When we got back to Maui on our recent visit, we had a long wait to get our bags at the Kahului Airport, then another long wait to get our rental car at Hertz. Tired and hungry after a long flight from Chicago, I remembered a sushi place in Kihei that was the sister restaurant to one we ate at on the big island of Hawaii over six years ago - Sansei. (Click here to see the entry on our visit to Sansei on the big island.) We got to Sansei around 3:00 p.m. only to find that it didn't open until 4:30. We were sort of crestfallen that we wouldn't be able to get sushi in the afternoon, but we ended up going back there that evening to sit at the sushi bar and have some food.
Sansei is part of the D.K. Restaurants group that also features d.k Steak House and Vino - both are highly acclaimed restaurants in the Honolulu area. "D.K." are the initials of Dave "D.K." Kodama, the founder and owner of the D.K. Restaurants. Kodama is a native Hawaiian who left the University of Hawaii in 1979 and ended up as a bartender in Seattle. Kodama fell in love with the restaurant business and thought it would be a more fun profession than being an engineer.
After 3 years in Seattle, Kodama ended up in Aspen, CO, working at a number of restaurants, learning the business and getting valuable culinary training on the job. He ended up moving back to Hawaii in 1996 and opened his first Sansei in the Kapalua Resort north of Lahaina on Maui. Sansei specializes in fresh seafood and serving locally grown foods. It's sort of a contemporary Pan-asian seafood restaurant that also has sushi.
The Kihei location for Sansei is located in a small strip mall across from Kalama Beach Park along S. Kihei Road. (see map) A Foodland grocery store is located in the same strip mall and Sansei is a couple three doors down from Cuatro which was one of the best meals - if not the best meal - we had on Maui when we were there six years ago. (Click here to see the entry on Cuatro.) There's a pretty good sized parking lot, but we were having trouble finding parking until someone pulled out of a space indicating that this was a pretty popular spot on a Saturday evening.
Going inside Sansei, it was a lively atmosphere with most of the tables filled with people. There was an open kitchen along the north wall of the restaurant. We were told that it would be a 15 to 20 minute wait since we didn't have a reservation. But when I inquired about seating at the sushi bar, we were told that it would be an even longer wait.
I noticed a couple of seats open at the regular bar and I asked if it were all right to have food at the bar. The hostess said that was no problem. My wife doesn't like to sit at the bar, but she was hungry and given that we would have been sitting at the bar to wait for a spot to open at the sushi bar, she said it would be all right to have dinner there.
We were greeted by one of the bartenders that evening, Logan. He looked like an Asian version of comedian David Koechner, only with hair. Seated next to us were a dressed up couple who came from a wedding where they decided to bag the food they had and go to Sansei for sushi. Cindy got a mai tai for her drink, and I started out with a Maui Brewing Company Big Swell IPA before getting a mai tai later on.
We started off with a couple of spicy tuna rolls. The rolls were huge with a lot of rice wrapped in seaweed. Cindy remarked that the sushi chef made it look like it was a little face in the plate. The tuna rolls were sort of spicy, but not that bad. They had a lot of flavor and were a good start to the meal.
For our regular nigiri sushi, we had tuna, salmon and smoked salmon. The cuts were thick and the salmon and tuna were very fresh and tasty. The smoked salmon was a tad disappointing - it didn't have much of a good smoked salmon flavor - but it was still good with a nice consistency to the bite. We were thinking of getting some more tuna sushi, but we figured we'd had enough since we had a late lunch and the pieces were large compared to other sushi places we'd been to.
Even though we missed out on having sushi for our first meal when we returned to Maui, we were able to go back for dinner at Sansei that evening. The cuts of sushi were large and tasted great, the spicy tuna rolls - although having a lot of rice in the rolls - were also very good. Our service from Logan was prompt, friendly and he had a great sense of humor. It was obvious a number of locals like Sansei because the bartenders were welcoming to a number of people on a first name basis. Sansei was just as good at their Kihei location as what we experienced on the big island over six years ago.
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