Eating as I Go: Scenes from America and Abroad

OPAKAPAKA AND POKE, TOO

78 Honolulu,฀2000 This is embarrassing. I am calling Alan Wong’s, one of Hawaii’s premier restaurants , at 11:00 on a Monday morning hoping to reserve a table for that evening. A New Yorker knows better. Alan Wong’s received a James Beard award in 1996 as the Best U.S. Restaurant in the Northwest. The chef, Alan Wong, embodies the East-West hybridities for which his kitchen is famous. He is Japanese born, Hawaiian bred, and mainland U.S. trained, with Japanese ancestry on his mother’s side and Chinese and Hawaiian on his father’s. Wong’s coffee-table cookbook, New Wave Luau, promises the likes of drunken duck on choy sum with mushrooms and roasted garlic smashed potatoes in a vertical presentation too dazzling to disturb either with chopsticks or a knife and fork. If I were phoning a restaurant of equal distinction in Manhattan, I probably wouldn’t even get through to a receptionist; and if I did she would inform me quite snappishly that the first available reservation was three weeks from Tuesday. But Honolulu isn’t Manhattan , my friend Marilyn protested earlier that morning, when I tried to wiggle out of making the call. Now, on the other end of the line, a lilting “Aloha” greets me, fresh yet soft, like wind chimes or a muted guitar. I hesitate a second before asking about a table for two—on the early side, I quickly add, not wishing to sound disrespectful. There’s pleasure in the receptionist’s voice as she offers us a 6:30 seating at the chef’s counter, facing the kitchen. It’s the best way to enjoy Alan Wong’s, she says, with four chefs cooking right in front of you. Alan Wong himself slips into the kitchen without fanfare as we finish our first course: an artful ahi cake of eggplant layered with ahi tuna, onions, and tomatoes. The tuna and eggplant are silky in my mouth, buttery tastes balanced by a tart chile-lemongrass and goat cheese dressing. Eric, our server, alerts us to Wong’s presence. It is part of his job, Eric explains, grinning boyishly, to make our visit a satisfying experience. He has given us his engraved business card, which reads D OPAKAPAKA฀AND฀POKE,฀TOO฀ OPAKAPAKA AND POKE, TOO 79 “Eric Leung, server,” and has invited us to question him freely. When I ask his opinion about the exotic-sounding opakapaka, a pink snapper popular in Hawaii, he assures me that the house version, steamed with gingered vegetables in a truffle broth, is deservedly world famous. He adds, in case I require further encouragement , that the fish run leaner in the summer season. Eric is delighted by Marilyn’s choice of another signature creation: grilled lamb chops(carré d’agneau caramelisé) with a macadamia-coconut crust, star anise sauce, and Asian ratatouille. To my question “Can an ‘Asian accent’ improve a French classic?” Marilyn flashes a fivehundred -watt smile. We observe the famous chef, a chunky man with a calm, round face, oblivious to the kitchen ballet that swirls around him. He is preparing a loaf of smoked salmon with a creamy cheese, a Tuesday night special, he explains in response to our query. Marilyn and I both register a shock of (ethnic) recognition. Are we witnessing the mutation of Jewish New York’s cream cheese and lox into a nouvelle Hawaiian–Pacific Rim delicacy? Eric, who probably hasn’t heard that (some) New Yorkers have a genetically programmed cultural investment in smoked salmon , suggests we ask Alan Wong to autograph our menus. Politicians, tennis players , and rock stars acknowledge their fans in a similar fashion. We hesitate to interpose ourselves between the chef and his salmon. But our server, who knows the value of celebrity as well as the conventions of his workplace, prevails. When we move our menus toward Wong with apologies, he signs them with a flourish. Honolulu,฀1998 On my first visit to Hawaii in July 1998 I was a tourist with a mission. I was also an academic in transition, working in a liberated zone, as I liked to say. I remember my first awkward moment. Dr. Yoo, director of the Center for Asia Pacific Exchange (CAPE) in Honolulu, was introducing me to a group of Asian scholars at the center’s eighteenth annual American Studies Forum. Reading from the vita I had sent him in the fall of 1997, he enumerated...