Live abalone on the plate at Sushi Ii.
New at Sushi Ii, in the Samsung Plaza, is a generous and decadent amuse bouche of fresh abalone.
When I dropped in to see what's new on his chalkboard, sushi chef/owner Garrett Wong asked me if I liked raw abalone, I said, "Sure!" I was thinking a few pieces of sashimi and wasn't paying much attention to the prep going on behind the counter.
So I was surprised when he presented a bowl of about a half dozen of the living, writhing mollusks. I thought a little about the possible foot action of the abalone as it slipped down my throat, then gamely took a bite of one of the crunchy creatures ... then another, noting the still wriggling half that remained.
Talk about omnivore's dilemma. Like most of us in a constant state of food denial in some form or other, I have no problem eating meat, seafood and poultry—especially poultry because I hate the neighborhood chickens who dig up my garden—but I don't want to do the killing myself, particularly if it's by my own teeth.
I don't like to boil lobsters or crabs, because I grew up crabbing almost every weekend and can still remember the sound of their clawing at the pot of boiling water over my mother's stove. Yet, I enjoyed visits to Kickin' Kajun and Raging Crab.
I think if society ever reached a point when the only conscionable way to eat meat is to personally kill an animal, as writer Michael Pollan attempted in his seminal book, we'd have a lot more lacto-ovo vegetarians.
After devouring the single abalone, I apologized to Wong, saying I was too squeamish to finish the rest, but I guess that's true of many people, so he's always prepared to cook them up, when the baby abalone become soft and tender and you can't stop at one.
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Sushi Ii is toward the back of the Samsung Plaza, 655 Keeaumoku St., Suite 109. Call 942-5350.
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Not long afterward, I was invited to the Aug. 3 grand opening of AirBuggy, a jogger stroller and infant shop at Waikiki Beach Walk, where Kaiwa catered the event, offering up more grilled Kona baby abalone, and other specialties:
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