Road Tips

Wig and Pen - Coralville, IA

One of my more favorite restaurants in the Iowa City area over the years has been the Wig and Pen on the Coralville strip (see map).  They feature good pizza and a baked pasta dish called 'Wigatoni' that is just outstanding.  On a recent trip home from being out for a couple days, I was passing by Iowa City around 7:30 p.m. and decided to stop in for dinner at the Wig and Pen. 

The Wig and Pen goes back to my days in college at the University of Iowa in the early to mid-80's when it was known as the Coaches Corner.  It was a popular place with a lot of the local people before and after Iowa Hawkeye sporting events.  I don't really remember ever getting food there when it was the Coaches Corner - it was more of a beer bar from what I remember.  But in the 90's, they changed the concept and renamed it the Wig and Pen Pub, styled after an English-style pub.  They remodeled both the inside and outside of the place, right down to the English-style phone booth by the front door. 

The Wig and Pen still is a place for the locals to meet up at anytime, but it's suddenly found favor with a lot of the college kids that go to Iowa.  On my visit, which was on a Thursday evening, I was expecting to see a number of older local guys sitting in the bar area after a round of golf.  I was overly surprised to see the bar and the tables in the bar area full of college-aged people enjoying Wig and Pen's deep dish pizzas, sandwiches and other good food. 

One of the waitresses took me to a booth just inside the dining room where she gave me a menu and took my beer order.  I generally refuse to sit at a table at the Wig and Pen as they use plastic chairs instead of "real" chairs in the dining area.  The dining room is sort of two rooms - one in the front with windows that look out onto the Coralville strip, the other in the back northeast side of the building.  There's dark paneling with a lot of English beer signs on the walls and a cozy feel to the place.  And they did a great job of re-building the Wig and Pen after the devastating floods of 2008.  The Wig and Pen is pictured in the background on the right hand side of this picture, behind the white building.  They had about seven feet of water through the building and it was shut down for about eight or nine months for clean-up and renovations.   

There's also some discussion amongst the locals as to whether the Wig and Pen is in Iowa City or in Coralville.  They have an Iowa City address, but they're just west of the corner of Hawkins Drive and Hwy 6 West, a.k.a. the Coralville Strip (or 2nd St., to Coralville residents).  I've been told the dividing line for the two cities goes right through the Wig and Pen's bar area.  The restrooms are rumored to be in Coralville while the rest of the place is in Iowa City.  Nonetheless, everyone seems to say the Wig and Pen is in Coralville.

There are two other Wig and Pen locations - one in Iowa City on the east side of town; the other one recently opened in Ankeny, a suburb of Des Moines.  God, I wish they would open one in the Quad Cities.  

I pretty much knew what I wanted before I even went into the Wig and Pen that evening - Wigatoni!  They take a combination of mostaccioli and rotini noodles and put them in a dish with your choice of mild or hot sausage and the Wig and Pen's homemade marinara sauce.  It's then topped with mozzarella cheese and put into an over and baked at a high temperature for about 15 to 20 minutes.  It's absolutely wonderful.  

But I was sort of tempted to get one of Wig and Pen's thin crust pizzas.  They're deep dish pizzas are very good, as well.  It's also tough to pass up Wig and Pen's homemade onion rings, too.  Their "guinea grinder" Italian sausage sandwich is very good (although the green peppers give me indigestion) and their baked reuben is also a very sandwich.  But, no, I came in for Wigatoni - I was getting Wigatoni.

Given that they were pretty busy that evening, it took a little longer for me to get my Wigatoni - well over twenty minutes after I ordered it.  But the wait was well worth it.  Wig and Pen's Wigatoni has ample amounts of mozzarella on top, the chunks of sausage are large and plentiful, and I love the sweet marinara sauce.   The cheese around the dish is caramelized and helps add to the overall flavor of the Wigatoni.  Put a little parmesan cheese and hot pepper sprinkles on the top and it's a meal for the ages.  About the only gripe I have about the Wigatoni is the amount of pasta noodles they use.  They use a lot!  I usually eat around the bulk of the pasta getting the chunks of sausage and the mozzarella while leaving a large portion of the pasta when I'm finished.  It's tough to eat a full serving of Wigatoni in one sitting. 

We've tried to make Wigatoni at home on a couple of occasions, but it never turns out as good as when you can get at Wig and Pen.  I don't know if it's the hot Italian sausage or the marinara sauce or what, but I don't think anything compares to Wigatoni at the Wig and Pen.  I continue to be amazed that for being less than 60 miles away, no one in the Quad Cities has tried to duplicate what a place like the Wig and Pen does for their pizza, pasta and sandwiches.  Then again, it's sort of tough to duplicate the real thing.  That's why I think the Wig and Pen would be an immediate hit in the Quad Cities. 

The Gazebo - Lahaina/Napili Bay, HI

After our whale watching adventure earlier in the morning, we decided to drive up the west coast of Maui to a spot north of Lahaina - the tourist mecca for Maui - to have breakfast at The Gazebo.  Someone who Cindy knows back in Iowa told her that we had to go to this place for breakfast at some point, but she also said that we had to be prepared for a wait as it can sometime be 45 minutes before you can get seated.  We had the address and I punched it into the GPS and took off up to Napili. 

Actually, The Gazebo is part of the Outrigger Napili Shores rental condos on the northwest side of Maui (see map).  We were a little confused in that we pulled up to the address we'd programmed into the GPS and there was this hotel, but no restaurant in sight.  Finally, Cindy noticed a small sign under the main sign for the Outrigger that simply said, "The Gazebo".  We finally figured out that it was behind the condos near the shoreline.  We parked in the lot of the rental condos and made our way back through to the pool area.  Just beyond the pool area was the restaurant. 

And yes, there was a line to get into the place.  It was small and definitely not set up for a place to put your name in and just wait.  You had to be in line and hanging around just to get in.  But it afforded us both some time to individually step out and look around at the property.  Actually, from what we could see from open curtains in some of the condos, it was a pretty nice place.  And the views of the ocean didn't suck, either. 

There's also a little gift shop area set up outside The Gazebo where Cindy was able to get her morning fix of coffee while we waited in line.  Hawaiian coffee smells so good and I'm sure it tastes good, but caffeine makes me jumpy - and considering I haven't had much caffeine in the past 18 months, it would probably make me more jumpy now.

There's a great view from the point just beyond The Gazebo that looked out into Napili Bay and across the straits to the island of Molokai.  Counting the two islands we were on and the two off-shore islands we'd already seen on Maui, Molokai was the fifth of the eight Hawaiian islands we'd seen on our trip.  (We had a layover in Honolulu on Oahu, so we saw six of the eight islands during our trip.).  It was a warm, yet windy morning that day with low clouds hanging over the east side of Molokai.  

We finally got up close enough to the front to take a look at the menu that's encased in plastic near the front steps.  The Gazebo opens at 7 a.m. and closes at 2 p.m. serving both breakfast and lunch.  They're famous for their macadamia nut pancakes, a concoction that was first served up years ago by original owner Kimo Kiakona.  Thousands of tourists over the years have tried the macadamia nut pancakes which have a heavenly whipped topping that some say is a combination of homemade whipped cream, maple syrup, sugar and chopped macadamia nuts.   Some reports I've read on the stuff says that it's addicting with people coming in with jars just to scoop the topping off the pancakes into jars to take home with them. 

 
The current owners of The Gazebo, Lucy and Jerry Corson, continue the macadamia nut pancakes along with a number of other breakfast specialties such as a combination of their macadamia nut, banana and pineapple pancakes, omelets and different variations of Eggs Benedict.  Their lunch menu is pretty standard with salads, burgers and sandwiches.  

The Gazebo is not large - seating possibly 55 people - so it's no wonder there's always a significant wait to get in.  But like most of Hawaii, the pace on Maui is slow and no one's in a real hurry to get anywhere.   It was actually about 35 minutes from the time we got there around 11 a.m. to the time we finally sat down.  We figured a big breakfast would take care of us for both breakfast and lunch that day.  

We were seated in a back area of the restaurant at a small table that looked out into the bay and across to Molokai.  The chairs were the cheap plastic kind that are uncomfortable to me and sort of flimsy - even with my weight loss.  Most of the restaurant is open-air, but we had louvered windows at our table that helped keep out the gusty winds from the Northeast that blew strong all week while we were on Maui.  

Cindy had to go with the macadamia nut pancakes with white chocolate chips and she wanted a side of The Gazebo's fried rice.  Their fried rice is unique in that they fry the rice up with Portuguese sausage (cured pork sausage with onions, garlic and paprika), ham chunks, peppers and instead of scrambling an egg with it, they put the egg on top - your choice of an omelet, or a fried or scrambled egg.  She got the omelet on top of the fried rice.  Cindy said, "This may be too much food, but if this is the last meal we'll have until tonight I may need it."

I went more simple - I got a Supreme omelet with three eggs filled with Portuguese sausage, bacon, mushrooms, onions, green pepper and Swiss cheese and a side of bacon.  I figured that would hold me for the rest of the day. 

Now, I've said in many of my earlier posts about our trip to Hawaii that breakfast is big on the islands - and the portions are equally as big.  When they brought out our food and set it on the table, we barely had room for the large plates of food.   This is Cindy's order in the above photos.  The fried rice was a HALF-ORDER!  It could have been enough for two meals. 

My omelet was also good sized and it came with a side of fried potatoes and whole wheat toast.  My bacon was a little too crispy for my taste, but edible.  Portuguese sausage is an interesting concoction and it was pretty good with the omelet.  But the Supreme Omelet was pretty good and I was happy with it.  And, yes, that's a ton of black pepper on top - I like pepper on my eggs.

Cindy bit into a combination of the whipped macadamia nut topping and her pancakes.  Her eyes lit up and she said, "Oh, my God!  You've got to try this."

I can see why some people say the whipped topping The Gazebo puts on their macadamia nut pancakes is addicting.  It was a rich and vibrant taste sensation.  It was sweet, but not overly sugary.  It did have sort of a maple syrup flavor to it, or maybe it was the combination of the maple syrup Cindy put on her pancakes along with the whipped topping.   Either way, the macadamia nut pancakes were outstanding, definitely a taste explosion in the mouth.

Cindy soon found that her pancakes alone would have been sufficient for breakfast.  I made short work of my omelet and bacon, foregoing the the toast and the fried potatoes just to help her finish her pancakes.  They were so good that I wasn't going to allow them to go to waste.  She made a little bit of a dent in the fried rice, leaving the bulk of it on her plate.  I tried a couple bites of it and it was pretty good.  However, sort of like biscuits and gravy, I don't get the appeal of fried rice as a breakfast dish.  I'm sure it's popular in Hawaii because nearly every place we went to for breakfast had some sort of variation of fried rice on the menu.  But it wouldn't be the first thing I'd get.  Sort of like the Loco Moko that I got at the Hawaiian Style Cafe on the Big Island.  Yeah, it was interesting, but not something that I'd get again for breakfast.

 

I'd say The Gazebo was above average average compared to some of the breakfast places we'd eaten at during our trip.  My omelet was good, but not the best I've had.  The macadamia nut/white chocolate pancakes, however, were everything they were said to be - rich, huge, filling and wonderful.  You certainly don't get cheated on portions at The Gazebo.  And while I don't like to waste food, I was happy to leave a large portion of the fried rice on the table.  The service was good, the view was excellent and if you can get around the pesky - and brave - sparrows who try to dive in to steal a morsel of food off your plate, the ambiance of The Gazebo was wonderful.  I'm glad we made the trip up to the northwest side of the island for breakfast that day.  It's sort of tough to find, but well worth the trip if you can go.

Spices - Kihei, HI

We had driven by Spices on South Kihei Road a number of times during our visit to Maui and I was sort of intrigued by the open air restaurant connected to the Maui Coast Hotel.  We did a little homework from our hotel room (even with a horrible internet connection) and thought Spices sounded pretty interesting.  We decided to go there for dinner one warm Hawaiian evening. 

Spices wasn't far from our hotel - about a 10 minute drive to the restaurant (see map).  There wasn't a lot of people in the place when we got in about 7:30.  We were seated next to the open ledge looking out onto S. Kihei Rd.  That was sort of a mistake because it was sometimes loud with traffic and exhaust fumes permeating the air. 

The dining room was open and airy with a number of tables throughout the place.  There was a small bar in the corner and a nice little outdoor fountain with a few tables near it.  No one was seated outside that evening.  The decor was sort of a contemporary Hawaiian theme.  It was very comfortable. 

