Krik's Picks

As you’ll read in the following two posts, I recently attended a conference on Maui. I didn’t really expect to get out to eat too often since most of the meals were provided for the conference. Mostly I got out for lunches. One of my coworkers attending the same conference had come a few days early for some vacation time with his wife. I was chatting with him during the conference and he told me that they’d discovered a restaurant in Lahaina that was, in his words, a Hawaiian version of Café Barbette in Minneapolis. “Cool,” I thought. “Too bad I won’t be able to try it.” Well, after the conference ended, my flight home wasn’t until mid-afternoon. So it turned out that I’d have time for a brunch before driving to the airport. I checked with a colleague who was riding with me to the airport, and she was agreeable to a stop in Lahaina for brunch on the way to the airport. The restaurant is Mala Ocean Tavern . As the name suggests, it’s right on the ocean with a beautiful view of the isl...

It’s the last day of the conference that brought me to Maui. And contrary to what I wrote in my first pos t, we did not have a group lunch planned for today, so I got one more chance to try a restaurant. In my post from Feb. 5, I wrote about a fish sandwich that I had at a beach café. It was ok, but I was frustrated that it wasn’t cooked the way I wanted it (medium rare). Well, I didn’t intend to have another fish sandwich for lunch today. I picked ‘OnO Bar & Grill in my hotel because the menu said they served ‘ poke .’ I’d read about this traditional, Hawaiian raw-fish dish and I wanted to try it. I thought it would kind of ironic since the first time I ever ate sushi or sashimi was on the first trip I ever took to Hawaii more than 30 years ago. After I was seated, I discovered that poke isn’t on the menu for lunch. I thought about leaving, but I saw the fish sandwich on the menu and decided to give it a try. Boy, am I glad I did and what a difference from the fish sandwich I had...

So here I am in Maui for a conference. ‘Sure,’ I can hear you say. ‘Get a lot of work done there?’ Actually, yes. If you can believe it, we have breakfast meetings scheduled at 6:30 a.m. tomorrow and 7 a.m. the next day. Then the sessions go all day until 5 p.m. Since I didn’t come early, and I’m not staying later, there won’t be much time in the Hawaiian sun for me. Not much opportunity to try the local cuisine, either. Other than lunch today, all of my meals will be group meals at the hotel. So for lunch, I strolled along the beach looking for a likely place to have my one restaurant meal of the trip. I settled on the Hula Grill . Food: 3 Service: 2 Ambiance: 3.5 Value: 2 So just in case you don’t believe me that I was working, please note the conference materials on the table in the photo that I was reading at lunch. I had a fish sandwich. It was a piece of fish on a very good multi-grain bun. It was served with a jalapeño aioli and macadamia nut coleslaw. When I ordered the fish, t...