Aw bummer, I didn’t win the chance to purchase the Air Jordan Fear Pack from Ala Moana Foot Locker. I thought the signs were in my favor, especially with a raffle ticket ending with #23. But checking the winning numbers, I was denied both the AJ3 and the AJ5.
Oh well, the kicks gods were against me today, or maybe this is a message that I need to listen to Macklemore and not let consumerism define me. Nah, I’d still rather have a fresh pair of Jordans.
And probably so have you, especially if you’re a long time fan of Saint-Germain Bakery.
Long time Hawaii bakery, Saint-Germain, has followed the course of the cronut, introducing their aptly named Croissant Donut. But here’s the catch. Only 100 of these are prepared daily, and you can only get them at the new Makai location on the ground level of Ala Moana. You got that? Only 100 available at the Makai Saint-Germain (next to See’s Candies). So in order to indulge in the Croissant Donut, you have to get there early (opens at 7am on the weekdays), wend your way through the messed up Ala Moana parking, and battle the influx of senior citizens.
On a Friday morning while in the Ala Moana area, I took a chance and stopped by the Makai location. I got lucky. There was still a tray of both the plain and cream croissant donuts at 9am.
I grabbed a few upon which the perusing seniors started the dialog.
“You tried those yet?”
“They supposed to be good.”
“They’re a big thing from New York.”
“How they taste?”
“My son went to New York, and I told him to bring me back one.”
Anyways, you get the idea of how it went as I stood in line waiting to make my first ever purchase of Croissant Donuts.
I’ve had these before – that’s the singular thought in my head after my first taste. Now that’s not necessarily a bad thought but just somewhat anti-climatic. True, I don’t know what an authentic cronut tastes like, but I do know the pastries of Saint-Germain, and the Croissant Donut fit their flavor profile.
Over the years, have you ever tried the regular donuts from Saint-Germain? How about their long skinny donuts that are lined with apple, custard, or chocolate? Yeah, those. Now imagine taking that long donut and encircling it. Then take two of these circles and stack them. There’s your Croissant Donut. Want a cream variant? Use cream to bond the two donuts together. Again, the Croissant Donuts are not bad since the Saint-Germain donuts are good and flakey anyways, but this variation isn’t distinctively unique either.
So as always, I encourage you to form your own opinion based on your own tastes and preferences. Head on over to Saint-Germain Bakery, and try a Croissant Donut and let me know what you think.
The ramen burger is a perfect example of a collaboration of cultures – the American beef patty meets Asian noodles. Sounds simple enough that both you or I could recreate this collabo at home. Just don’t do it.
Confess. You’ve thought about it. Cook a few packages of Sapporo Ichiban and sizzle up some May’s beef patties, and marvel at your own homemade ramen burger. Or even better, prepare real ramen noodles, form them into bun shapes, and make your own hamburger patties.
But upon your first bite, you’ll realize it’s just not that simple. While you can mimic the appearance of the noodle bun around a burger, you can’t replicate the taste of the ramen burger. It’s best to leave that to the experts.
Whatever it is, don’t try to make your own ramen burger at home without being ready to infuse it with some flavor and soul. And while going to New York to sample the real ramen burger is out of the picture, you can get a ramen burger locally from Tanaka Saimin. I hear it’s quite tasty.
Disabling the WordPress JetPack Photon function temporarily. With the latest JetPack release, Photon is messing up resized images, or rather is not adhering to image sizes. In preview mode, the images look fine, but when published, the images display in their native size.
Disabling the JetPack plugin resolved this issue, so that helped isolate the culprit. Now I’m specifically deactivating Photon to see the impact.
Another foodie fad from the East Coast like the cronut, the ramen burger “traveled” to Hawaii much faster than the donut hybrid. So far, Tanaka’s is the first location I know of that serves this Asian American combination.
Thanks for the tip, Hammer! And we’re still missing you on Hawaii radio waves.
On a recent trip to Ala Moana, I made my rounds then headed to Aroma Caffe for a caffeine pick-me-up. With a location in the center court area, this cafe is typically empty which makes for short waits. Let’s be honest, the Starbucks end caps in Macy’s and Sears are just way too crowded and your drink takes forever. I never got into the Honolulu Coffee Company even with their convenient locations. So Aroma Caffe was perfect – good location, short waits, decent prices, and I personally liked my espresso drinks.
But on this day, the location was vacant with no trace of the colorful Italian themed kiosk. Maybe they relocated in the mall due to all the construction? I couldn’t find their relocation using Foursquare or Yelp so instead I headed to my backup coffee spot, the eBar at Nordstrom’s.
Looking online, Aroma’s site still lists Ala Moana, but Ala Moana’s web site does not show them as a vendor. On Facebook, there are pictures of a new storefront with no location given, but on Yelp, a recent review places Aroma at the Ilikai Hotel. Aw bummers, looks like I lost my coffee oasis in Ala Moana. 🙁 Thanks for the memories, Aroma Caffe.
So I hear that the Starbucks at the Windward City Shopping Center in Kaneohe is closed for renovations. I haven’t yet verified this however.
This is a busy location and so is the other Kaneohe Starbucks across of Windward Mall. The new Starbucks inside the mall needs to open soon to better distribute the coffee load.
I wonder if Starbucks would consider installing a Clover at this renovated location. This would be the first in Hawaii, but I doubt the Windward side would be the beneficiary. Then again, the first drive through SBUX was in the 96744.
Here’s a virtual tour of the Disney Wonder via my pictures. While the ship looks empty, it ain’t. The pictures were taken either really early or late in the day.
The oddest part of the staterooms on the Wonder are the “split” bathrooms. Instead of one room, the shower and a sink are together in a room while the toilet and a second sink are in another room. I guess this split arrangement does make it more efficient so one person doesn’t hold up the use of a single bathroom. Just something to get used to.
Although the Huffington Post Hawaii doesn’t officially go live until September 4, they’re ramping up their social media presence on Facebook and Twitter. Just for fun, I happened to be the first public @mention of @huffposthawaii.
Fellow Hawaii-focused bloggers, you offering up your services?
Seems like Pulpconnection has a pulse now, actually being more responsive and not timing out. Could it be things are fixed?
But the damage to Pulpconnection’s blogging ranks is probably already done. Only way to climb the ranks is to keep blogging. Just Do It!
Sorry for the off-and-on behavior of Pulpconnection for the past few days. There’s been a prolonged outage as my server on Dreamhost is getting fixed. First there was a planned behind-the-scenes migration for my Dreamhost server. But then, there was an unexpected hardware issue. Because of this, Pulpconnection has been coming and going as things are being fixed.
Hopefully the situation stabilizes soon.