Our waiter was a pretty nice guy and very good at his trade.  We were given menus and we ordered up a couple drinks - I had a Kona Big Wave Golden Ale and my wife had a mai tai.  I also looked over Spices very short wine list trying to find a nice white wine to go with dinner.  There wasn't much to be had.  I finally ordered a Kendall-Jackson chardonnay which was about the best they had to offer.  

We looked over the menu on line before coming to Spices and there were a lot of intriguing things to try.  One thing was the garlic clams - a pound of fresh clams sauteed in butter and garlic.  We decided to try that as an appetizer.  

The waiter brought out the clams and the wine and we dug in to the plate.  The clams were *OK*, really nothing special.  I would have thought the taste sensation would have been a little better given that they were sauteed in butter and garlic, but they didn't really have much pizazz.  It was rather disappointing.  

We ordered up dinner after the clams were gone.  One thing that jumped out at me when I first looked at their menu on-line earlier in the day was the mahi mahi piccata.  They take fresh mahi mahi and cook it like a veal or chicken piccata with a light breading, then cooking it with a butter wine sauce with mushrooms and capers.   They served it on a bed of rice with a side of fresh steamed veggies.  Now, THAT sounded interesting to me. 

My wife was torn between Spices' Hawaiian-style mahi mahi - they take a mahi mahi filet and encrust it in macadamia nuts and top it with a tropical fruit salsa - or the special that evening which was baked opakapaka, which is also known as "pink snapper".  Opakapaka is plentiful all over the tropical regions of the Pacific Ocean, but they seem to grow rather large around Hawaii.  She decided to try the opakapaka and it was served on a bed of garlic mashed potatoes. 

It really wasn't all that long before our entrees showed up at the table.  My wife's opakapaka was a large filet that had a light cream sauce on top.  Three grilled shrimp came with the fish which was served on some steamed vegetables.  She said the opakapaka was "good", but not great.  I tried a bite and I thought it was OK.

My mahi mahi piccata was overly disappointing.  It was nowhere close to being a true piccata-style meal.  The piccata sauce was more of a glaze and the fish was overcooked and dry.  It just wasn't very good.  The veggies were good, however.  They weren't overcooked or lifeless to the taste.  Sadly, it was a mediocre meal compared to other places we were at while we were in Hawaii.

Since we tried Spices, I've read reviews from travelers on some web sites that denigrated the food at the place.  I will say the waiter we had was very good and very attentive, but the level of service and the atmosphere at Spices is the draw.  I understand they have very good breakfasts at Spices, but my dinner was pedestrian, at best.  My wife's opakapaka was good - much better than what I had - and that's not saying much.  Overall, Spices was probably the worst meal we had while we were in Hawaii.  That's too bad as the place seemed to have a lot of potential.

(Update - It's been called to my attention that Spices has closed.  It's probably for the better.  It was highly disappointing.)

Mama's Fish House - Pa'ia, HI

Before we went to Maui, we talked to a number of people who had been there before.  Nearly everyone said, "You have to absolutely go to Mama's Fish House for dinner at some point."  Everyone raved about how great the food was there.  When we got to Maui, the consensus among the locals was that it was tough to beat Mama's Fish House for the best fish on the island.  Even before our visit to Mama's, our expectations were high.

In the late 1950's, Floyd and Doris Christenson decided to turn in their staid life in San Diego for a sailing trip around Polynesia.  For three years, the Christenson's lived in French Polynesia learning about island cuisines and how to prepare different types of fish that were caught by natives.  It was in Polynesia where their daughter and son were born.  And while they were in French Polynesia, Floyd Christenson landed a bit part in "Mutiny on the Bounty" starring Marlon Brando.

The family eventually moved to a home on the north shore of Maui.  In 1973, the Christenson's bought an old nightclub on Ku'au Cove and renovated it into a restaurant.  They leased the building to Hilda Costa who was the original "Mama".   Costa ran the restaurant for three years before leaving the restaurant to the Christenson's.   

The Christenson's eventually turned the restaurant into one of the best seafood restaurants - a favorite spot for tourists and celebrities, alike.  Over the years, Mama's Fish House has hosted the likes of Frank Sinatra, Reba McEntire, Roger Clemens, Ann-Margret and a large number of performers and professional athletes.  A number of autographed portraits of famous people who dined at Mama's Fish House were on the walls near the bar area of the place.  Some of the regulars in Mama's Fish House are actors Owen Wilson and Woody Harrelson who, we were told, have houses in the hills just up from the restaurant.  (As an aside - Willie Nelson owns Charley's restaurant in Pa'ia and has a home not far from there.) 

Today, Karen Christenson Marshall, Floyd and Doris' oldest child, runs the day-to-day operation of the restaurant.  Doris and Floyd show up periodically and Doris loves to tell stories of the times they sailed around Polynesia. 

Mama's Fish House only prepares freshly caught seafood at their restaurant.  They contract fishermen in the area to catch a bounty of different types of Pacific Ocean fish.  On the menu for that evening, they list the type of fish, who caught it and where it was caught.  That's kind of a nice touch to recognize the fishermen who put in long hours to put the fish on the tables at Mama's. 

Mama's decor is definitely island-themed with a Polynesian feel to the place.  Mama's Fish House employs their own in-house designer, Bill Kohl, who continually updates the items in the place from the antique doors to the knick-knacks around the place.  

The Christenson's have also bought up property around the original Mama's Fish House over the years and they now feature nine cottages for nightly rentals - all designed on the inside by Bill Kohl.  The cottages feature a number of amenities and run between $175 and $595 a night.  Four of the cottages are ocean front properties while the other five are called "garden cottages".  

The head chef at Mama's Fish House is Perry Bateman (right).  Bateman, in his early 40's, has been with the Christenson's since he was 19.  He was never trained to be a chef, but picked up a lot of his skills on the job.  He started out on the hot line in the kitchen, then worked his way up to sous chef.  Bateman took over the kitchen at Mama's when he was 30 and has a good grasp of Hawaiian style cooking.  Growing up, his family owned a restaurant on Maui - the only one that was serving true Hawaiian cuisine at the time.  Bateman's knowledge of the ingredients that go into Hawaiian cuisine "is what makes Mama's work," Karen Christenson Marshall once said in an interview.  One of Bateman's signature meals is an "Upcountry style" dish featuring fresh fish, tomato, avocado and caramelized onions grown on Maui.  Bateman's - and Mama's - motto is "Quality before price".

It was on our way back from the Road to Hana on the Hana Highway on the north side of the island (see map) and we stopped in about 5:30 for an early dinner.  Actually, we were pretty hungry because we had a big breakfast, but really nothing other some snacks on our trek to Hana and back.  Plus, Cindy needed a drink after the drive back from Hana - something that she hardly ever asks for these days.

After leaving our car at the complimentary valet parking up front, we made our way around the ocean front side of the building to the hostess stand.  Since it was relatively early when we got into Mama's Fish House, there was little to no wait to get a table.  We were seated in an area near the bar, but nowhere close to the open windows that faced the ocean.  That was sort of disappointing, but we sort of figured out a little later on as to why that may have been the case.

We were dressed rather casually - even casual for Hawaii.  I was in a black "Iowa" t-shirt and shorts.  Cindy was in an orange sleeveless top - stylish, but still pretty casual.  We had always changed our shirts before we went out for the evening - me usually into a Hawaiian or button-down short sleeve shirt - and Cindy in a nice top.  Since we were just coming back from Hana and had dressed down on purpose thinking that we'd stop and frolic in one of the many pools along the Road to Hana, we didn't want to go back all the way to the hotel, change clothes and then drive 23 miles back to Mama's Fish House. 

We noticed similarly dressed people around us and when we both got up to go to the restroom at various points, we both noticed people who were more nattily dressed seated in the dining rooms with the open windows looking out to the tree-drenched beach and the ocean beyond.   We just figured they wanted to keep the "riff-raff" in one area and put the classy folks in another.  And as I always tell Cindy, the money coming from our jeans or shorts spends just as well as money that comes from a pair of wool or cotton slacks.   

Our waitress came around to greet us and asked us if we wanted anything to drink right off the bat.  Cindy laughed and said, "Mai tai!"  I told her to make it two.  When she brought them back, Cindy's eyes got pretty big.  They were served in these large mugs and filled to the top.  I was liking this place already. 

The menu at Mama's Fish House was rather interesting with a mix of traditional Hawaiian food and fresh seafood.  They had deep-sea caught ahi tuna, monchong caught off Kona, mahi mahi caught not far from Mama's off the north shore of Maui.  They also had something called "lau lau" - mahi mahi, Pacific salmon, pork and lu'au leaf cooked in ti leaves, South Pacific style.  That sounded rather interesting to say the least.

We started off ordering Mama's onaga ceviche appetizer.  Ceviche is something we were introduced to in Mexico a number of years ago.  They take chunks of freshly caught fish and is marinated in lime juice for up to 12 hours.  The acid from the lime juice literally cooks the fish and the taste is - well, it's killer.  And the onaga ceviche at Mama's goes a step further as they also marinate it with cilantro and chili pepper.  It sounded just as good as it tasted.  It was served with a chunk of avocado and fried banana slices.  It was absolutely mind-blowing.  We almost ordered another one.

A lady seated at a table near us was served something that looked absolutely scrumptious.  Cindy couldn't keep her eyes off her plate.  Cindy finally asked the woman, "I'm sorry, but what is that?"

The lady turned to Cindy and said, "It's the stuffed mahi mahi.  And it is wonderful!" 

And that's what Cindy ended up ordering.  It's stuffed with lobster and crab meat along with sweet Maui onions.  It's then rolled in a macadamia nut mixture and cooked to give it a nice light crust.  Grilled asparagus spears and a rice pilaf came on the side with the stuffed fish.  Cindy was hooked when it mentioned the macadamia nut crust.  It was sort of expensive - about $40 bucks.  But, hey we were on vacation.

I ordered the seared ahi tuna for my dinner.  It's quickly grilled with a peppercorn/Hamakua mushroom sauce and served with a side of breadfruit-mashed potatoes.

We also ordered a bottle of white wine from Mama's interesting wine list.  They featured a number of obscure wines - ones I was definitely not familiar with.  And I have to say that I can't remember what kind of wine I ordered for our dinner although it was pretty good and went very well with our meal.

Our main meals came out and the presentation on the plates was exquisite.  We were so hungry by this point we just dug in.  I have to say my ahi tuna with the peppercorn/mushroom sauce was very good.  I don't know if it was the best I've had, but the fish was very fresh and very tasty.

Cindy's stuffed mahi mahi was outstanding.  We traded bites and we decided that even though the ahi tuna was very good, the stuffed mahi mahi was out of this world.  The macadamia nut crust was light and didn't overpower the fish.  But the lobster, crab and onion stuffing was a great taste combination with the mahi mahi.  Cindy was literally in heaven.

Our waitress, who was very good in a laid back sort of way, came around to check on us.  She asked how our meals were and I think Cindy and I both answered, "Great!" at the same time.

     
Of course, we had to have dessert after that fine meal.  One thing that jumped out at me was the crème brulee made with lilikoi.  I was addicted to anything that had lilikoi in it and I told Cindy I wanted to try one of those.  Our waitress offered to bring us one of Mama's signature desserts - a homemade tropical fruit sorbet with ice cream - as a complimentary gesture.  Cindy and I sort of looked at one another, shrugged our shoulders and said, "Sure!"

The crème brulee was just orgasmic.  I don't know if I'd ever had a crème brulee that had such a forward citrus taste to it.  We made very short work of the dessert.  The fruit sorbet/ice cream dish was very good, as well.  But it was nowhere as good as the crème brulee with lilikoi.

After we paid our bill (over $200 with a nice tip for the waitress - it wasn't cheap) we took a walk around the property so Cindy could get some pictures of flowers, Polynesian sculptures, tiki torches and a Hawaiian canoe that was planted on the beach.  The wind was still coming in rather briskly off the ocean, but it wasn't as bad as it was earlier in the evening.  With the sun setting behind the mountain that sits on Maui's north side, it was getting sort of dark under the abundance of palm trees that surrounded Mama's Fish House.  It was sort of neat to be the deep shade with a lot of blue skies and fluffy clouds off in the distance.

Cindy also bought some of Mama's Hawaiian blend coffee beans that they sold at the outdoor hostess stand.  I don't know if it was any different from the other Hawaiian coffee that she bought at other places, but she just was wanting some memento from Mama's Fish House.

