Centenarian Gladys Goka celebrates at the Prince

Nadine Kam photos
Gladys Goka chose Hawaii Prince Hotel’s Prince Court restaurant to be the setting for her 100th birthday party. She’s with her daughter Gladys Aanerud.

Gladys Goka celebrated her 100th birthday in style at the Hawaii Prince Hotel’s Prince Court restaurant on April 11.

I met the centenarian in 2008 while working on a story on the fashionable Bon Ton Girls who worked in downtown Honolulu’s biggest department stores in the 1930s and ’40s, Bon Ton and Bon Marche.

They were the eras “It girls,” who caused a stir everywhere they went because of their youth and aura of glamour that followed them. They served as models for the store, role models in the community, and partied together.

Over the years, their lives took them in different directions, but funerals of friends brought the remaining Bon Ton Girls back together in the early 1990s, and they began to reunite once a year at various restaurants around town.

Gladys Goka shows the letter of recognition from the state House of Representatives, honoring her 100th birthday.

After meeting some of the Bon Ton Girls in 2008 for a feature story in the Star-Bulletin, I guess I became an honorary member and they invited me to join them at lunches hosted by Dr. Thomas Sakoda, the son of their former boss, Horace Sakoda, who served as general manager at Bon Ton.

With the few remaining Bon Ton Girls in care homes or suffering from dementia, the reunions stopped in 2013, but Gladys is still feisty and going strong.

“I feel young,” she said. “I feel like I’m 80.”

She shared some of her advice for living a long and healthy life, which includes working hard and eating healthfully. True to her advice, while the rest of us feasted on Prince Court’s Hawaii-style buffet with laulau, chicken long rice, oxtail soup, and much, much more, Gladys enjoyed a plate of fresh fruit before her birthday cake arrived. She plans to come back to the Prince for her 101st birthday.

About 75 family and friends turned out to celebrate her milestone birthday, and on display were congratulatory messages from Gov. David Ige, the state House of Representatives, and President Barack Obama.

Happy birthday Gladys!


Non-flash video

—————
The Hawaii Prince is at 100 Holomoana St. The Prince Court Buffet is open for breakfast 6 to 10:30 a.m. Mondays to Saturdays and 6 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. Sundays ; Sunday brunch from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.; lunch 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Mondays to Saturdays, and seafood dinner buffet 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. daily. Call 944-4494. View menu details here.

Gladys with her daughter Gladys, son George and granddaughter, left, Shari Spring.

Customizable oxtail soup on the Prince Court buffet. I love cilantro! Passed on the ginger.

Kalua pork.

Loads of shrimp and vegetable tempura.

Steamed fish, Chinese style, with lup cheong and more cilantro.

Slurping good chicken long rice.

They have some remarkably light and wonderful desserts here including these fruit tarts, and below, Japanese-style cheesecake.

———
Nadine Kam is Style Editor and staff restaurant critic at the Honolulu Star-Advertiser; her coverage is in print on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Contact her via email at nkam@staradvertiser.com and follow her on Twitter, Instagram and Rebel Mouse.

Around the world at Kahala

Nadine Kam photos
A view from inside the Plumeria Beach House toward the ocean, al fresco tables and musicians.

The Kahala Hotel & Resorts hosted the second of its "Kahala Restaurants Present: Island Heritage Cuisine" in the Plumeria Beach House on March 12, with an international array of appetizers, salads, entrees and desserts in a buffet reflecting the way various cuisines came together to become island favorites.

The selections are forever linked to Hawaii's history of plantation labor, and the Chinese, Filipino, Hawaiian, Japanese, Korean and Portuguese dishes represent the ethnic backgrounds of executive chef Wayne Hirabayashi and his team of chefs. Although the circumstances of our ancestors were trying, what's left is a remarkable food legacy ingrained in our culture.

The amount and array of food offered was so vast that one has to make a tour of the room and come up with a strategy for making the most of the buffet without overdoing it. For me, it meant starting with dishes that I don't see every day, like salt cod-stuffed Portuguese bread and caldo verde, a delicious soup of chorizo, kale and diced potatoes.

Prawns sinigang with New Caledonia prawns, tamarind, squash and eggplant.

I was also tempted by the Philippines section with its old-style prawns sinigang and braised oxtail kare kare. I think a lot of people are still wary about Filipino cuisine so those dishes were barely touched, but they were among the best dishes available that night. Also amazing to me were the amazingly compact Korea bi bim bap, molded musubi style, so the meat and veggie fillings were inside the crisped rice!

Oxtail kare kare, and below, shrimp paste that accompanied the Filipino dishes.

It added up to an educational experience for some of the visitors there, like a tourist in the Japan section, who, studying the hasu, kabocha and assorted tsukemono, asked of one item, what's that?

"Taro," I said. "What's that?" she asked again.

That's something that doesn't require an explanation for locals.

A noodle bar allowed diners to pick their own ingredients for a stir-fry.

The next event, taking place 6:30 to 10 p.m. April 9 will be themed "Buns and Dumplings," with another selection of dishes from around the world, with staples of salads, raw bar, cheese tray and desserts. The cost is $75 plus tax and 20 percent gratuity per adult, and $37.50 plus tax and 20 percent gratuity per child age 4 to 12.

Hasu, or lotus root, in the Japan section of the buffet.

>>>>><<<<<

Here's what will be on the menu on April 9:  

Cold selections: Chinese chicken salad, salmon tofu salad, Waimanalo greens, chopped romaine, tomato mozzarella, domestic and imported cheese platter.

Raw bar: Assorted nigiri sushi; California, spicy ahi, unagi and maki rolls; inari sushi; ahi sashimi; ahi, tako and mussel poke; oysters, crab claws and shrimp on ice.

