RRainbow

Rating: OK
Meal:  Dinner
Price:  4500 yen
Payment:  Credit cards accepted
Dishes:  L-bone steak
English Menu: Yes
Smoking:  No

Another meeting in Yokohama, another underground restaurant.  I was sucked in by the big pictures of a "meat festival" at RRainbow (I am not messing with the ampersand in the name), a Hawaiian themed restaurant.  The steak wasn't very good and was quite chewy.  It was also quite expensive.  Oh well...should have stuck with the Hawaiian dishes!

Quite rare..I wasn't asked

Waikiki Kitchen

Rating: Very good
Meal:  Lunch
Price:  10.403 BHD (10% tax and 10% gratuity added)
Payment: Credit cards accepted
Dishes: Parrot fish with roasted vegetables and rice, and an expensive glass bottle of water (oops)
English Menu: Yes
Smoking: No, and a guy tried to light up and was told to stop!

The second of the restaurants here at the Elite Crystal Hotel in Bahrain that I've eaten at, Waikiki Kitchen bills itself as a Hawaiian restaurant.  They also advertise their seafood.  I had a complimentary drink coupon from the front desk so I figured I'd try it out.  I wasn't too excited by what I saw on the menu though.  Not sure how authentically Hawaiian you can be without spam on the menu!

Say hello to my leetle friend!

Then the waiter came and suggested I have a look at the "catch of the day" selection.  I'm not really one for seafood (unless it's raw and on rice), but I figured what the heck, I wasn't seeing much I liked on the menu anyway.  The chef suggested the parrot fish and I got pick what sides I wanted.  I selected roasted vegetables and rice.  They weighed the fish and it was estimated to be around 8 BHD.  Again, I'm not a seafood guy, but that seemed pretty reasonable for a whole fresh fish.  I waited about 15 minutes and presto, there it was all nicely filleted with the head.  The roasted veggies were tasty, as was the rice, but the fish itself was one of the best I've ever had.  If I was a big fish person, I might rate it an Excellent meal, but as it was, thought I enjoyed it, it's not something I'm likely to order again.  I contemplated only eating half and taking the rest back, but found myself licking the last bite before I knew it.  Oh well...

Parrot fish with rice and vegetables

The total price including the accidentally ordered bottled water (some fancy water in a glass bottle, oops), and the mandatory 10% gratuity and 10% tax, was about 10 BHD which is about $30.  Expensive for a single meal, yes, but for a freshly cooked whole fish at a fancy restaurant, not too bad.  I'm giving this place a Very Good, though I don't know that it would have gotten above an Ok if I'd just ordered off the menu.

Kohisama

Rating: OK
Meal: Lunch
Price: 950 yen
Payment: Cash only
Dishes: Locomoco
English Menu:No

No English, but big pictures

I was really rooting for Kohisama Coffee as it's so clearly a labor of love for the owners.  However the dish I had just wasn't very good, so I can't give it much more than an Ok.  I'm beginning to think I need a new cuisine label of "Islander" for these kinds of places.  They have some faux Hawaiian dishes along with Okinawan influence, but aren't strongly one or the other.  Generally you *know* when you're in a hard core Okinawan restaurant, but these places are sort of wishy washy and are going for more of an islander vibe filtered through Japanese hippy sensibilities.  That being said, they are usually cute mom and pop shops with lots of local character.  You can tell someone is probably sinking their life savings into a labor of love, so I feel bad when the food is just kind of meh...but there you go.

I spied this place in my last ditch wanderings about Shioiri for lunch spots.  I wasn't sure if they were open but they were just shut up to keep the heat in.  They use one of those kerosene heaters that you can smell the minute you go inside, but after a while you stop smelling it too strongly.  With just two people working in a very confined space it took a bit longer than expected for my dish, the Locomoco.  This is a hamburger patty on rice with an egg on top and some lettuce on the side.  It can range from very simple to very complex.  This was definitely simple, very little spicing to the meat and the sauce didn't help give the dish any character.  Oh well, at least the meat seemed to be of good quality.  The two frozen pieces of pineapple were fresh...a nice touch if you like pineapple.

I also splurged for "Okinawan" coffee (not included in the price above).  This was quite a disappointment, having the flavor of yesterday's cafeteria coffee.  Not recommended really.

Ohana Aina

Rating: OK
Meal: Lunch
Price:  1000 yen
Payment:  Credit cards accepted
Dishes: Minced chicken with red and green peppers and pineapple
English Menu: Yes

Smoking: No

Hawaii is big in Japan, and there are numerous little Hawaiian themed restaurants scattered around.  One of the ones nearest the base is Ohana Aina.  It's a small place, and they are big on "slow food," so much so that they warn you on the first page of the menu that it will take a while to cook your food.  You have been warned!  Actually it didn't take all that long, but it wasn't too busy, so your mileage may vary.

 We're in the middle of Golden Week here, a series of holidays that all string together to make approximately one week of tourist madness.  Since Japanese don't like to take vacations because of the perception that they are letting their co-workers down, when the entire country *has* to take vacation, they *all* take vacation.  Even little Yokosuka gets its fair share of Japanese tourists wandering around and generally looking like Japanese tourists anywhere do.










I tried two other places before stopping here but they were either full or clearly too busy to be bothered getting to me.  The menu is mainly Hawaiian inspired and filtered through Japanese tinted glasses.  I've never been impressed with what the Japanese have done with Hawaiian "themed" food myself.  I kind of think of Hawaiian cuisine like Pacific Northwest cuisine...it's too young to have any defined shapes.  In Oregon, it's "pacific northwest" if it has salmon in it.  For Hawaiian, it seems to run in the "has pineapple" in it, or "put an egg on it" direction.  Now, I'm all down for an egg on everything, and I like Thai food so I went for their one and only thai dish, minced chicken with vegetables and an egg on.

Of course it had pineapple too.  And a scoop of a brownish frozen banana mush that I was told to mix in with everything.  This I dutifully did, and it was...ok I guess.  But otherwise the chicken was kind of tough, not truly minced, and the flavors were very singular and one-noted (typical with Japanesification of most foreign food).  While it wasn't terrible, it wasn't great either, meriting an OK from me.  It was also kind of expensive for the small quantity of food.