We were overly thrilled with our visit to Mama's Fish House.  We knew going in that our expectations could be too high given the glowing reports we'd received before our visit.  But everything we heard from people stood up to the test and more.   I really can't think of one thing I can bitch about Mama's Fish House.  Oh, maybe I could bitch about the sudden downpour as we were waiting for our car.  I felt bad to send the valet running out to get our car and bring it to the waiting area.  Bad enough to give the soaking wet guy a $5 buck tip.  But I later decided I should have only given him $2 bucks because the seat was wet from him dripping on it.

But that was it!  Mama's Fish House is a great place to eat.  Highly recommended by Cindy and I if you ever get to Maui.

The Road to Hana

If whale watching was the number one priority for Cindy on our trip to Hawaii, traveling the Road to Hana (pronounced HAW-na) had to be priority 1A.  Located on the east side of Maui, the road to Hana is over 30 miles of twisty roads, one-lane bridges and enough spectacular scenery to fill up the memory of your digital camera in one day.  

We had read up about the Road to Hana in a number of tourism books and web sites before we embarked on our trip.  First of all, they said to budget one full day for the trip.  It's very slow going with a lot of cars sharing the roads in both directions.  Given that it's the only way to get to Hana by vehicle, you're also sharing the road with delivery trucks and other large vehicles.  Add to this, the incredible vistas along the way and you're stopping quite a bit to get some great pictures.  The top piece of advice we read and heard from some who had already taken the trek was to leave early in the day.  Even though it's 32 miles from the start of the road until you end up in Hana, it can take up to 3 hours to get there.  

We decided to start our morning at the breakfast buffet at the Grand Wailea.  We got into the breakfast area about 7:30 a.m. and proceeded to eat a hearty breakfast.  The breakfast buffet at the Grand Wailea was nice, but it wasn't what I would call outstanding.  The hotel thought differently, however, as evidenced by the bill for $36.95 per person for the breakfast.  That was the first and last time we had breakfast at the Grand Wailea.  

The Hana Highway starts just past the airport entrance and goes around the north end of the island.  Just past the small village of Pauwela, the highway goes from a nice wide road to an interesting narrow asphalt road with little to no shoulders.  Vegetation comes right up to the roadway and you begin to run into tight blind curves on uphill grades.  The Road to Hana isn't for the faint or timid drivers. 

The weather wasn't cooperating, either.  All week long while we were on Maui the wind was blowing at gale force speeds.  The weather had changed from a mild sunny morning when we left the hotel to a windy, cloudy misty day on the east side of the island.  Occasional on-shore showers would alternate with partly sunny skies along the route. 

According to one of the guide books we took with us on the trip, there was supposed to be some general store at the start of the Road to Hana where we could get sandwiches, water and guide maps.  Well, I certainly didn't see much of anything like that near the "0" mile marker.  Cindy was a little miffed that we didn't stop and get something.  But I told her that I was sure that we could get something to eat in Hana if we needed it. 

About 10 or so miles into the trip, there's a primitive road side rest area that Cindy wanted to stop at after it took us about 35 minutes to go the initial few miles.  There's a lot of stopping along the way to let cars come through the one-lane bridges (there are over 50 one-lane bridges on the road and over 600 curves - some of them are 180 degree hairpin turns), and to allow the more impatient people to pass.  The top speed we got to was about 25 miles an hour. 

At the rest area, there were a lot of tourists who had stopped, as well.  A lot of small bus tours take groups of people along the Road to Hana, as well as a number of "rent-a-locals" that will drive you and your group on the Road to Hana.  The "rent-a-locals" know the good photo opportunities and along the way and also know the road like the back of their hand.  I suppose if you drive it every day of your life, you're going to know which curves are more treacherous than others. 

While the Road to Hana starts out hugging the shoreline in places, it goes inland for a ways as it ribbons around the sides of small mountains that look out onto small valleys of rice paddies and pineapple trees.  There were a number of turnouts and scenic overlooks on the way to Hana.  This picture actually turned out pretty well considering it had just begun to pour rain on me as I was focusing for this shot.  And it was a cold rain with that blustery wind, too.

Along the Road to Hana were a number of waterfalls, water pools and small streams coming out of the mountains.  However, due to the drought they were experiencing on the Hawaiian Islands, a lot of the streams and waterfalls were either dried up or a trickle of water compared to what they normally are.  The guide books said that the pools are so pristine and the waterfalls so intense that you can wade out into the water and stand under the falls.  We brought our swimsuits and towels with us in anticipation of being able to walk into some of these pools, but for the most part it was pretty disappointing.  Coupled with the cool, blustery weather, the idea of playing under waterfalls that day pretty much escaped from our heads.

We did find some nice waterfalls along the way, however.  The problem is they were well off the roadway and you had to take a little bit of a hike to get to them.  Or, if they were close to the road, there were "No Parking" signs all about because there was no shoulder to park on.  In some cases, I'd let Cindy out of the car to get some closer pictures of some of the waterfalls, go up the road a bit, double back and pick her up. 

We stopped at one spot where we read there was a nice waterfall and pool.  There were a lot of cars there and there was a small roadside stand selling water and snacks.  But there was a big sign that warned against leaving anything in open sight in the car if you trekked back to the waterfall.  I guess local thieves pray upon the tourists along the Road to Hana.

We started to walk along this path back into some heavy vegetation, not exactly knowing where we were going or what we were going to see when we got there.  A couple hundred yards into the hike, we came across a group of 20-somethings who were coming from the waterfall.  Cindy asked them how far it was to the waterfall and one of the guys said, "It's about a half-mile." 

One of the young ladies in the group said, "Yeah, and it's not much to see.  It's a big pool, but the waterfall is hardly a waterfall.  It's more of a trickle."  We decided to follow them back to the parking lot and continue on our way.     

One of the roadside stops on the Road to Hana is Halfway to Hana - a small building where we stopped to get some water and their famous homemade banana bread.  With the stops, slow traffic and just general laziness, it took us just under two hours to get half-way to Hana.  Halfway to Hana was a popular spot for both tourists and locals to stop for a morning snack and something to drink.  We hung out there at a picnic table for a while as Cindy ate her piece of banana bread.  I'm not big on bananas, but it did smell pretty good. 

Back on the Road to Hana, we tried to make mental notes of places we wanted to stop at on our way back up the road on our return trip.  The picture below was one of those places - a beautiful vista of a valley stretching out to the ocean.  Dense green vegetation on the hillsides hid the fact that Maui was experiencing their worst drought in 30 years. 

We finally made it to Hana just before noon - almost three hours after we first got onto the Road to Hana.  We decided to go down the road even further to visit the Seven Sacred Pools in O'heo Gulch, about 10 miles past Hana.  These pools are situated in the Haleakala National Park and are said to be one of the most beautiful places on the island.  Actually, there's way more than seven pools as the gulch, itself, runs about two miles up into the mountains.  There's a hiking trail and some great lookouts, but the main pools are located close to the shore. 

As we got about four miles outside of Hana, we found this little place where an elderly Hawaiian native lady was selling some homemade jewelry and offered free restrooms to tourists along the road.  My wife is sort of like a five-year-old when we travel and it seems that she has to pee every 45 minutes.  But we've been together for so long now that it's normal for me to just ask her when I see a sign along the way that says, "Public Restroom".   

I'm kinda glad we stopped because she had a wonderful flower garden full of yellow hibiscus.  We've got a couple of hibiscus plants back home, but they certainly don't bloom like the ones did in this lady's yard. 

As Cindy was using the bathroom, I was sort of looking around the porch area of this lady's house.  On the outside wall of her house were two framed autographed pictures of Los Angeles Dodgers manager Joe Torre.  He was pictured in his New York Yankees uniform back when he was managing that team.  I said, "Huh!  Joe Torre!"

The lady said, "Oh, yes, Mr. Torre has a home not far from here.  He comes out here often and he comes to visit when he's here.  A very nice man." 

I noticed she was selling packages of macadamia nuts from Naborly Farms - a nut farm near Hana owned by entertainer/actor Jim Nabors.  The lady told us, "Oh, yes, Mr. Jim Nabors owns 100 acres near here.  He lives on Oahu, but comes here about once a month.  A very nice man."   (She thought everyone was a very nice man.) 

We didn't buy any because we had already sent three or four cases of Mauna Loa macadamia nuts in cans back to Iowa.  They were addicting. 

  

Along the side of the parking area of this lady's place were these trees with orange flowers.  Now, I'd noticed these trees when we were on the Big Island.  They were actually sort of beautiful with these big flowers, sometimes in abundance on the trees.  We asked the lady what kind of trees they were.  She said, "They're African Tulip trees."

Cindy said, "Oh, they're just beautiful!"

The lady said, "We don't like 'em here.  They're an invasive species.  And they're messy.  When they drop the petals, they get all over the place.  We try to take 'em out if we can." 

Oh! OK.  But they were still my favorite tree to see while we were in Hawaii.

We told the lady we were going to the Seven Sacred Pools and she said, "Well, a lot of the pools are dried up and have very little water in them.  It's the first time in 30 years that the pools are running dry.  You can go on over, but it's not as nice as when the pools are full."  Cindy and I decided to skip driving the remaining distance and decided to head back toward Hana. 

  

We ventured back toward Hana and decided to take a side road that went a little closer to the ocean.  We came across this beach - Koki Beach - that was situated in the midst of a rocky cove.  The wind was just howling and the waves were crashing on the large rocks located just off shore.  It was sort of beautiful and surreal at the same time.  A group of young European 20-somethings were there and I helped them out by taking their picture near a solitary Hawaiian flag with a small dormant volcano in the background.  Quite honestly, I don't know why anyone would want to surf at this spot.

Koki Beach is just down from Hamoa Beach - one of the most pristine beaches on Maui.  Author James Michener wrote about Hamoa Beach, "Paradoxically, the only beach I have ever seen that looks like the South Pacific was in the North Pacific. Hamoa Beach on Maui Island in Hawai'i; a beach so perfectly formed that I wonder at its comparative obscurity."  And, of course, we missed going there.  There is no parking at Hamoa Beach and the only access is down some steps from the road.  We honestly didn't know it was there until we got back home. 

We got back into Hana and drove around.  There's really not much to the town - a school, a couple three churches, a couple restaurants.  That's about it.  There are about 700 people who live in Hana and it is one of the last undeveloped areas in Hawaii.  And that's probably because of the long and treacherous road to the place.  There is a small commuter airport that gets people in and out of the area, but the flights are few and far between. 

At one point in time in the early 20th Century, Hana was a bustling little town with as many as 3500 residents.  They used to have a couple movie theaters, a number of restaurants and other places for people to go.  Population began to drop off after World War II and the sugar plantations began to close.  Many people moved to the other side of the island to work on sugar plantations there. 

One of the more obscure facts about Hana is that famed aviator Charles Lindbergh spent his final years living near there before he passed away in 1974.  Lindbergh is buried in a church cemetery near Hana along with his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh. 

There is a nice little harbor around Hana Bay that we drove out to.  There was a pier along with a black sand beach that wrapped around the south side of the bay.  Just past the pier is a rocky point where people snorkel along the reefs.  Given that Hana is on the windy and rainy side of Maui, I can't see where there would be all that many opportunities to enjoy the bay. 

   One of the more famous places to visit in Hana is the Hasegawa General Store.  The store celebrates its 100th year of being run by the Hasegawa family and has survived natural disasters and a huge fire that burned down the original building a little over 10 years ago.   The Hasegawa family moved the general store into one of the towns long-closed movie theaters as a temporary location, but never ended up moving after that.  The Hasegawa General Store has just about one of everything - food, dairy, produce, snacks, shirts, dresses, movie rentals, make-up, first aid kits, hardware, CD's - you name it, they probably have it.  The aisles are narrow and some of the things on the shelf are dusty, but it's a quaint throwback to simpler times where all you have is the general store to take care of the needs of the local residents.  But I will say nothing was cheap in the place.  Milk was $8.79 a gallon, a can of soup was $2.39.  I bought a shirt for $22.00.  Cindy bought some snacks that weren't overly cheap.  But as we found out everywhere we went in Hawaii, nothing was cheap. 

We took off from Hana around 1:30 and began to make our way up the road again.  We took our time to stop at some of the scenic turnouts which were on our right on the way back up the road from Hana and easier to get to than on the way down.  This is one little cove that had a steep rocky lane down to a pristine beach that I was chicken to try.  We saw people down along the shore and knew they had to get down there somehow, but I'm guessing it was by jeep or four-wheel drive.  I didn't think our rental car would be able to make it and I didn't feel like seeing if it could. 

