Aloha Spirit in
Monterey: Hula’s Restaurant Review –
Part 2 – by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
The
co-owner I spoke to at Hula’s says that the restaurant offers five choices of
fresh fish nightly. The co-owner also
stated that they only serve fish that is on the safe harvest list from the
Monterey Bay Aquarium.
The
four fish that show up most often on Hula’s menus include:
-ahi
(a slightly strong flavored tuna with light pink flesh)
-ono
(a sweet flavored tuna with white flesh)
-mahi
mahi (sweet-flavored dolphin fish with white fish)
-hapu
(delicately flavored sea bass, also known as grouper, with lean, white flesh)
Diners
have a choice of how they would like to have these fish prepared, including
style as diverse as:
-coconut-encrusted
-Cajun
-lemongrass-encrusted
-pan-fried
with onions
-macadamia-nut
encrusted
-blackened
For
his dinner, Laurent chose the wasabi fish special with mahi mahi, which is one
of the most popular items on the menu.
Laurent’s
order arrived blackened on a bed of pale green wasabi mashed potatoes that had
the green, Japanese horseradish mixed in for flavor.
A
cream sauce made with wasabi covered the fish.
The mashed potatoes were delicious.
The sweet flesh of the mahi mahi hardly needed the wasabi-cream sauce,
but it still tasted good with it.
I
ordered the luau pork plate that came with coleslaw and rice. The co-owner I spoke with told me that in
Hawaii, a pig for a luau would be roasted in a pit for several hours.
Hula’s
roasts their pork with teriyaki and molasses.
They add pineapple at the end for flavor: The pork almost tasted like a dessert except
for the saltiness of the pork.
We
drank a surprisingly good wine with our meal:
A Maui Blanc. The wine is made
from pineapple wine and tasted great with the blackened mahi mahi and the luau
pork. The wine has been made for 20+
years in Maui by Tedeschi Vineyards.
The
two co-owners of Hula’s lived on Maui for 20 years. They operated restaurants after graduating
from college.
Article
End
If
you have never tried Hawaiian food, Hula’s is a fun place to sample without
leaving Monterey County.
By
Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
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