We spent a few days in Maui. Lots of good food, but some hitches, even with an exhaustive list of tips from a Chowhound and our local hosts.
Koa’s (Lahaina): awesome fried rice— heavy from fat, and bold from garlic and linguica sausage. Pancakes were good and huge, and came with a butterscotch flavored whipped cream. Omelette was plasticky, and home fries were crisp and seasoned like curly fries.
Baya bowls food truck and the adjacent TaquerEATa truck (Lahaina) : it was hot, so the sharing of a spicy, cheesy, breakfast taco and a cooling tropical fruit Acai bowl was perfect. Acai bowl had a good base and granola, not too sweet, and the fruit offered was ripe. We got starfruit because the papaya and lilikoi (yellow passion fruit) were waiting to ripen. Three alarm taco was delicious.
Aloha Mixed Plate (Lahaina) : Loco moco beef patty had a dark charring but kept moist. Gravy and fried rice weren’t very exciting. The Hawaiian bread French toast was pretty good. Coconut syrup tastes closer to real coconut than fake maple syrup tastes like real maple. Side of pineapple wasn’t ripe.
Choice health bar (Lahaina) : homemade granola was great in a smoothie we upped to a bowl. I liked the execution, but the fruit selection wasn’t too exotic and the strawberries were too white.
#lunch
Star noodle (Lahaina) : we managed to get bar seating without a reservation and this our favorite meal of the trip, possibly best meal of 2016.
Fiddlehead fern salad, with a dash of added soy sauce, was a lovey interplay of crunchy ferns with briny dried shrimp and wisps of salted cuttlefish.
A ginger purée made the scallops shots, and accompanying broth, even more aromatic.
Lahaina fried soup was akin to a pork chow fun, only the rice noodles were formed into 1/2 cm tall batons. Despite their thickness, they were as tender as chow fun noodles, and they didn’t stick to my teeth like Shanghai rice cakes. The lack of wok char on the noodles was made up for by the pork, which had an intoxicating lardy flavor. Wow.
They kindly split our Hapa Ramen into two separate bowls. My ramen experience is limited to the Bay Area, and I’d put Star Noodles’s hapa ramen above anything I’ve had at previous favorites (Orenchi, Ramen Shop, Maru Ichi, and San Mateo spots). Haunting pork broth and the different spheres of flavor stayed distinct until I got to the bottom of the bowl. The black garlic oil tasted buttery, the roast pork had tasty solid and shredded sections, the choy sum stayed crisp, the bamboo was soaked in mirin and provided an occasional sweet component, and the noodles had a tug that never devolved into rubber bands or mush. Epic.
Malasadas, Portuguese doughnuts duster in cinnamon and coarse sugar, came with two dipping sauces: butterscotch and chocolate. Wonderful stuff.
Thai Food by Pranee (Hana stop) Papaya salad, ordered “spicy”, had minimal seasoning so we amplified it with the Chili Water condiment, which worked well. Pumpkin curry is a throwaway dish in the Bay Area, but Pranee did a great job— the pumpkin was tender and its flavor melded with the curry.
We didn’t make it to a farmers market, like the daily one next to Leoda’s, but had some fresh fruit while hiking. There are tons of farm stands at the end of people’s driveways on the roads to and from Hana. Foodland Farms, not the regular Foodland, had lots of cool looking local and prepped foods (poke!), and Island Grocery Depot had lots of local products, at decent prices, for snacks to take for the road or back to the mainland.
Leoda’s (Lahaina) : good purple sweet potato pie, but only after I tossed some salt on the sweet filling to bring out the flavor. Haupia chocolate pie was also quite good. Desserts were the highlights, but also good were the club sandwich and the Brussels sprouts, which with dipping sauce reminded me of duck sauce. Taro veggie burger was meh.
Local boy shave ice (Lahaina): Very refreshing. Ice had a fine grind, syrups didn’t taste artificial, and the vanilla ice cream underneath had vanilla bean flecks.
Coconut Glen’s ice cream (Hana) : Lilikoi flavor was great, but I preferred the salted caramel because the salt helped raise the melting point and provide a smoother texture
##Dinner
Aloha mixed plate (Lahaina) Fresh catch sandwich, mahi mahi, was simple and good. Kalua pork plate was disappointing— pork was dry, macaroni salad overused mustard, and the rice was dry. Massive amount of Sriracha to the rescue.
Paia fish market (Lahaina) I liked the fried mahi mahi and the grilled mahi mahi. Fast casual restaurant.