But there were numerous little turnouts that afforded some pretty beautiful views of the coastline and the ocean beyond.  The weather began to get a little better as we drove up the coast from Hana and by the time we got about 10 to 15 miles north of town (which is about 17 to 25 miles of driving on the road), the clouds were beginning to break and the warm sun was coming through. 

Parts of the Road to Hana tunneled through large forests of bamboo trees that hung next to and up over the roadway.  At some points of the drive because of the cloudy conditions and heavy vegetation, you almost needed to use your headlights to make sure oncoming traffic would see you.  Cindy was overly amazed at the amount of bamboo trees that were all over the place.  The bark on bamboo would be a variety of colors from deep green to yellow to red to brown.  We tried to get some pictures from the car a couple times, but they just didn't turn out.  And with a lot of cars behind us, we just couldn't stop and take a picture of the colorful bamboo stalks. 

  
As we finally got off the twisting Road to Hana and back on the Hana Highway, it was good to be able to drive more than 20 miles an hour again.  Driving 55 almost seemed to fast.  But it was certainly good to not be hitting the brakes and making blind hairpin turns at the crest of a hill along side a steep incline down a mountain to the ocean.  As we drove along for a bit, we came across Hookipa Beach Park which is internationally known as possibly the best place in the world to kite surf.  The wind is blowing in nearly everyday at gale force strength and the waves are huge.  Word has it that kite surfing originated on the north shore of Maui and kite surfers from all over the world converge on Hookipa Beach to surf the big waves.  Along with kite surfers, the surf off Hookipa Beach had a handful of windsurfers and traditional surfers.  Cindy and I are mesmerized watching surfers where ever we go.  I think we stood there for nearly an hour just decompressing from the stressful drive we had to and from Hana earlier in the day. 

Yes, the Road to Hana is stressful, but the beautiful scenery along the way outweighed the difficulty of the drive.  I've talked to people who have made the drive to Hana as we did and the consensus is, "I'm glad we went, but if we go back to Maui we won't do it again."  I have to agree with that.  It was a beautiful drive and we had been warned in guide books and by the locals that the Road to Hana was a tedious and treacherous drive.   Even Cindy was wrung out and declared she could use a drink by the time we got to the restaurant that evening.  Still, it's one of those things one should do at least once on a trip to Maui.

 

 

Estiatorios Milos - Montreal

I was excited to visit this place when I was in Montreal recently.  Estiatorios Milos - or mostly known as just Milos -  is a place that some of my colleagues have visited in the past but I've never had the chance to go.  So when I was told we were going to eat at Milos one evening during our company meeting in Montreal, I immediately said, "Yes!" 

Estiatorios Milos is the flagship restaurant of Costas Spiliadis' restaurant empire that stretches from Montreal to New York to Athens.  Spiliadis, a Greek immigrant, came to New York as a 19 year old student.  After school, he moved to Montreal and opened a night club.  In 1980, he changed the night club into a Greek restaurant that served only the freshest fish available. 

One story about Spiliadis during his early days of running Milos - he would only buy fresh and good looking fish - something that wasn't readily available in Montreal at the time.  Spiliadis would drive to New York City and shop at the Fulton Fish Market three times a week.   He brought the fish back with him to Montreal and waited for the customers to show up.  They didn't.  Spiliadis wouldn't freeze the fish - he knew freezing the fish would compromise the taste - so he ended up giving the fish away to the stray cats hanging around outside in the alley. 

But people eventually came and Milos thrived.  Eventually, Spiliadis would have fresh fish flown in almost every day from Greece, caught by family fishermen - on hooks, not caught in nets to cut down on wasting fish - that he befriended over the years.   He also has a number of fresh North Atlantic seafood to offer, as well.  Spiliadis eventually opened a Milos on 55th St. in New York and a Milos in his home country of Greece.  

Estiatorios Milos is located on avenue du Parc in central Montreal (see map).  It's an area of Montreal where a lot of immigrants from all over the world end up living and there's a large number of ethnic restaurants in the area.  Milos is housed in a non-descript building that has sort of a contemporary industrial look on the facade.  10 of us, including my colleagues and the husband and wife team that heads up Siltech and Crystal cables from The Netherlands, descended upon Milos one cool Montreal evening. 

We took a table toward the back of the restaurant where an ice shelf filled with fresh seafood showed what we could get that evening.  While the menu features a number of fresh seafood entrees, they also feature prix fixe courses for dinner, along with a family style offering of whole fish that is basted in olive oil pressed from olives grown on Spiliadis' family estate in Greece, then lightly grilled.   My boss made the decision to do just that for our main course that evening.  He ordered the grilled red snapper and the grilled sea bass.  

Milos offers a wide variety of Greek wines on their wine list.  They also feature some interesting wines from France, Italy and a smattering of California wines, as well.  Milos has been lauded by a number of wine magazines as having one of the best selections of wine in Montreal.  Spiliadis also owns Cava Spiliadis, a noted wine store that imports and sells Greek wines.  Since we were going to be eating seafood that evening, my boss ordered up bottles of the 2007 Tsaktsarlis Domaine Bibila Chora, a Greek chardonnay that was light, but flavorful with the seafood.  

We also ordered a large round of appetizers before the main entree was brought to the table.  The first thing to come out were a couple plates of pan-fried zucchini and pan-fried egg plant with pan-fried Saganaki cheese wedges and sides of tzatziki - the Greek cucumber sauce that is more known to go with gyros.  The cheese, I understand, comes from farms about 45 miles to the west of Montreal and it was excellent.  We had three plates of that for the whole table and, quite honestly, I was sorry to take my last bite when it was gone.  The Saganaki cheese was just great.  

Our next round of appetizers consisted of fried calimari served with a zesty tomato creme sauce.  The calimari was absolutely wonderful - lightly breaded and lightly fried with a wonderful batter coating the outside.  The tomato creme sauce gave the calimari a little more spark to the taste.

Not stopping with just two appetizers (I love it when we go out to eat as a company - we're all "foodies" in our group), we had a couple heaping plates of grilled octopus.  Now, I'm not big on octopus, but Milos' octopus is flown in from Greece, caught in the waters off Crete in the Mediterranean Sea.  My colleague, Todd, coaxed me to have a bite of the octopus appetizers and I was pleasantly surprised with the taste.  The octopus is served cut into bite sized pieces on the large plate and it didn't taste like any octopus I've had before.  It had a sort of smokey, grilled taste to it that wasn't overpowering and rather pleasant.  It was hell to look at, but it was wonderful to eat. 

It wasn't long after we finished off the octopus platters that our fish showed up at the table.  Here's a picture of the presentation.   The red snapper is at the top, the sea bass below.  Some of the more adventurous members of our party fought over the cheek of the fish - supposedly a delicacy in some countries.  I was happy with just trying some of the flaky filets they cut up and served with olive oil.

The sea bass was very good.  It was grilled perfectly, it wasn't fishy tasting at all, it was light and flavorful.  The red snapper, however, was disappointing.  It was over-cooked and somewhat chewy.  I didn't care for the red snapper as much as I liked the sea bass.  Everyone agreed the snapper was over-cooked.  Given that my last two or three experiences with red snapper have not been favorable, I will probably never order it again if it's offered on a menu.

Of course, after dinner we had to have dessert.  Milos' dessert menu features a number of traditional Greek desserts, as well as fresh fruit, a Key Lime tart and cheesecake.  One thing they have are Loukoumades - basically Greek beignets that are deep-fried and then sprinkled with cinnamon and chopped almonds along with a thyme-honey concoction that you can drizzle on top.  Although I wasn't all that hungry after dinner, we ordered up a little bit of everything including the Loukoumades, the Key Lime tart and we couldn't pass up Milos' own homemade Baklava.  I'm a sucker for good Baklava.

And I wasn't disappointed in the least with any of the desserts.  We shared a little bit of everything at the table.  The Loukoumades were surprisingly good.  They had a wonderful sweet cinnamon taste to them.  I don't usually care much for almonds, but the nut taste was subdued.  The Key Lime tart was OK - sort of a fluffy Key Lime pie, mainly.  But the Baklava was some of the best I'd ever had.  Light and flaky, the homemade Baklava was just out of this world.  By the time the last Baklava was eaten, I was stuffed.  But I seriously considered ordering up another batch just to take back to the hotel with us.

Other than the over-cooked red snapper, Milos lived up to my lofty expectations.  My colleagues had talked in glowing terms about the food at Milos and, overall, it didn't disappoint.  I can easily see why Milos is one of the top international restaurants in Montreal and why it has spawned a number of imitators over the years.

Pappy's Smokehouse - St. Louis

Since Pappy's Smokehouse opened in 2008, it has climbed to the top of nearly every "Best of" poll for barbecue in the St. Louis area.   This Midtown barbecue place - in the shadows of Harris-Stowe State University and a short walk from St. Louis University (see map) - features Memphis-style barbecue cooked in smokers up to 14 hours.  And when they run out of food for the day, they shut down.  Then they start the whole cycle again for the next day.  It's a great concept for barbecue - no reheating of one or two day old barbecue to serve to customers.

 

 

The man behind this concept is Mike "Smokey" Emerson, (pictured at right - courtesy Riverfront Times) a restaurant industry veteran who started out busing tables at the age of 13 working his way up the ladder at various restaurants until he helped open the high-end Del Pietro's Italian restaurant in the mid-70's.  Emerson then got a commercial sales gig, but got back into the restaurant business when he interviewed to be the General Manager of Super Smokers out in suburban Eureka.  (There used to be a Super Smokers right near the office of the old company I used to work at years ago out in St. Peters.  It was just fabulous, but that location closed long ago and I haven't been to the original Eureka restaurant.)

It was at Super Smokers that he got hooked up with barbecue expert Skip Steele, the co-owner and pit master at Super Smokers.  Steele was a world barbecue champion award winner and he took top spot for whole pig at the Memphis in May barbecue contest in 2000.  Emerson and Steele became very close as they shared a love for not only fine barbecue, but for hunting and fishing, as well.  Emerson used to barbecue with his older brother, Pappy, in his brother's back yard.  Pappy, who died in 2001, and Mike used to make tons of barbecue for whoever showed up.  Pappy's Smokehouse is named in honor of Mike Emerson's older brother. 

Steele sold his share of Super Smokers in 2007 and moved to Las Vegas to be the head chef/pit master at R.U.B. BBQ at the Rio casino and hotel.  But soon after Emerson - along with partners Brian Scoggins and John Matthews, as well as investor Mike Wegmann - opened Pappy's Smokehouse, Skip Steele was lured back to St. Louis to be the chef/pit master of the place.  Given how great Super Smokers was under Steele's pit watch, Pappy's has been a hit and has gained national recognition in just over two years in business.   (April 2013 Update - Scoggins left Pappy's to become one of the owners of Bogart's Smokehouse along with Skip Steele; and Emerson and Matthews bought out Wegmann's interest in Pappy's after contentuous period with Wegmann suing the two for breach of contract.)

I had tried to get into Pappy's Smokehouse on a couple of previous occasions, once just before noon and another time around 2 p.m.  Each time, the parking lot off to the side was full of cars and the line stretched out through the "L"-shaped restaurant toward the back door.  I wasn't quite willing to wait that long for barbecue, no matter how good it was.  However, on a recent trip to St. Louis, I planned on having a late lunch at Pappy's - after 3 p.m.  I figured the crowd at Pappy's wouldn't be as big at that point (it wasn't), but I'd also heard that they would sometimes start to run out of food around 4 p.m. (they hadn't).   

Pappy's Smokehouse is on Olive Street located right next to The U restaurant and bar, a favorite hang-out of college kids and sports fans.  Both Pappy's and The U share the parking lot, but Pappy's uses the share of spots in the daytime while The U will garner most of the crowd at night after Pappy's has closed.  

Out in front of Pappy's are two commercial smokers where the bulk of their barbecuing is done.  About the time when they start running out of food in the early evening, the next day's meat is beginning to cook - low and slow - at around 215 degrees.  They use both apple and cherry wood for their pork ribs and they're cooked dry with a spice rub.  Mike Emerson's motto is "We've got nothing to hide so the sauce is on the side."   On a typical day they'll cook up to 750 pounds of pork and 300 pounds of beef brisket.   

