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

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Sampling Swiss Cuisine with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Sampling Swiss Cuisine with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Lugano Swiss Bistro in Carmel (California) is an oasis of Old World European charm in Monterey County.  My family has celebrated birthdays and anniversaries there over two decades.

My editor at the Monterey County Weekly (Circulation: 200,000) absolutely wanted an article from this Monterey County “happy times” restaurant.  The following is the article I wrote for the Weekly:

When my husband Laurent and I yearned for some Old World charm on our recent anniversary, we headed out to Lugano Swiss Bistro in the Barnyard Shopping Center in Carmel Valley.

We liked to sit on the German side of the restaurant, enjoying its carved wood and beer tankard decorations, but we now prefer the Italian side with its painted street scenes of gelati vendors and florists.

The night of our anniversary, we ordered Swiss onion soup and the original Swiss Fondue.  I cannot detect a difference between French and Swiss onion soup, but I will say that the melted gruyè cheese on Lugano’s soup had a tang to it that you do not get when you use “Swiss-style” cheese.

We continued our cheese test with fondue, a dish said to have originated in the French-speaking part of Switzerland.  The creamy texture made from bubbling gruyère, emmenthal, and appenzeller cheese makes it tempting to drop the bread cube into Lugano’s fondue.

The penalty for dropping your bread in the fondue according to A Little Swiss Cookbook by Jacqueline Martinet is to buy another bottle of wine for your party.

Laurent’s favorite wine for fondue at Lugano is the Père Patriarche.  This slightly sour wine perfectly cuts the rich cheese flavors of the fondue and aids in digestion.  When we go to Lugano with a large group, we like to order the Swiss Fendant du Valais for its perky flavor that can stand up to the cheese like Père Patriarche.

After dinner with Laurent, I came back a few days later with my friend C., who was looking for restaurants with locals’ specials.  Lugano fits the ticket on Tuesday nights.

We started our meal with a Swiss specialty Buenderfleisch, air-dried beef.  These thin slices of beef taste like a meaty, prosciutto, but not as delicate.

This was the first time my friend C. and I ate buenderfleisch, and we both liked it.  Usually buenderfleisch gets served before fondue or another specialty called raclette, which I ordered as my main dish.

Raclette’s history evokes Switzerland’s pastoral heritage.  As snow melts in the spring, cow herders take cattle higher up on the mountain slopes until they reach the lushest pastures at the foot of the glaciers.

The herders stay on these high pastures all summer and make rich cheese.  Villagers go up to the pastures where they heat half-wheels of the new cheese over branch fires.  They scrape the melted cheese over steamed, new potatoes making raclette.

Lugano’s raclette lived up to my foodie musings.  Generous amounts of Swiss cheese covered the potatoes finally.  Sour, cornichon pickles added crunchiness and a sour taste to the rich, cheese dish I had ordered.

C. took advantage of the special night to order a roast rack of lamb with demi-glazed, seasonal vegetables.  The tender lamb was juicy with a slight crust to make perfection.  It takes decades of roasting to make this dish look simple.

I will definitely order this for myself when I come back to Lugano.  C’s large side dish of Swiss roesti potatoes merited attention.

Roesti roughly translates as “potato pancake,” but roesti are more than a side dish in Swiss cuisine.

The Swiss eat them for breakfast along with milky coffee.  To make roesti potatoes, the cook boils waxy potatoes, peels them, and then rubs them through a grinder.  Finally, the potatoes are fried in lard with a little bacon until they form a sturdier version of hash browns.

Lugano offers several interesting beers.  We drank a Spaten Oktoberfest from Germany and a Czechvar Lager from Czechoslovakia with our meal.  The Oktoberfest beer is a smooth beer while Czechvar has more bite to it.  Beer and cheese just seem to go together.

After we had eaten, the co-owner insisted that we try a chocolate fondue that usually comes as part of the four-course fondue dinner.  The light chocolate in no way resembled the thick chocolate concoctions I create at home.

