Tag Archives: restaurants

Happy Mother’s Day to me!

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A Sunday with nothing to do was just what I needed! We decided to make it an early dinner so we all just lazed around the house. Until I got bit by the cleaning bug and did a million loads of laundry, dishes and mopped the floors. Yes, I know. I am doing Mother’s Day wrong. However I felt a million times better having a clean house to start the week.

I was a little bit bummed by my meal out, we hit up Nico’s one of my favorite places to eat. It wasn’t too crowded which was great. I ordered a Pier 38 Punch to start, eh, it was okay. My husband decided to be brave and try the oyster shooters. My seafood lover wasn’t a fan, I was actually surprised. I could barely look at them, ugh. It was a brave person who first ate one of those. Well I decided to order the Steak Frites, ribeye steak, medium and was so disappointed to have it come almost well done. Awful. But I am one of those people who NEVER send food back. Like ever. (I have seen Waiting I know what happens!) I am kinda picky when it comes to steak, if you can’t grill it better than I can for $25 then shame on you. Also my husbands seafood scampi was pretty bland.

It’s such a surprise when one of your favorite places let’s you down! We couldn’t get reservations at the Japanese Steakhouse I really wanted to go to, and instead of postponing dinner out, I just went with a second choice. Dang it!

(Dessert partially redeemed it, however, dessert trio- mini lava cake, salted caramel ice cream and smore’s bread pudding)

At least I managed to snag a picture with each of my munchkins, you can tell how delighted they are.

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Really that is as good as it gets picture-wise. I am amazed I even got those.

Happy Mother’s Day to all of the other mamma’s out there!

Eat the Street: Mililani

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This is something I’ve been wanting to do for ages, before we even moved to Hawaii I saw some pictures from this event and was sold!

I love to eat and one of my FAVORITE shows is the Great Food Truck Race. Finally was able to make this happen!

First off, some advice. Get there early, as close to opening as you can. Park at a shuttle stop, no worries about finding a spot. Come hungry and with plenty of cash.DSC_0144

 

We did a quick sweep of the trucks (there were SO many-spread out over two parking lots!) to get an idea of what was out there and what we wanted to try. ets

 

foodWaffledogs, delicious! Especially drizzled with maple syrup. The kids were VERY skeptical about these but ended up loving them! ($3/each) Next up Xtreme Tacos, smoked chicken taco. It came with two tortillas and I was able to split up the filling. Because there was pico de gallo in it Omar didn’t want to try it and Mckenna didn’t love it. They were good to me though! ($2.75)

food2Our splurge of the day, wood fired pizza from Kiawe Pizza. So good. ($10) Pop pop donuts ($3.50) Aloha Pops ($3)

fairycakesAnd one more dessert to share, Death by Chocolate from Fairy Cakes. I really wanted everything on the menu! Mckenna was eyeballing the Maple Bacon Cake but it was just too weird for her!

We had a great time sampling lots of goodies. I am going to have to branch out and try some things I didn’t get to next time, Fried Musubi, octopus balls and Malasada burgers are calling my name!

More food truck dates and locations for Oahu:

http://www.streetgrindz.com/

Do you have any favorite food trucks or know of any food truck events?

 

 

 

Breakfast with a view…

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Omar had soccer pictures on Saturday morning over on Hickam, when he was done we had some time to kill before his game so we popped over to Wright Brothers for some breakfast. I LOVE eating here, it is priced really well ($3.25 for a kids plate and that includes a drink) the food is good and it comes out quick. Also the view is pretty great, right across the entrance to Pearl harbor. The outdoor seating is really beautiful although hard to come by, I was stalking tables waiting for someone to leave!
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It’s a great spot to take pictures (which is why soccer pictures are done here I assume!) Lots of pretty trees and a lovely backdrop. I’ll have to bring them back in something other than soccer uniforms!pose

 

There is also a seawall right by the restaurant that allows some great fish watching, lots of FAT fish from all of the bread people feed them. I even saw some yellow tangs which is crazy because we haven’t seen them ONCE while snorkeling.fish

Anyways, get over to Wright Brothers, have some breakfast or lunch and enjoy the view and breeze!

 

 

 

The one where I eat out of a trough

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So yesterday we decided to be the most awesome. parents. ever!  and pick our kiddos up from school and go directly to Dave and Buster’s. D&B’s is like a big kid’s Chuck E. Cheese. They have a restaurant and then a huge video game area. We had been before on one of our day date’s we have been indulging in since the kids have been in school, but this time we decided to be nice and take the kid’s too.

We were going for a late lunch but the kids weren’t hungry so they just got milkshakes. And eat the nachos we got as an appetizer (I LOVE their nachos!)

See?! Spoiled happy kids! (pardon the cell phone pics)

So for lunch I decided to get a salad and picked one called The Lawnmower. The picture looked like a cobb type salad with a little bit of everything. My kind of salad. So imagine my surprise when this arrived at our table:

That platter is TWO FEET LONG! You know how when you order fajitas and all the plates and bowls and sizzling platters feel like you are taking up half the table? Well this thing took up half the table!! I think our entire family could have eaten comfortably off of this salad. (Also please ignore Mckenna’s super natural looking surprised face)

Anyways, the salad was good (what I could eat of it) also the stolen sips of Omar’s abandoned chocolate milkshake.