Pappy's also does a large catering business, as well.  Niki Puto, who was the former catering manager at the Ritz-Carlton in St. Louis, came over to Pappy's to head up their growing full-service, buffet-style catering business.  (Update - Puto also followed Brian Scoggins and Skip Steele over to Bogart's Smokehouse in 2011.)   

I was able to get right in to Pappy's when I walked in around 3:15.  Actually, the place was over half-full with people either having a late lunch like me or an early dinner.  Or they had been frustrated trying to get in during lunch in the past or had been in late in the day when they had already run out of barbecue.  In any event, there was a good sized crowd in the place in the middle of the afternoon.  

Blues music blared out of speakers located around the dining area.  The long part of the "L"-shaped building features conventional picnic tables as well as tables and chairs.  There is a small dining area up front by the counter with a few tables and chairs, as well as a high window ledge with high chairs to sit on.   Because of the popularity at Pappy's, management asks people not to sit first, then go order.  Pappy's isn't the kind of place where people will linger for a couple hours as they don't sell beer (What!?  Another barbecue place that doesn't sell beer!?), so tables turn over rather quickly. 

Pappy's menu - which is located above the counter where you order - consists of a wide-array of barbecued meats and sides.    They feature sandwiches such as pulled pork, pulled chicken, sliced brisket and turkey breast.  The food platters at Pappy's feature full and half-slabs of their pork ribs, pulled pork, brisket, pulled chicken and turkey breast.  They have a number of sides including cole slaw, baked beans, fries, green beans, fried corn on the cob and applesauce.  But they're well know for their sweet potato fries.  Pappy's claims to be the biggest seller of sweet potato fries in the nation.  

Next to the menu board on the wall is a dry-erase board where they jot down what they're out of at that point of the day.  Thankfully, they weren't out of anything when I walked in.  I heard one of the workers in the dining area tell an older man that they usually run out of brisket first. 

They also feature a number of combinations, including one called "Heifer and Hog" - a combination of beef brisket slices and pulled pork served with thick white bread and two sides.  That's exactly what I wanted.  

I stepped up to the counter and a pleasant young lady with a good sense of humor took my order.  She asked me what sides I wanted and I decided to try their baked beans, but I was torn between getting their cole slaw or the sweet potato fries.  I finally opted for the cole slaw - I thought the sweet potato fries would be too much.  She said, "Good choice.  I like our cole slaw."  

I made the mistake of ordering a beer and she said, "I'm sorry, we don't have a liquor license."  I got confused because when I came in through the back door I saw a sign for Boulder Buffalo Gold beer.  But then I realized afterward that it was on the back door going into The U and not for Pappy's.  I got a water instead.  

She asked me for my name as they usually dish it up and bring it out to the table.  But since it was slow at that point, they handed my platter over the counter.  I got a seat at the window ledge with the high chairs and dug in.  

First of all, the brisket was absolutely fabulous.  The smoke ring around the meat was perfect.  The beef brisket was tender, flavorful and fresh.  On its own without any sauce, it was just excellent - some of the best brisket I've ever had.

The pulled pork was almost as good as the brisket.  The charred ends were chewy, but the inner pork was moist, tender and full of flavor.  They definitely know how to smoke their meat at Pappy's as there was just a hint of smoke taste in every bite, not enough to over power the natural taste of the meat like some barbecue places will do.  It was very good. 

When I did add sauce to the meat, it only helped enhance the taste.  Pappy's features three different types of sauce - their Original sauce that has a little bit of smooth pepper taste; Holly's Hot Sauce that they claim is pretty hot, but I found it to be slightly more spicy than their Original; and Sweet Baby Jane, a thick and rich, sweet/smoky Kansas City-style sauce.  I tried each of the sauce on a corner of the thick white bread and then began to experiment.  I thought that a mix of the Original and the Holly's Hot Sauce was a great combination. 

The baked beans on their own were good, but I really liked them better when I put some of the Sweet Baby Jane and the Holly's Hot sauce in them.  And the cole slaw was the sweet and sour kind that I like.  They weren't very creamy - also a big plus in my book.     

The meat portions were generous, the sides were in 6 oz. cups filled to the brim and the two large slices of white bread was more than enough.  I was able to finish the meats, but not the sides.  I'm going to have to try the sweet potato fries the next time I'm in.  And with a number of trips planned to St. Louis in the coming months, I will be back at Pappy's at some point.  From what I remember about Super Smokers when they had their location next to I-70 in St. Peters, that was the finest barbecue I've ever had in St. Louis.  But I have to say that Pappy's Smokehouse probably smoked 'em and replaced them as my favorite barbecue place in St. Louis.   But, of course, the common denominator here is Skip Steele.   Pappy's Smokehouse is, simply, barbecue heaven. 

Whale Watching - Maui

Quite possibly Cindy's number one priority while in Hawaii was a chance to take a boat ride out into the Pacific to view the humpback whales up close.  There's no shortage of charter services on the islands that will take whale watchers out to see humpback whales leisurely roll, jump or frolic in the waters.  We had a chance to go while we were on the Big Island, but were told by some of the locals that the best whale watching was just off the west coast of Maui.  Since we were going to be there the next week, it worked out for the best.  It turns out that the height of the whale watching season is in February and March - the exact time we'd be in Hawaii. 

Each year, hundreds of humpback whales begin to migrate in November from just off the Alaskan coast to the Hawaiian Islands to give birth and raise their young calves, or to breed again.  During this time, the whales don't eat - they lose as much as 50% of their body weight in the winter time, going back in April and May to the fertile waters of the north Pacific.  One of the things we found out while we were in Hawaii is that the more blue and clear the water, the less amount of nutrients are present in the water to sustain large schools of fish.  

Female humpback whales are usually slightly bigger than males and when they give birth to their calves, they guard them against any interloping males who may want to kill the young whales during the winter courting season.  Calves will stay close to their mother who feeds them milk that is 50% fat and is pink in color.  Calves will grow quickly and the mothers will nurse them for about six months.  After about a year, the young whales generally go off from their mothers and the life-cycle will continue for the mother who will breed in the waters off the Hawaiian coast.

The courting process is a part of the whale's ritual while swimming around the Hawaiian Islands.  As many as 15 to 20 males will vie for the affection of a single female humpback.  Sometimes the competition between the "escorts" can be fierce with a combination of breaching (when a whale comes completely out of the water), tail or fin slapping, and charging other males to establish a dominance in the group.  

Along with the posturing that males exhibit during the courtship process, the whale's song is a large part of the annual ritual.  Only males make the the song which is a combination of varying air pressure exerted through the whale's nasal cavity.  Underwater microphones - hydrophones - can easily capture the singing of a handful of whales in the immediate area.  The interesting thing is that all whale songs are the same.  However, one whale may begin a different intonation of the same song and other whales will follow suit. 

Each whale has a distinctive tail - or fluke.  It's like the whale's fingerprint, if you will.   Marine biologists in Hawaii have taken thousands of pictures of whales flukes over the years and compare them to check to see if the same whales come back to the Hawaiian waters each winter.  I understand that many of them do. 

As I said earlier, we had a number of different whale watching charters to choose from when we were on Maui.  In talking to the bartender at the Bistro Molokini at the Grand Wailea, she told us the most popular one - Pacific Whale Foundation - was generally a large boat stuffed with as many people as possible, including a lot of kids at times.  She said, "You want to go with the smaller charters.  Yeah, they're more expensive, but you can move about the boat a lot more easily.  And you don't have to deal with the screaming and whiny kids."  She gave us the name of a guy who did the smaller charters and she told us to use her name when we talked to him.  

We considered doing that until we got to talking to some other people who had done the Pacific Whale Foundation's charter.  Cindy didn't feel comfortable calling someone up and scheduling a charter.  We decided to go ahead and make reservations for a morning charter on one of the Pacific Whale Foundation's boats that were based out of a harbor in Ma'alaea.  The price of the charter was $28.75 per person.  We found out later that many smaller charters would be twice or more the amount we paid.  Cindy also felt, the bigger the boat, the better.  

It was a cool morning when we set out for the Ma'alaea harbor.  20 minutes later, we pulled into the parking lot near where the Pacific Whale Foundation's boats waited to take people out to see the whales up close.  The process was a little confusing for us - we'd paid on line for the charter and there was a boat that was loading passengers when we showed up.  We went up to one of the PWF's people who was checking tickets and he told us that we needed to go across the street to the foundation's store to check in and they'd give us our tickets. (see map) 

The Pacific Whale Foundation is a non-profit organization that has studied humpback whales for nearly 30 years.  Their charter tours are conducted by two naturalists who give a running commentary of the whale's habits and rituals during the two hour cruise.  The PWF also has charters to take people to see schools of dolphins and also have boats that go out to the Molokini crater for snorkeling excursions.   

After getting checked in and getting our tickets, we had about a 20 minute wait until a guide came to gather the group of about 60 people - people of all ages - in the courtyard in front of the store.  She gave a quick talk about the foundation, their mission and what to expect on the tour.  After that, we walked back over to the harbor across the road.  Turned out that we could have left our car at the lot at the harbor marina instead of driving it over to the lot in the strip mall where the foundation's store was located.  

The person conducting the tour was Patrick, who said he has been studying whales for about 11 years; and the captain of the boat - Captain Timmy - had been in Hawaii for about 13 years, but had been piloting boat charters for about 20 years.  Both of them looked like they were in their mid-30's.  And both were pretty good guys.

Cindy and I found a spot in the upper deck of the boat - a catamaran-style boat that was pretty stable, even in rough waters.  We were very fortunate that morning because all week long while we were in Maui, the wind howled.  But for some reason, the ocean was calm and the winds were very light when we went out that morning.  We noticed later in the day the wind had picked back up and the sea had turned choppy, even in the bays around the island.  

 

 

As we were leaving the harbor, Patrick asked the people on the boat for a show of hands of people who were on a whale watching tour for the first time.  The majority of people put their hands up.  He asked to see the hands of people who had gone on a tour between two and five times.  A few hands went up.  He then asked to see the hands of people who had gone on the tour over five times.  A few more hands went up.  He finally asked if there was anyone who had been on a tour more than 10 times.  About six or seven hands shot up, including a lady seated next to us.  She said, "I think this is my 20th-something time I've been out on a charter to see the whales.  Honestly, I've lost count."   

We got off shore by about a mile and Captain Timmy started to steer toward a group of whales that he spotted off in the distance.  By law, a boat cannot come within 100 yards of a whale.  That's not to say that they haven't been surprised by an occasional whale that somewhat sidles up to the side of the boat.  Patrick told us that sometimes a female with a calf will use the boat as a barrier between her and an aggressive male "escort".  I asked Captain Timmy if he'd ever been bumped by a whale.  "Oh, yeah," he shot back.  I asked him what it felt like and he said, "It feels like getting bumped by a 60 ton whale.  It can be a jolt and it can scare the heck out of some folks."  

 
 
Now, we just got a new Panasonic camera before we went on vacation.  It has more pixels than the older Panasonic we had and was more compact for easier storage and carrying around.  I was manning that camera and Cindy had her little "point and shoot" camera.  The biggest mistake I made with the new Panasonic camera was that I did not activate the "rapid fire" feature that would take up to seven pictures with the click of the button.  Of course, Cindy was on the ball and had that feature activated on her camera.  She would take six or seven pictures of a whale breaching - the process when the whale shoots straight up out of the water.  Five of the pictures might be blurry, but one would be perfect.  But she did get this pretty spectacular breach shown above.  I know I missed some great shots without having that feature activated.  

Nonetheless, we did manage to get some excellent pictures of whales cavorting around us.  At one point, a whale breached not more than 40 yards off the port bough of the boat.  Patrick and Captain Timmy both went "WHOA!!!" when it did that.  I was late on the switch to get a good picture, looking off in another direction when I caught the breach out of the corner of my eye.  The sound of the upper body of the whale hitting the water sounded like the most intense "cannon-ball" dive I'd ever heard.  It was way cool.  The same whale did about four or five more breaches and each time I was late on the switch, but I was able to at the very least get this shot of him. 

About halfway through the charter tour, Patrick and Captain Timmy spied what appeared to be two calves swimming with a mother.  I don't know if they were naturally astounded by this, or putting on a show for the tourists, but they were both excited to see that.  Apparently, female whales will give birth to twins, but it's a very rare event.  However, with the fortunate sighting of two calves with a mother came the revelation that one of the calves was doomed.  Patrick said, "The mother doesn't have enough milk to feed both calves, so she'll pick the one that she wants to live and let the other one die off."  