I was skeptical about how cantaloupe dunked in chocolate would taste, but it was good.  Musk melon, bananas, and strawberries tasted wonderful with the warm, chocolate coating as well.  Part of the reason for this may have been that the fruit was perfectly ripe.

The food is the obvious Old World European attraction to Lugano Swiss Bistro, but the restaurant literally exudes genuetlichkeit – German friendliness and coziness.

The restaurant employs accordion players and German Alpine Trio players once a month.  I have even heard yodeling when this group takes the stage.

End of Article

When Florence would come along to this restaurant, the waiters would pick up the Alpine cow sculpture and run around with the bell clanging on her birthday - Silly stuff, but fun.

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

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Lunching at Steinbeck's Childhood Home with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Lunching at Steinbeck’s Home with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

When I moved to Monterey County (California), one of the first things I did was try reading all of John Steinbeck’s novels that I could get ahold of at the library. 

My favorite John Steinbeck novel remains East of Eden, which is set in Salinas (California), a little bit east of where I live now in Marina, California.

I was happy to learn that his childhood home in Salinas was a restaurant.

I called the editor at the Monterey County Weekly (Circulation:  200,000) and asked if I could do a story on lunch at Steinbeck’s birthplace in Salinas.

She thought that would be grand, especially for getting visuals for the article.  I called and made reservations for lunch.  (Florence was at school, so I lunched alone.  I worked on some projects while I was waiting for my meal.  I always have large post-it notes with or a small notebook with me for this purpose.)

The article I wrote follows:

The Steinbeck House in Salinas offers homey meals and a chance to tour the author’s birthplace.

On a visit last week to the Steinbeck House Restaurant in Salinas, I snuck a peek into the room where John Steinbeck was born.

The 19th-century manor immediately made me think of childhood visits to my great-aunt’s Victorian house with its dark, wood furniture, lace curtains in floor-to-ceiling, and brown flower print tablecloths reaching to the floor.

Thanks to the labors of the Valley Guild volunteers for the past thirty years, lunch in this landmark establishment provides the seasonal offerings of the Salinas Valley at a reasonable price.  Meals change on a weekly basis.

Lunch with rolls, a starter entrée, and beverage are reasonably priced.  For those interested in lighter fare, the Steinbeck House offers a soup and salad special.  There are desserts and wine by the glass.

The chef plans out all the meals one month in advance, so that guests can check out what is being served before making reservations.

The day that I ate at the Steinbeck House, I had a molded cranberry fruit salad, chicken cacciatore with tortellini, the house iced tea, and a slice of lemon tart.

While waiting for the starter to arrive, I helped myself to the homemade rolls that the waitress brought.

The rolls were as soft and moist as brioches without the sugary taste.  Instead, the chef had brushed the tops with a butter, garlic, and dill mixture that made them taste even better than dessert.

The slice of red, molded cranberry fruit salad that came served on a lettuce leaf was much more elegant than plain Jell-O.  Cranberries, along with thin slices of celery, chopped walnuts, and crushed pineapple went into this tart gelatin.  This starter did the job of “opening the appetite” as the French would say.

Chicken cacciatore always amuses me when I order it.  This dish is also known as “Hunters’ Chicken” as I learned while perusing the Joy of Cooking one day.  I wonder what kind of hunter would carry tomatoes, mushrooms, and chicken around to create this dish.

Apparently, the genius of an unlucky hunter has given the rest of us a dish of moist chicken sautéed in olive oil and simmered in a mixture of tomato paste, white wine, and chicken stock flavored with thyme, basil, marjoram, and mushrooms.

The Steinbeck House version of this dish is sweet tasting.  I liked the sauce with the homemade tortellini.  I sipped the delicious Steinbeck House iced tea made with lemonade, black tea, and a “mystery” ingredient.

Brown-tinted photographs of John Steinbeck’s parents, Olive Hamilton and John Ernst Steinbeck, hang on the walls in frames in gilt ovals around the photos.

A large, red bow for Christmas decorated the right side of each photo.  A Nutcracker-worthy Christmas tree stood in the room where Steinbeck was born.

