
Do feed the models: when haute couture meets haute cuisine, Fine Dining Lovers, December 2024 (I’ll tell you more about this later — and get into a tangent of kanpachi sourcing)
Philly’s quirkiest new Italian restaurant is ‘middle-class fancy’ by way of Oklahoma, Philadelphia Inquirer, November 2024 (Scampi is so much fun and so refreshing)
Recently published on The Strategist (but written months ago):
The Best Gifts for Vegans, November 2024
The Best Gifts for Pantry Nerds, November 2024
What Maddy DeVita Can’t Live Without, November 2024
I’m going back to being fussed over now.
Mahalo for reading!