When asked how long the doomed calf would be able to sustain, he said, "Boy, maybe a month at the most."  He said it could also be that the second calf could have come from another mother who abandoned it or possibly died in the process.  "Either way," he said, "it's not going to make it for very long."  

There was certainly a lot of activity that morning.  Once again, I couldn't tell if the enthusiasm both Patrick and Captain Timmy showed was sincere or if it was a show for the tourists to entice them to come out on the boat again.  But they were excited for the amount of sightings we had as we cruised around the bay just off Ma'alaea and Kihei.  And for a novice first-timer like me, it was pretty impressive.  Seriously, after a while, I was sort of getting bored by the whole thing.  Cindy, though, thoroughly dug the experience.  "I didn't want to go back in (to port)," she told me afterward.  

 

For our first excursion to see humpback whales I was pretty impressed.  It was a pretty fun experience going on the Pacific Whale Foundation boat.  I'm glad we went in the morning when it was more calm.   And while there was a screaming kid on the boat, he settled down when we got out in to the bay, so it wasn't all that bad.   It was money well spent on a tour that was not only exciting, but I certainly learned a lot more about the nature of humpback whales.  It's a must-do if you go to Hawaii in the late winter months. 
  

  
     

Isana - Kihei, HI

On the recommendation of our bartender at the Bistro Molokini at the Grand Wailea, we had sushi at Isana on our first night on Maui.  We had told her that we were thinking about going to the Sansei location up the way in Kihei.  She told us, "Sansei is very good, but I sort of like the atmosphere at Isana better.  And for me, it's difficult to choose between the two as to which has better sushi.  They're both very good."  So it was off to Isana that evening.

Isana bills itself as the largest Korean restaurant on Maui.  Hmmm...  A Korean restaurant that serves sushi?  I guess I didn't know that sushi was served in Korea.  But, then again, I don't make it to Korean restaurants all that much, as in ever.  So what did I know?  Our bartender did tell us that Isana was a little more funky in its decor.  "Sansei is definitely upscale compared to Isana, but it has a great funky vibe to the place." 

We found Isana on South Kihei Road (see map) and walked in around 7:30.  We went to the small sushi bar and took the last two seats that were open.  Cindy ordered up a green tea right off the bat and I got a large bottle of Sapporo.  That was a good sign - they had Japanese beer.  Our waitress offered us a regular menu, but we declined and looked over the sushi menu.  In addition to sushi and traditional Korean food, Isana also has a Korean Barbecue menu.

We immediately ordered a couple of spicy tuna roll to get things started.  The bartender at the Grand Wailea was right - Isana had a funky kind of vibe to the place.  There were a lot of neon signs throughout the place.  There was a second floor to the restaurant and on the landing heading up to the upper floor there was a wall-mounted carving of two humpback whales.  I don't believe anyone was dining upstairs that evening as it looked pretty dark up there.  

By the time the spicy tuna rolls showed up, we were ready to order up regular sushi.  We tried their maguro (tuna), hamachi (yellow tail), shake (salmon), shiromi (red snapper) and both ebi (sushi) and amaebi (sweet shrimp).  I asked our sushi chef if they had any smoked salmon and he gruffly said, "Only fresh fish."  Oh, OK.  That's fine with me.   

The area around the sushi bar was rather festive with a lot of laughing and drinking going on.  We were having a good time and I was getting a little plowed on the Sapporo.  I only had two, but I think the effects of the mai tais and the previous beers I had back at the hotel, along with the lack of any substantive food since breakfast was starting to get the best of me.  When our large tray of sushi showed up, I was ready to quit drinking and start eating. 

And the sushi was very good, as advertised.  I was very impressed with the maguro tuna, so much that I ordered four more pieces along with four more of the shake salmon.  The tuna was very fresh and it melted in our mouths.  The red snapper was OK, but the yellow tail had great flavor to it and was easy to chew.  The sweet shrimp was not as good as the regular shrimp.  The waitress kept checking on us for drinks and the sushi chef was pleasant enough when we were eating to see how we were doing. 

 

 

Isana was a little expensive - total cost of the sushi and drinks were well over $100 bucks.  I thought it to be a little higher priced than Sansei, but the quality of the food was on par.  I don't know if the tuna at Isana was as good as Sansei, and I was a little disappointed they didn't have smoked salmon, but sushi purists point out that sushi should be fresh fish only.  So Isana was more of a purists type of place.  

A few days later, we saw the bartender at the Bistro Molokini back at the hotel and thanked her for steering us toward Isana.  She said, "It is a funky place, but it has some great sushi, doesn't it?"

It sure does... 

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Saint Giuseppe's Heavenly Pizza - Moline, IL

We're always on the lookout for new pizza places to try in the Quad Cities.  We recently tried a new place - well, new to us, but not new to people on the Illinois side of the river - called Saint Giuseppe's Heavenly Pizza.  The lady who does pedicures for us (that's right - I get pedicures and they're GREAT!) suggested this place and we thought we'd give it a shot one night.

Now, most of the pizza places in the Quad Cities fashion their style of pizza after Harris Pizza, the four-restaurant establishment that is near and dear to the hearts of most Quad City residents.  Harris Pizza is the first pizza many of the life-long residents enjoyed and will still flock to one of the restaurants for their pizza.  And some people who moved away from the Quad's still regard Harris as the best pizza in the world.  The only problem is that in my somewhat educated opinion about pizza, it's not. 

One of the most viewed posts on Road Tips has been my synopsis, nearly 4 1/2 years ago of Quad City pizza places.  (Click here to see that post.)  I should get around to update that post, but part of it had to do with my first - and only - encounter with Harris Pizza.  Here's the story -

I had just moved to the Quad's in 1991 and everyone was telling me how great Harris Pizza was.  So one night on a Sunday night, it was getting kind of late and I decided to call for a Harris Pizza to go pick up.  I ordered my usual - sausage, pepperoni, mushroom - and I ordered a large so I could put some in the fridge and piece on it through the week. 

I ordered from the one on E. Locust and went and picked it up.  I took it back to my apartment and tried a piece.  Hmm, something with the taste isn't right here.  Ooo, what are these things on top?   Is this the sausage?  Where's the big chunks?  I finished that piece and got into the second piece.  It wasn't tasting too good.  In fact, it tasted pretty bad.  For the first time in my life, I actually threw away a nearly whole pizza. 

I got home late on the following Monday night from a meeting in Iowa City and remembered that trash day was the next morning.  I took the trash out to the curb around midnight and went in and went to bed.  The next morning, I had to be up for a 7:30 meeting at the store I was working at.  As I was driving out of the parking lot, I noticed that something had gotten into my garbage sack.  I stopped and kind of cleaned things up around the sack and noticed that the Harris Pizza box was opened - and not one piece had been taken!  The pizza was so bad, even the critter that got into my garbage thought it sucked and wouldn't eat it!  True story!

If you've read "Road Tips" for any time, now, or even click on the "Pizza" category to read about past visits to some pretty damn good pizza joints, I consider myself to be somewhat of a pizza connoisseur.   What I thought made the Harris pizza so bad was the rather bland tomato sauce - it didn't even taste like tomatoes.  The sausage - it's not even Italian fennel sausage - is ground and scattered across the pizza.  Harris Pizza started this practice saying that you get the taste of sausage (or whatever meat topping) with every bite.  The only problem is that the sausage is about as bland as the tomato sauce.  And while the crust is thin, it's spongy and limp with large crust edges that are make it too chewy.

From time to time, Cindy's work place will bring in Harris pizzas for lunch for the work force.  She's at the point that she won't even have a piece because she doesn't like it.  But both Cindy and I were not raised in the Quad Cities and were exposed to more authentic Italian-style pizza growing up.

Over the years, a number of Harris Pizza "clone" shops have popped up around the Quad Cities.  That's because a handful of former workers at Harris have opened up their own pizza places.  What gets me is that a lot of these places are thriving - having the SAME style of pizza as Harris.  I mean, why would anyone want to go to a Harris Pizza-style pizza place when they can get the original at four different locations around the Quad Cities?

That's when we heard about St. Giuseppe's and found out that the owner didn't appear to have any connection or past with Harris Pizza, we were encouraged that it could be a pretty good place.  In fact, Bobby Schilling was an insurance salesman supporting a large (and growing family) when he decided to make a complete career change in 1997 by opening a pizza restaurant that was based on "family values and Christian beliefs" (hence the "heavenly pizza").   From the start, Schilling and his wife, Christie, worked hard to make a go of the place.  As the business got up and going, Schilling decided to close on Sunday's to allow his employees and himself the opportunity to spend time with family.

But Schilling decided that running the restaurant wasn't enough.  He is running as the Republican nominee for the 17th Congressional district which encompasses a large portion of Western Illinois.  It's an uphill climb for Schilling running in a district that has voted primarily Democratic for nearly the past 30 years.  But he feels he has a good chance of overtaking incumbent Phil Hare in the fall elections.  Click here to see his web site for U.S. Congress. 

(Update - Schilling did, indeed, win the Congressional election in 2010 and represents the Illinois Quad Cities in the U.S. House of Representatives.  Here's his congressional web site - http://schilling.house.gov/)

St. Giuseppe's has turned into a pretty popular place on 53rd St. in Moline just a couple blocks south of The Avenue of the Cities and a couple blocks west of the Moline/East Moline border (see map).   We found that to be true the one evening we were there as the restaurant was over half full and there was a steady stream of people coming in for "to-go" orders on pizza.  The phone never stopped ringing with orders while we were there.

We found a table in the center of the restaurant that seats approximately 60 people.  There were a couple booths near a buffet area (lunch Tuesday thru Saturday) on the north wall and five or six booths along the south wall.  The front counter is also the pizza oven area and the young guys back there were hand-tossing the pizza dough.  That was a good sign for us.

There was only one waitress in the place and she was overwhelmed by the amount of people that were coming in.  It was about five minutes before she could even come over to greet us.  By that time, we'd looked at the menu they had on the table and figured we just wanted to get a medium sausage and pepperoni pizza.  Cindy also wanted to get a garden salad as a starter.  Since St. Giuseppe's is a family-oriented place - fully indicated by the crayon-drawn pictures that sat under a clear plastic table cover on all the tables - I pretty much figured I couldn't get a beer with our pizza.  So I just stuck with water.  Cindy got an iced-tea.

As I said, the waitress was very busy and she was the one who was taking orders, getting drinks, clearing tables, making salads and bringing food to the tables.  About three or four tables or booths remained cluttered with plates and glasses for quite some time after those who had eaten at those stations had left.  The three guys back behind the counter were also very busy taking phone orders, waiting on people to pick up pizzas, and making the pizza.

It took our waitress about 15 minutes to come out with Cindy's salad.  She got a side of their homemade garlic dressing which was really nothing more than garlic powder in mayo, but the garden salad was very good with chunks of fresh tomatoes, olives and chopped lettuce greens.  Cindy gave me a bite and it was very fresh.

Another 15 minutes went by and she finally came out with our pizza.  As soon as she set it down, Cindy and I looked at one another - it was another Harris Pizza clone.  Ground sausage - plain ground sausage - a mild tomato sauce, lots of cheese hiding a few slices of pepperoni and a limp and soft thin crust with thick edges.

And it was OK, nothing special.  Even a cold beer wouldn't have been able to help the taste.  But it was just like any number of other pizza joints in the area.  It's almost like all these pizza places get their meat, sauce and dough from the same food purveyor.  It's all the same as the others.  That's what upsets me most about Quad City area pizza places.

The price wasn't bad - the pizza, an iced-tea and the salad came to $18.50, tax included.  I left our waitress a $3.50 tip because she was working hard, but they really needed two waitresses to keep up with the crowd they had in there.

I'm sure St. Giuseppe's Heavenly Pizza is a popular alternative to Harris Pizza in the eyes of some people.  But we probably won't drive all the way over there to have a pizza again when we can easily get the same style of pizza at three or four different establishments on the Iowa side of the river.

Stella Blues Cafe - Kihei, HI

On our first full day on Maui, we ventured out into the Kihei area just north of our hotel.  We decided to go to breakfast at a place one of the valet guys at the Grand Wailea suggested - Stella Blues Cafe.  Being a pretty popular place, it showed up as a pre-programmed destination for food on my Garmin GPS.  I hit a couple buttons on the screen and we were soon headed in that direction.