They have a volunteer-run gift shop with books and other Steinbeck-related items.

End of Article

I brought Florence back to the “Nutcracker House” for a tortellini lunch with hot tea.  I showed her Steinbeck’s room and told her we would also visit the Steinbeck Center downtown, too, to see the camper that he traveled around the U.S. in for Travels with Charley.

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

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Discussing Bogus Statistics and Science with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Discussing Bogus Statistics and Science with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

On the way home from my daughter Florence’s charter Waldorf School in Pacific Grove (California), we had a discussion about bogus science.

Florence began by telling me that one of the parents at school said that aliens caused the 9/11 terrorist attack when we went to the astronomy field trip at Pebble Beach.
I told Florence, “That is a bogus science remark.  She probably said it, because you-know-who runs a Girl Scout troop and does not invite most of the class to participate despite getting funding as a class troop.”

I continued, “Do not worry about being in the troop, we do more interesting family field trips and activities, because dad and I are better cultured and educated than the troop leader’s family.”

“Just tell alien-terrorist mom that we want to retain our culture, religion, and heritage like scout leader mom.  The rest of the class are free to do the things we do, but many of our family field trips are religious or violate dietary laws,” I said.

Florence laughed at my peacekeeping efforts for the day.  I used this discussion as a teaching moment about bogus science, the scientific method, and statistical correlation.

“Bogus science is actually kind of fun, but you have to recognize it for what it is.  Aliens are the topic of the 2000s.  When I was young, there were books out on the Nazca Lines in southern Peru that were supposed to be landing sites for alien planes,” I said.

Florence was laughing.

“But, the topic I was more interested in was Pyramid Power.  I asked my science teacher, if I could do my science project on pyramid power even though I knew this was phony, but I thought it would be a good way to show how the scientific method works,” I said.

My teacher agreed to a pyramid power experiment that I would devise.  We skipped a human subjects interview.

I made a presentation to the class about the pyramids at Giza, the architect Imhotep, and the process you need to go through to establish a theory with the scientific method.

The outline I gave at the presentation for the scientific method follows:

-Ask a question
-Do background research
-Construct a hypothesis (A simple one would be: If I do this, then this will happen:____________________)
-Test the hypothesis with an experiment
-Do test results support your hypothesis?  If so, proceed to the next step.
-Do the results not support your hypothesis? If not, analyze the results, but do not change the data to support your hypothesis.  Proceed to the next step.
-Analyze data and draw conclusions.  This step is different from seeing if data supports your hypothesis.  Notably, see if your research has further research implications.
-Communicate your results in written and spoken form.

My hypothesis, which I developed from the book named something like Pyramid Power, was that if my science and United Nations teacher sat directly under the apex of a pyramid over her head, she would become neater and more organized.

In theory, the force of the pyramid was supposed to concentrate and send a ray of power into her brain and make my teacher think better.

She had to record in a journal over a month-long period any changes in her routine that made her neater and more organized on a daily basis.  She had to take a picture of her desk on the first day of the experiment as a baseline to see if any changes were apparent at the end of the experiment.

I bought an engineering toy set with tubes and connectors, which we hoisted over her desk as a class project.

During the month of the experiment, all of us would crowd around her desk and take any chance we could to sit at her desk and say, “Buzzzz” and shake like the force was with us amidst much laughter.

At the end of thirty days, our science teacher shared her notes with us and said she had become more organized while sitting under the pyramid.

At this point, our science teacher became a scientist and not an entertainer.  She took this opportunity to tell us about correlation in statistics that we would take in college.
“The better organization could have been due to the pyramid or some other factor.  But, as all of you kids were crowding around my desk, I kept grade books and notes to other teachers put away.” 

“So, another factor caused me to be organized.  I can talk, but when you are dealing data, you have to take many factors into consideration.  Many times thinking of why something happened in dollar figures, helps evaluate an data to draw a conclusion,” she said.

After that, all of us took photos under with our arms held out buzzing to conclude my Pyramid Power project.

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

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