food, glorious food (you heard that with music, right?)

Are you sick of reading about our trip yet?

I’m torn.  I feel like some of you must be like “Damn, is she ever going to write about something else??”  But then I think, “There’s so much more I want to say, and since my OCD brain requires me to group things into categories (God bless you, WordPress) I couldn’t possibly just stick them into a 4,000 word post.  Not that you’d want to READ a 4,000 word post anyway…”

So there you go.  Damned if I do, damned if I don’t.  Guess I do.

We enjoyed some seriously delicious food on Kauai.  “Worthy of blogging” kind of good.  Eat-until-your-tummy-hurts kind of good.

Was I on top of things enough to take pictures of the food?  Sadly, no.  This is how I know I’m not a food blogger, because those folks always have these gorgeous photos on their page of the food in all its glory.  Whereas the food gets placed in front of me and I’m all Holy cow, that looks AMAZING.  

One bite later and it’s like the Cookie Monster takes over my body, so by the time it occurs to me that a picture might be useful there’s nothing left to shoot.  Oops.

But hey, I’m a writer, so I guess I’ll just have to paint the picture with words.  (Well, maybe I’ll troll the internet for pictures, too.)

FISH – We had some outstanding fish there, particularly dishes prepared with a macadamia nut crust.  My favorites were the Ono and Opah, both flaky white fish that are tender and delicious.  The funny thing is that seafood isn’t the first type of dish BrightSide and I turn to when we’re eating out at home, but it was pretty much the only section we looked at there.

PINEAPPLE – Seriously, people, the pineapple.  It may be the one item on this list that I don’t feel I can adequately describe.  Sweet and juicy, light and tangy…it was delicious and delightful and completely addictive.  For all of us.

SHAVE ICE – Oh, sweet mother above, shave ice.  I didn’t know what I was missing until I tried this delicious treat.  It might look like a snow cone but don’t be deceived – snow cones have a somewhat crunchy texture from the crushed ice, but this Hawaiian delight is made by shaving a block of ice so it has a very fine, snow-like texture.  There’s a scoop of ice cream in the bottom (often vanilla or macadamia nut) and you choose flavors for the ice.  It is, simply put, fantastic.

HULA PIE – We didn’t discover this yumminess until dinner on the day we left but I’d say that was a serious stroke of luck, otherwise we would have been dropping by Keoki’s Paradise every afternoon. This dessert is made of ice cream piled high on a cookie crust topped with chocolate fudge, whipped cream, and macadamia nuts and it is heavenly.  Sadly, it has forever ruined me for any kind of ice cream cake I might find here.  I don’t even think a Ben & Jerry’s cake could hold a candle to Hula Pie, and that’s saying something for me.

KALAHEO CAFÉ AND COFFEE COMPANY – Based on a review in the guidebook we tried out this gem in the winter and, as usual, it was even better than promised, so we were really psyched to get back there again.  I tell you what, the mornings when I had the chance to sit down in this cute café with my bottomless cup of fantastic coffee I was good to go.  Plus everything in the restaurant is baked fresh daily.  Mmmmmm…

These are just a few of the goodies that we enjoyed while visiting Kauai; there are several other places we didn’t manage to visit, so we have something to look forward to the next time we make that flight across the Pacific…