Stella Blues Cafe is the brainchild of Ray Enis and his wife, Janie.  In 1986, the Enis' opened the first bagel shop on Maui.  Bagels at that time were about as foriegn to the Hawaiian Islands as poi would be to a New Yorker.  They gave away hundreds of bagels initially just to get the locals to try them.  After bagels caught on, their bagel shop had great business.

Ray and Janie sold their business in 1990 and traveled to Thailand to experience life in that country.  After about a year in Thailand, they moved back to Maui and decided to open another restaurant, this time with a Grateful Dead-theme to it.  Ray named the place after his favorite Grateful Dead song, "Stella Blue". 

 

The place was an immediate hit in a culture where breakfast and home-cooked meals were big.  The small restaurant could only accommodate about 40 people and the wait was sometimes about 45 minutes to an hour.  In 1998, the Enis' moved across the street to a new location in the Azeka Mauka strip mall that effectively gave them an additional 250 seats.  The decorated the place with Grateful Dead memorabilia and continued to stress that "laid back" feel to the place.  Daily operations are handled by Ray Enis' son, Kyle Boverman.   

It was around 9:30 when we got into Stella Blues.  It's sort of tucked back in a corner of a strip mall with ample parking out front (see map).  We had our choice of eating inside the main dining room, or outside on the patio.  We decided to do the outside seating.

It was really a no-brainer.  It was a beautiful morning.  The early morning Maui sun was beating down, so we sat at a table that had a large umbrella near an area that had a retractable awning that would allow people to sit there even in the rain.  The patio area was spacious and comfortable with metal grated tables and chairs.  The patio epitomized Stella Blues laid-back feel.

Looking over the breakfast menu at Stella Blues Cafe, their selection wasn't overly large, but it was pretty impressive.  They also had a special that day - a fruit crepe that featured a variety of berries topped with homemade whipped cream.  That's what Cindy ordered along with a half-stack of Stella Blues' pancakes.  "Just to try them out," she said.  She knew I'd help her eat them.

I was torn between a lot of things on the menu.  It was down to getting a sausage, mushroom and cheese omelet or their French toast.  The French toast is Maui sweet bread dipped in a vanilla and cinnamon egg batter, then grilled to a golden brown.  I couldn't resist.  I went with the French toast with a side of bacon.

They were pretty busy at Stella Blues and service was a little slow.  It took us about 10 minutes before our waitress came back to take our order after she brought coffee for Cindy.  It was another 25 minutes - easy - before our food showed up.   But the wait was well worth it. 

The French toast featured 3 thick slices of bread and I had my choice of maple syrup or lilikoi.  I alternated using both types of syrup.  There's just something magical about lilikoi syrup. 

Cindy's crepe with the variety of berries was big.  The pancakes weren't going to get close to half-way eaten.  But she said the crepe was very good.  I took a couple bites of the pancake with some lilikoi syrup on them.  They were a little thick for my taste, but they were still pretty good. 

There was no-way we could finish everything.  I still had about half of my French toast, well over half of the 1/2 stack of pancakes and Cindy had a lot of her crepe left.  Our waitress came around and asked if we wanted anything boxed up.  We declined, although we could have eaten what we had left over for breakfast the next morning.  But there was no way we could warm everything up being in a hotel room with no oven or even a microwave.  Plus, we just knew it wouldn't taste as good reheated.

We liked Stella Blues Cafe a lot.  The food was good and overly plentiful.  The restaurant also features a varied dinner menu and live music on Friday and Saturday nights which features a four-course meal with the show.  We were tempted to go back, but with all the various dining options in the area, we just didn't do it.  Still, Stella Blues was one of the better meals we had on Maui.   It got two thumbs up from Cindy and me.    

(Update - It was disheartening to hear that this wonderful place closed in April of 2014.  The Enis family had been working on a lease extension with the landlords, but the two couldn't come to terms forcing the Stella Blues to close.)  

 

Springtime Garden Report

This is usually for my sisters who want to see how our early season gardening has been going.  So, if this doesn't interest you all that much, you have my permission to pass on today's entry in Road Tips. 

We've had a pretty good spring around the Quad Cities.  It started out warm and dry, then it went to wet and cool.  Finally about two weeks ago we went from temperatures and rainy conditions found on average in early April to hot and dry weather like you'd find in late July.  We had a high of 95 degrees here in the Quad's about two weeks ago and it hit 91 on our thermometer over the Memorial Day weekend.  Other than a heavy downpour that brought us about two inches of rain on May 25, the weather the past couple of weeks has been amazingly great. 

Our plants are rocking this year.  All two dozen of our rose bushes made it through the winter - the first time in memory that happened.  I tried something different last fall - I raked up the leaves from the yard and put them over the base of the rose bushes.  Then I put hardwood mulch over the leaves and watered the living crap out of them before the first hard freeze.  It helped that we had a lot of snow this past winter to help insulate the rose bushes.  Not long after we got back from Hawaii in early March, the weather was getting warm enough to promote some growth on the roses.  Initially, we were worried about a couple bushes in the rose garden next to the garage wouldn't come back, but they began to show life in April with the warm weather and we breathed a sigh of relief that we wouldn't have to buy any new rose bushes this year.

  

Actually, our first rose bush to open up was around May 8 - a full three weeks earlier than what is usually normal for our rose bushes to bloom.  Cindy took a class in nature photography about a month ago and the instructor told her that everything was about three weeks early this year in this region.  We'd heard that the annual Tulip Time festival in Pella was nearly void of tulips because the tulips bloomed early and had lost their petals long before the mid-May celebration.  The same thing happened to our tulips that Cindy had planted last fall - by mid-May, all the petals were gone.  But, by Memorial Day last weekend, the majority of our rose bushes had bloomed out and there were a stunning amount of roses on some of the bushes.   

We're also more cognizant of the feeding and care of the roses this year.  We've already given them a monthly liquid fertilizer/disease control solution and have sprayed them for bugs (beetles and aphids) about three or four times now.  I have to say this is most healthy our rose bushes have ever looked.

One other interesting aspect about an early spring - it was also one of the earliest times in memory of the return of the wrens.  We had wrens by the first week of April - nearly a full month before we normally see them.  I kept hearing what sounded like a wren off in the distance, but dismissed it as some other migratory bird.  But in talking to the guy who sells us our bird feed, he told me that the wrens did, indeed, come back early.  He did say, however, that the goldfinch population was very low due to a winter kill of many of those colorful birds in the area.  We then noticed that our thistle feeders weren't going down all that much.  But over the past 10 days, we've suddenly noticed an uptick in the number of goldfinches at the feeder.  A few evenings ago we counted five bright male goldfinches on the feeder in back. 

Our vegetables and herbs are also doing very well so far.  With the exception of a late season frost the second week of May - and having to replant our basil (Sweet, Genovese and Lemon) due to too much rain earlier in May - everything has been going according to plan.  We planted three tomato bushes in the garden this year - a Better Boy, a Roma and a Grape/Cherry.   We planted a red bell pepper plant in a large pot behind the garage and Cindy planted an ornamental pepper out in the berm.  We learned that if you pick the first pepper off the plant when it's almost full grown, it fools the pepper plant into thinking that it has to grow more to make up for the loss of the first pepper.  We did that last year and we've never had so many sweet red bell peppers as we did.  We still have some cut up in the freezer.   

Our berm out back continues to be an on-going project.   Cindy wanted me to mulch the berm this spring because the weeds were so bad that she couldn't keep up.  It's been a double-edged sword for us as the mulch is helping keep the moisture in the ground, but we've had so much rain in April and into May that it's not getting a chance to dry out.  The water table is so high around here that our sump pump is running nearly non-stop creating a nice little swampy marsh in the front yard where the water comes out.  

Speaking of the front yard, the wild rose bushes have come back tremendously in front of the house.  We planted impatiens in the window boxes as Cindy decided that a potpourri of flowers just didn't work out that well.  And the perennials around our maple tree in the yard have turned into a mini-jungle.  The irises and columbines were huge this year.  The ground cover is thick and heavy and it's finally looking the way I envisioned it to be when Cindy started to plant perennials rather than annuals under the tree. 

Another surprising area for us this year is our hosta beds along the west side of the house.  This side doesn't get a lot of sun due to a large maple tree that is in our neighbor's yard, but the plants have just been going nuts this spring.  It's been a perfect combination of moisture and temperature to enhance the growth of these plants. 

About the biggest problem we've had this spring is the amount of maple seed "helicopters" that came down from the maple tree up front and the large maple tree next doors.  Unfortunately, when they all decided to drop, we were in the midst of a three-day stretch where we were getting a stiff wind out of the west.  The vast majority of the ones from our neighbor's tree landed in our yard, in our gutters, in our flower beds - all over the place.  And there were millions of 'em.  We're now having to get down and pull them out by hand and it's a major hassle.

But that's about all the problems we've had so far.  Even the peony bush that we've threatened to dig up because it's getting old and hadn't had a lot of blooms over the past couple years is flourishing this spring.  We've lived here about eight years now and it's taken a lot of time - and money - to get our yard the way it is right now and I'm happy with it.  We just planted a couple of dahlias and this weekend we're going to plant an orange azalea bush up in front.  Walking around the yard surveying the plants and flowers in the early morning sunshine is a great start to my day.

 

 

Montreal

I work for a French-Canadian company located in the Montreal suburb of Le Gardeur (see map).  Every once in a while, we're called into Montreal for meetings.  Last year, we had a meeting scheduled in early March - but I couldn't go as I was recovering from my first hip replacement.  And I really missed out on that trip as my boss took the sales guys up to Quebec City for a couple days.  He apologized to me before they even went, saying that we'd do it again at some point.  Actually, I'm kind of glad I didn't go because I understand it was unusually cold with well below freezing temperatures the whole time they were there.  Other than the good restaurants they ate at, I was told by my colleagues that it was not a pleasant experience. 

This year, however, we were summoned to Montreal for training on two high-end Danish audio cable lines we picked up recently - Siltech and Crystal.  I hadn't been to Montreal for quite some time and I was really looking forward to going.  At one point in time, Montreal was on my list of five North American cities I wanted to visit (the others were Memphis, Seattle, San Antonio and San Diego - I've yet to visit San Antonio and San Diego).  My first visit was 8 years ago when I was hired by the company, and I'd made two other trips to Montreal for meetings.  But we figured that it had been over four years since I was last in Montreal.  

The demographic of Montreal is highly diverse.  It's about as European as you can get and still be in North America.  It's sort of a cosmopolitan melting pot of cultures and customs as both Francophone and Anglophone Quebeckers co-exist with a large Italian population, along with Irish, English, Scottish origin people.  There's a large Jewish and Arab population, and a growing Asian population, as well.  The largest Haitian population in Canada is in Montreal.  Only Paris has more French speaking people inhabiting the city.  It makes for some very interesting neighborhoods and restaurants.

Montreal is also the home of a high percentage of very beautiful women.  I don't know what it is about the women in Montreal, but I have seen some of the prettiest and most striking women on my visits to the city.  Many of the women have a very European look to them.  It's difficult to be out somewhere and not find yourself staring at one of the beautiful women you'll encounter in the city.  One of my Montreal colleagues told me, "Your parents probably told you it's not polite to stare at someone, but the women in Montreal take staring at them as a compliment." 

The architecture of Montreal is very European, as well.  A lot of the buildings and residences have a French flair to them.  There's a lot of ornamental wrought iron work on townhouses and condos that line the wide streets of the city.  

One thing that struck me from my first visit to Montreal are the amount of private swimming pools in the city.  In  the summer and early fall months, when you fly over the city on the final approach you can see countless swimming pools in the backyards of homes throughout the city.   My boss has a house north and east of Montreal that is on a cliff overlooking the St. Lawrence River.  He has a swimming pool.  When I asked him one time why all the swimming pools were around the area, he sort of shrugged his shoulders and said, "I don't know.  I guess I never really noticed that there were a lot of pools."  

But one of my colleagues told me, "When the weather gets nice in Montreal, we just want to get outside.  So people will put pools in their back yards.  They only use them, maybe, four months out of the year, but they get a lot of use."  

Montreal is still a pretty gritty city, though.  There's areas that aren't safe after dark.  One of my colleagues got his briefcase stolen out of his rented SUV last year.  It contained his laptop and his passports (he has dual American and Canadian citizenship).  While they were at dinner, someone came up and smashed the window of the SUV and grabbed his briefcase.  I noticed walking in a couple areas while I was near downtown Montreal a lot of shattered glass on the sidewalks.