Oh, Also!!! Dave and Buster’s offers a 20% military discount! That is a seriously good discount because they have decent meal prices to start, like mainland prices, not Hawaii prices.

Life size connect four! Mckenna won, she was super excited!

So after eating we hit up the games, which was perfect because Wednesday is half price games, who knew? The kids had a great time, we won a bazillion tickets and ended up not getting home until almost 6pm (love that traffic!)

So I got to skip out on making dinner because we still weren’t really hungry so we did leftovers/scrounge in the fridge night. Perfect!

So, yeah. Don’t order The ginormous salad unless you are starving or prepared to share some of your three heads of romaine lettuce!

 

 

 

Sunday in Waikiki

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So Sunday I had wanted to head over to Kaneohe Bay on the eastern side of the island, but we ended up deciding to make our way back down to Waikiki and go to the Honolulu zoo.  Of course the parking near the zoo is an absolute madhouse on the weekend.  When we were staying at our hotel down here we had purchased a month long parking pass at the hale Koa hotel parking garage ($90 for the entire month!) So we decided to park there again and just walk to the zoo, stopping for lunch along the way.

We stopped for lunch at the Yard house, which I definitely recommend. They have something like 130 different beers on tap. Omar got a 1/2 yard of some local beer, Kona blonde something, I got a pint of a pear cider (yum!). Lunch was good, I got the BBQ chicken salad and it was delicious… avocado, roasted corn, shredded BBQ chicken, can’t wait to go back. Prices were pretty standard for Waikiki and they do have lunch specials.

This is also the point where I realized that I didn’t have my memory card in my camera. I was SO upset! And I didn’t even have my back up point and shoot in my purse like I usually do. So now I get to lug around my DSLR for no reason all day. I did take some crappy cell phone pictures but it’s not the same.

After lunch we keep walking. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea. Omar is getting ready to turn around when I spot the zoo.  They have a military and local price so we got in pretty cheap. We only had a couple of hours before the zoo closed so we had to make it fast.  The kids really loved the howler monkeys, those suckers are loud!  For the most part the exhibits are nice, reminded me a bit of the Norfolk Zoo in some places.   The elephants didn’t make an appearance, nor did the lions.  I was most bummed about the fact that by the time we made it to the kids area of the zoo they were closing it. That area closes a 1/2 hour before the zoo closes so we only had a couple of minutes to crawl inside the big koi tank, check out the cool guinea pig house and see the goats.  The kids liked it so we’ll have to go back.

Loooooong walk back to the car, passing some shops that I really wanted to stop and peek into but everyone else was just done.  I keep seeing Hawaiian style quilts and they are just beautiful. They are going on my to buy list for Hawaii!

Also, yesterday we went and stocked up on snorkeling supplies. I can’t wait until my stuff gets here in over a month and Omar needed some of his own. he actually got this really nice mask that I’m a little jealous of, but he couldn’t get a good seal on any of the cheapo ones.

So this weekend we are going to try a new place to snorkel, hopefully one that isn’t as crowded as Shark’s Cove was. It seems like all the best places are going to be crazy crowded.  We’ll have to see what we can find.

Hotel Living

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I am officially over living out of a hotel room. One week, that’s all it took.  Plus we’ve been lucky because I’ve been dropping Omar off at work then running around with the kids so we aren’t stuck in here all day. But man, it sure didn’t take long for me to miss cooking. And dressers. And a bedroom door between me and my children.  We moved from our hotel right smack dab in the middle of Waikiki to one right near the base. Our temporary housing allowance was getting cut off because we refused a house to wait for the house we really wanted, and that means we have to start paying out of pocket for a hotel. So goodbye beach hotel, hello cheap hotel. I’m not complaining, it’s clean, has wifi in the rooms, a pool and is SUPER close to the base.

We did have some delicious Chinese food for dinner tonight. Let me just tell you that Chinese food in Europe? Is not what you are used to, we got used to it over there but man was it so good to have our unauthentic American Chinese food again!

Also Cinnabon for breakfast (yes I know I will soon be 200lbs). Little Omar said to me “Mom, you need to learn how to make cinnamon rolls like these!” Honey I am sorry, the closest you will get will be from the tube. I haven’t had the patience to make yeast breads in forever.

It’s been pretty fun taking Omar out to eat everywhere, it’s all a first for him. First Cinnabon, first Taco Bell, second time at Popeye’s (the first was in Germany of all places!) Although I did almost disown him for saying he didn’t like the cheddar bay biscuits at Red Lobster (and yes we are planning on hitting up EVERY SINGLE chain restaurant on island!)

Found out which school my kids are going to. Not 100% happy with it. I can change it to another school but I am not sure how much of a pain in the butt that will be or even if they will approve it.  I hate the way they draw district lines. We end up going to a school that is across a highway instead of the one that my daughter could ride her bike to.

I think we are going to explore the beach on Hickam tomorrow since it’s just up the road. I’ve heard that it’s nice. I’m still kicking myself for not packing my snorkel stuff. I’m trying not to buy more but I don’t know if I can wait until our stuff gets here in September!

The end of the month can not get here soon enough, I am ready for a house!