Buns and dumplings: Vegetable Samosas, fried masa bun with pulled beef cheeks, kalua pig paroshki, duck and mochi rice dumpling with Asian gremolata, imperial scallop soup buns, har gau and vegetarian pot stickers.

Hot pans: Black truffle gnocchi, chicken and dumplings, monk fish dumplings in consommé, and grilled catch with mochi rice lup cheong dumplings.

Carving station: Prime rib of beef au jus with horseradish buns, roast duck and roast pork with buns, and lemon-bacon roast chicken with rosemary buns.

Desserts: Seasonal whole and sliced fruits, ube and coconut ice cream sandwiches, pineapple turnovers, apricot “ravioli” cookies, blueberry panna cotta, chocolate dobash Cake, haupia cake, strawberry Napoleons, Kona coffee profiteroles, stuffed marshmallows, brownies and blondies, and bun pudding with crème Anglaise.

Desserts available March 12 included the resort's specialty Kahalasadas with lilikoi sugar, and above, Portuguese custard cream, chocolate and matcha green tea torte.

Chocolate fans were delighted by jasmine tea-infused pots de creme.

Fixings for halo halo included tapioca pearls, ube, toasted coconut, red beans and cantaloupe.

Fresh fruit was pretty enough to lure those that might normally choose more sinful desserts.

New spot needs more Hello Kitty spirit

Cooking up lobster tails evenings at Makittii Hawaii.

I like the option of dining at a Hello Kitty/Sanrio restaurant, but the first couple of forays leave me feeling like Goldilocks in the Three Bears story. 

The first Hello Kitty Cafe in Pearlridge Center, essentially a dessert counter, was too small.

The second, the recently opened Makittii Hawaii Japanese Seafood Buffet, is more Papa Bear than girly size. Maybe the next will be just right in appealing to women and girls, the core Sanrio fans.

Very young girls might be taken by the Hello Kitty murals in back that make a nice backdrop for birthday parties, as well as the small gift shop in front of the restaurant.

It was smart of Makittii owner Toru Makino, of Makino Chaya fame, to try to differentiate this buffet from his other establishments, but then Makittii doesn't go far enough with the theme. Save for some delightful, colorful desserts at the end of the meal, there's little in the buffet or about the setting in general that makes me think I've entered a joyful fantasy world. The plantation-style ambience is much the same as it was when it housed another buffet operation, Perry's Smorgy.

Anyone planning another Sanrio restaurant in the future should look to Disney and Q-pot for inspiration in everything from candy- or ice cream-shop decor and cute uniforms to match, to hiring staffers full of bubbly charm.

Considering what I imagine to be a childlike effervescence and aura of Ms. Kitty and crew, I found the experience rather gloomy due to servers just doing a job, without having sipped Kitty's shiny, happy Kool-Aid. In fact, when in the absence of adequate help I tried to get a glass of water myself, I was chided for doing so.

When I first hit the evening buffet, I felt there was no way I could eat $30 worth of food. There are so many options you'd be full after sampling just a bite of perhaps one-tenth of dishes offered. It doesn't help that I don't have the buffet mentality of going for the most expensive food. I just go for what I like, so when I scooped a hard-boiled egg out of the oden, my guest didn't think that was very smart, warning, "It'll just fill you up." Sorry, I just like boiled eggs.

Mussels are a little dry, but still one of the best items on the buffet.

This was before I discovered a chef grilling steak and lobster tails to order. That's where you might want to try a tag-team approach and have one person stand in line and place your order before backtracking to salads and appetizers. Otherwise, you might have a long wait as diners catch on to what's going on. The steak and lobster tails are only available during the evening buffet, not the $14.98 breakfast or lunch buffet.

Even so, the lobster I got was flavorless, so when adding up the cost of about $60 for two (with 20 percent kamaaina discount for those with a local ID), one has to consider they can get a pretty good lobster meal elsewhere.

The beauty of buffet is really in the bounty for those with insatiable appetites, or those who simply like to pick and choose from many options. But maybe you've also noticed that in this town where buffets have long reigned, they've been on the wane during the past couple of years. Chalk it up to the economy and waste associated with buffets, as well as a growing appetite for quality over quantity.

I ran into someone else I know there, and surveying the scene after the meal, we counted a handful of things that we really liked, out of dozens of items.

One diner told me the lotus root was good, but with so many options, I didn't try it.

Conceivably, if you do find that many things, you can fill up on those and be quite happy. But first, you have to taste a lot, the dining equivalent of kissing frogs.

Dishes I liked included all the fixings for a fresh spinach salad, salt-pepper shrimp when hot from the deep -fryer, cocktail shrimp, garlic sauteed basa and cubes of kabocha.

My friend liked those things as well, and would add a Japanese lotus salad I didn't have room to try, plus smoked salmon, though I found it was drier than it needed to be.

None of us tried the snow crab legs, which generally involve too much work for too little payoff. Maybe someone else will try it and report back.

Another plus is the sushi bar, run by Gaan Sushi over at the Waikiki Sand Villa Hotel. I wondered where the sushi was in this buffet, and you'll have to look for the abundance of sushi rolls toward the back of the restaurant. A sushi maker is stationed near the desserts, ready to prepare Gaan-style nigiri to order. This should be another of your first stops, for Edo-style sushi made with red vinegar and salt. It may take a while for some to adjust to the stronger, rustic flavor.

Last stop was the dessert station, where 35 types of cakes and desserts are available, though patrons are limited to picking up only two at a time. Oh well, walking to and from your table for the likes of chestnut and pistachio tarts, tiramisu and strawberry parfaits is good exercise. For those who want healthier options, there is mochi and flan made of soymilk.

Nadine Kam's restaurant reviews are conducted anonymously and paid for by the Star-Advertiser. E-mail nkam@staradvertiser.com.