One of my colleagues told me that when the first Quebec Referendum that would pursue independence for the province from the rest of Canada came up 30 years ago, a number of people with money fled the Montreal area and settled in Ontario.  He said, "It basically went from being a city with people who had money to a blue-collar city almost overnight."  Crime became rampant in the city, but efforts by city officials to curb crime have been overly successful as the crime rate in Montreal has dropped over 40% over the past 15 years.  Still, you've got to be careful of what you leave in your car in plain sight - even during the day.  

Montreal has some world class restaurants and we visited a couple during our meetings.  We also went to a couple small, but interesting cafes, as well.  Look for posts on those places in the coming week.

One of my Montreal colleagues, Todd, got married in late May.  We were invited to the wedding and Cindy was very keen on going.  But airline prices to Montreal were over $600 per person.  With the amount of money we spent on our trip to Hawaii still burning our bank accounts we just couldn't pull off going to his wedding.  We could have driven, but it's almost exactly 1000 miles between the Quad Cities and Montreal.  That would have been a two-day trip both ways.  Cindy was upset that we couldn't go and I was upset that I couldn't take her.  But I'm hoping that one of these days my boss will call a meeting and ask us to bring our wives along (he's done that in the past, but before my time with the company).  I think Cindy would get as big a kick out of Montreal as I do.   

Grand Wailea - Wailea, HI

During our stay on Maui, we stayed at the Grand Wailea resort in the Wailea-Makena area on the southwest side of the island (see map).  This place was, by far, the nicest place we've ever stayed at.  And the prices at the hotel reflected how ritzy the place was.  The room we stayed in went for $699 a night, a beer at any one of the bars on the property was $7.00, and breakfast at the hotel's breakfast buffet was $36.95 per person.  As I've said before, the only way we would have been able to pull off staying at a place like this was because of using Hilton Honors points.  And it took me something like 480,000 points to stay there compared to about 250,000 points to stay for the same amount of nights at the Hilton Waikoloa Village on the Big Island of Hawaii. 

Our flight to Maui was overly pleasant as we took Hawaiian Airlines, named by the Airline Quality Rating report as having the best performance of 18 airlines something like four out of the last five years.   We flew three legs on Hawaiian Airlines during our trip to Hawaii and each time was one of the most pleasurable flying experiences I've ever had.  I just wish mainline airlines would have as comfortable seats, as efficient boarding processes and as pleasant personnel as we experienced with Hawaiian Airlines. 

As we got into Maui's Kahului Airport, our bags were literally waiting for us at the baggage carousel.  We walked out to the rental car area and the bus to take us to the Hertz counter was waiting for us.  Two minutes later we were on our way to Hertz and two minutes after that we pulled into the Hertz lot.  I went into the building, went to the Gold Member line and they had my paperwork ready to go.  I signed the contract, gave them my credit card (we'd already pre-paid last fall to get a good deal), and they pointed to where the car was.  We went out, loaded the bags and took off.  It was a lot better than our experience when we landed on the Big Island a few nights before.  Within 25 minutes of walking off our plane, we were on our way to the hotel.

It's about a 20 minute drive from the airport to the Grand Wailea.  As we arrived at the hotel's valet stand, a young Hawaiian girl welcomed our arrival and placed a lei of flowers around Cindy's neck and she placed a lei of banana leaves around mine.  Actually, I sort of wanted the flower lei.  I'd never seen a banana leaf lei before. 

The Grand Wailea first opened in 2003.  And like the Hilton Waikoloa Village, the Grand Wailea used to be a Hyatt property until about five years ago.  Hilton signed a 30 year management agreement for the resort in the summer of 2006 and turned it into one of their high-end Waldorf-Astoria Collection properties.   Even with the downturn in the tourism economy in Hawaii, I heard the Grand Wailea was actually looking to expand.  But I understand that Morgan Stanley investment company owns the resort and the property is pledged as collateral against a $1 billion dollar loan that is due in 2011.   The investment firm is trying to negotiate a new loan agreement, but if it does default on the loan it appears that Hilton may be waiting in the wings to take over ownership. 

We entered the spacious and open air lobby area of the Grand Wailea and went to the desk to check in.  The lady at the desk said that we were in a courtyard-view room.  I asked if we could get an upgrade to a top floor ocean view room.  She said that wouldn't be a problem.  Since I booked the room last fall with my Hilton points, I knew there would be an upgrade charge above the free rooms we were going to get.  I asked the lady, "How much is it a night for the upgrade?"

She said, "It's $38 dollars a night, but I'm not going to charge you for the upgrade as you're a Hilton Diamond member."

(It was supposed to be a $25 a night upgrade for our room at the Hilton Waikoloa Village.  I thought they had charged me for the nights we stayed there, but a quick perusal of our bill showed that they did not.  Hilton Diamond members are eligible for free upgrades at most Hilton properties, even when you're using points to get free rooms.)

The only problem is that the room they had for us had two queen beds instead of one king bed as we requested.  Cindy asked, "Is it possible that we can have that room for one night, but then move us to another room with a king bed for the rest of our stay?"

The lady didn't hesitate and said, "Sure!  We can do that!"

And they did.  We spent the first night in a room with two queen beds and then the next day they moved us 10 doors down to a room with a similar view of the ocean and a king bed.  Actually, the bathroom in the king bed room was nicer than the one in the one with the double queens.  And with just one bed, it was much more roomy than the other one.  We had some great views of the sunset each and every evening we were on Maui.  The one to the right is no exception.

This is the view when we'd walk out our door looking to the east.  There were a number of condos and houses on the hillside surrounding the Wailea Old Blue golf course.  What is known as the Maui Upcountry is in the background.  There were also some spectacular moon rises over the ridge on the first couple three evenings were were there. 

The Grand Wailea has a number of restaurants on the property, but we found all of them to be somewhat pricey.  As we became acquainted with the property with a little walkabout after we got settled in, we stopped off at the Bistro Molokini for a couple mai tais and something light to eat since we hadn't had lunch that day.  They had a wonderful seared ahi tuna appetizer that we devoured and then ordered another one because it was so damn good. 

We were talking with one of the bartenders and looking out over the ocean to one of the Hawaiian islands that was off in the distance.  She said, "That island over there is Kahoolawe.  That's the island in the chain that the government used for target practice during World War II."  She was telling us that a group of people got the government to pay for clean-up of old shells and unexploded ordnances back in the 90's in a movement to eventually have Kahoolawe become a natural wildlife park.  "But they've only cleaned up about 40 percent of the island before they ran out of money earmarked for the project," she said.

She pointed at a littler island just off of Kahoolawe.  "And that's Molokini - that's what this place is named after." Molokini (right) is a small crescent-shaped dormant volcano that is partially submerged.  It's a popular place for divers and snorklers. 

The island of Lanai was also easily visible to the northwest of the Grand Wailea.  The waters between Maui, Kahoolawe and Lanai were full of humpback whales that were easily visible from the deck from our top floor room.  Cindy spent her mornings sitting on the deck and watching the whales pop up from time to time in the early morning light. 

The Grand Wailea was situated right next to the ocean, but unlike the rocky shores that surrounded the Hilton Waikoloa Village there was a nice, sandy beach that abutted up to the property.  There was a public walkway between the beach and the hotel grounds and it was pretty busy with walkers and joggers.  We walked down to the south end of the walkway one morning and were nearly run over on a number of occasions.  It wasn't very wide.  Thankfully, they didn't let bikes on the trail.

The Grand Wailea also has a large spa - the Spa Grande - on the property.  It was voted one of the Top 10 spas in the U.S. by Conde Nast Traveler and a couple other travel magazines.  As spas go, it was pretty nice.  We decided to do a "spa day" - actually it was more of an afternoon.  They have "his" and "hers" parts of the spa, but both are about the same as far as amenities are concerned.  Cindy signed me up for a foot and scalp massage.  But part of the spa experience is that you get to use the hydrotherapy facilities for 60 minutes before you get your massage or spa treatment.  This included these five warm baths that featured a sea salt treatment, a eucalyptus bath, some sort of Hawaiian bath and a couple others that were designed to get the stress out of your body. 

You lay in these baths for up to 10 minutes (I only did about five minutes, each), then you got out and showered off.  They had conventional showers, or they had these jet showers that shot water out of the wall from different directions.  The first time my male appendage got smacked by one of those jets of water, I was out of there. 

The best shower was this three-inch wide spigot that was about 10 feet above a marble seat in a small bath.  Water just flowed out of this thing and you could sit on the slab and position the water on the back or your neck or back.  It was just fabulous.  I immediately wanted one for our home.  Quite honestly, it was the highlight of the spa for me. 

They also had a large Roman bath, a eucalyptus steam room, sauna, whirlpools, and hot and cold baths.  I sat in the hot bath for about five minutes, then got into the cold bath.  I got up to my knees before I said, "Screw this!  I didn't come to Hawaii to get cold!"  And it was cold - the water temp was easily 55 degrees, if not lower. 

So, after all that, an attendant - a male attendant, in my case - comes and gives you a skin exfoliation with an exfoliation sponge.  Now, I just thought it was a little weird they did that.  It sort of made me feel rather uneasy to have a man who wasn't a nurse sponging my body.  But he was a good guy and was making small chat with me to make me feel more at ease.  And he didn't sponge off my naughty bits, so that was good. 

I got a robe and went to this terrace to wait for my foot and scalp massage.  The terrace overlooks the grounds and pools of the property and has a nice view of the ocean, as well.  It wasn't long before my masseuse, Ursula, came to get me.

Ursula was a middle-aged blond, slightly built German woman who had trouble pronouncing "W's".  So I was "Vill" to her during the massage process.  I got all settled under a sheet and she came in and asked what I'd like to have done first, my feet or scalp.  Now, when I get a haircut and the girl shampoos my hair, I could just let her go on and on because there's nothing better than someone else shampooing your hair.  I figured that since I just got a pedicure before we came out to Hawaii - which included a foot massage - I'd go with the foot massage first and the scalp massage second. 

Ursula had some strong hands, I'm telling you.  That was, by far, the best foot massage I'd ever had.  I thought if the scalp massage was even half as good as the foot massage, I'd be overly satisfied. 

But it wasn't.  She just sort of "kneaded" my scalp.  She didn't get down to the surface and really massage the scalp with her finger nails.  I was telling DaMel Howard at Salon Luce in Davenport as I was getting a haircut after we got back, "Abby does a better job of massaging my scalp when she shampoos me than this lady did at the spa.  I should just flip Abby a twenty and a say, 'Keep this up for another 15 minutes, would ya?' "  I was highly disappointed in the scalp massage. 

After the massages, I was allowed to go back and use the hydrotherapy area of the spa.  I went back in and sat under the one of the big faucets, shown here on the right.  Oh man.  That was great.  I could have sat in there all afternoon, but Cindy was waiting for me.  I almost went back just for the hydrotherapy part of the spa.   

Much like the Hilton Waikoloa Village, the Grand Wailea had a number of paintings, sculptures and other artwork around the property.  This was one of their "artists in residence" working on a wood sculpture on the grounds.  But unlike the other hotel, the Grand Wailea didn't have a series of upscale stores and shops to buy things.  Oh, the property had some small shops and the like, but nothing on the scale of the what the Hilton Waikoloa Village had to offer.  However, the Shops at Wailea upscale shopping mall was located less than a 10 minute walk from the Grand Wailea.  We only discovered the place the day we were leaving. 

And like the Hilton Waikoloa Village, there were a number of Japanese tourists at the Grand Wailea.  Menus and signage were in both English and Japanese.  But there didn't seem to be as many - if any - gay couples that we saw; and the amount of kids at the Grand Wailea was not as many as what we encountered at the Hilton on the Big Island.  I'm guessing the cost of the hotel probably had something to do with that. 

We found that we got better information and recommendations on restaurants and what to do and see from the parking valets than we did with the concierges.   I thought the valets, in particular, were pretty strong with their insights as to the better places to go in the Kihei/Wailea/Makena area. 

I would have to say the only bad thing about our stay at the Grand Wailea was the wireless Internet connection.  When I could get on - and the signal wasn't all that strong to begin with - to check something out like a restaurant or an attraction, I usually got kicked off when the signal strength would drop.  And I will say once again the prices were pretty high at the place.  But other than that, the service we got from an overly accommodating staff, the beautiful rooms with the great views and a world-class spa helped make it an enjoyable stay at the Grand Wailea.  I'm going to have to save up for about four years just to be able to pull off another week long stay using Hilton points.