Aloha Spirit in Monterey: Hula's Restaurant Review - Part 2 - by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

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

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Aloha Spirit in Monterey, California: Hula's Restaurant Review - Part 1 - by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Aloha Spirit in Monterey, California:  Hula’s Restaurant Review – Part 1 – by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

I queried The Monterey County Weekly (Circulation: 200,000) to do a restaurant review of Monterey’s local Trader Vic’s – Hula’s.  I went to Trader Vic’s when I was a student at the University of Chicago and fully appreciate how Aloha Spirit can make you feel warm in winter.

I noted in my query that I had been to Hawaii (Twice now in 2019) and stayed with a Polynesian family upon returning from the People’s Republic of China in 1979. 

I thought Hula’s food tasted like the luau that Hawaii’s Polynesian and Japanese communities prepared for the youth tour I was on before going back home to Detroit, Michigan.

The Monterey County Weekly asked me to do an article, which I have modified as follows:

Aloha Spirit in Monterey: Hula’s Wows with Great Food and Kicky Atmosphere

Hula’s Island Grill and Tiki Room is the kind of restaurant that makes me want to smile the minute I walk in – especially at dinner time when flickering candles in red glass holders cast a hypnotic glow on the thatched roof over the bar and the Polynesian wood carvings.

Blue lights outline the bar, and colored lights frame the windows.  It is fun to be seen in this noisy, party-time restaurant that fascinates children and adults alike with its Hawaiian-inspired décor.

My husband Laurent and I began our meal by ordering some festive appetizers called pupus: surfrider sticks and tiki torches.

The surfrider sticks, which looked like surfboards sticking up in the sand, are chicken breast pieces threaded on skewers and planted in a thick slice of roasted slice of pineapple.

Both dipping sauces tasted yummy:  One was a slightly sweet Thai peanut sauce and the other was a mildly, salty soy-teriyaki sauce.

Six miniature drumsticks that came bathed in a spicy sesame-hoisin sauce made up of our tiki torch dish.  The hoisin sauce - made from soy sauce, molasses, and Chinese hot sauce – gave the chicken a luscious kick.  The sour cram dipping sauce made the already rich chicken very filling.

We drank one of Hula’s eclectic beer choices with our appetizers:  Longboard lager produced by the Kona Brewery on Hawaii. 

One of the co-owners said he likes to offer out-of-the-ordinary items to make eating at his restaurant an exotic experience.

End of Part 1.

To be continued…

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

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Sampling a Hawaiian Luau with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Sampling a Hawaiian Luau with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget by Savvy Mom Rut Paget

My editor at The Monterey County Weekly (Circulation: 200,000) called me and said she would like my husband and me to go out on a date at Hula’s Hawaiian Restaurant, so I could do an article on that. 

“Florence can go out some other time,” she joked with me.

Blue lights outlined the bar and colored lights framed the windows.  It is fun to be seen in this noisy, party-time restaurant that fascinates children and adults alike with its Hawaiian – inspired décor.

My husband Laurent and I began our meal by ordering some festive pupus or “appetizers’: surfrider sticks and tiki torches.

The surfrider sticks, which looked like surfboards sticking up in the sand, are chicken breast pieces threaded on skewers and planted in a thick slice of roasted pineapple.

Both dipping sauces tasted great.  One was a slightly, sweet Thai peanut sauce and the other was a mildly, salty soy-teriyaki sauce.

Six meaty miniature drumsticks that came bathed in a spicy, sesame-hoisin sauce made up our tiki torch dish.  The hoisin sauce, molasses, and Chinese hot sauce gave the chicken a luscious kick.  The sour cream dipping sauce made the already rich chicken very filling.

We drank one of Hula’s eclectic beer choices with our appetizers: Longboard Lager produced by the Kona Brewing Company in Hawaii.  Co-owner D. likes to offer out-of-the-ordinary items to make eating an exotic experience.

Co-owner D. proudly says that Hula’s offers five choices of fresh fish nightly and that the restaurant never uses farm-raised fish.  He notes also that Hula’s only offers fish selections that the Monterey Bay Aquarium lists as existing in safe numbers for harvesting.

The four fish that show up on the menu most of the time are ahi (a slightly, strong-flavored tuna with light, pink flesh), ono (a sweet tuna with white flesh), mahi mahi (sweet-flavored dolphin fish with white flesh), and 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 styles as diverse as coconut-encrusted, Cajun, lemongrass-encrusted, pan-fried with onions, macadamia-nut encrusted, or blackened.

For his dinner, Laurent chose the wasabi fish with mahi mahi, which is one of the most popular items on the menu.  The mahi mahi arrived blackened on a bed of pale, green wasabi mashed potatoes (made with Japanese horseradish).

The mashed potatoes were delicious and the sweet flesh of the mahi mahi hardly needed the wasabi-cream sauce, but it did taste good with it.

I ordered the luau pork plate that came with coleslaw and rice.  Co-owner D. told me that in Hawaii, a pig for a luau would be roasted in a pit for several hours.  Hula’s does not go to quite these lengths, but they do roast the pork for several hours with teriyaki and molasses and add pineapple at the end for flavor.

The pork tasted almost like a dessert except for the saltiness of the meat.  I wished I had not ordered appetizers, so I could have devoted my full attention to the pork.

We drank a good wine with our meal as a lark: the Maui Blanc.  This wine is made from pineapples and has a mild flavor and wonderful pineapple bouquet.  The pineapple wine went extremely well with the sweet-fleshed mahi mahi and luau pork that we ate.

Co-owner D. says that it goes well with most of the items on Hula’s menu.  The wine has been made for twenty years on Maui by Tedeschi Vineyards.

Co-owner D., who opened Hula’s with his brother, lived on Maui for twenty years where he operated restaurants after graduating from college.

When the two came to Monterey seven years ago, they saw that there were no Hawaiian restaurants and decided to fill the void.

His brother had the food expertise as well as the eye for knick-knacks – he is the one who has gone to garage sales to find things like the hula girl lamp stand which graces the bar.  The brother is the design man.

Together the brothers D. have created a rollicking, good-time restaurant that evokes the aloha spirit on the Monterey Peninsula.

End of Article

We did take Florence to Hula’s after our date, and she loved it.  We had fun posing by all the fun decorations and doing hula dances.  We all laughed about a dish called a “pupu” platter.

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

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