A Taste of Hawaii (in SF)
t says: g and I are psyched for our first trip to Hawaii (coming in January 2017!). I have to go to a conference (time to nerd out!), but g’s going for the sun! This will mark our first island trip since our honeymoon (St. Lucia 2007!); bathing suits in winter, here we come!
To prep for the trip, we just had to check out one of SF’s latest brunch sensations, Aina. I have to confess that I was a little hesitant, as one of my Hawaiian colleagues felt that it was “not as good as it is in Hawaii” … however, I imagine that Korean food in SF is not as good as it is in Korea, either, so I still had hope (especially after a recent tasty soondubu outing). Located in Dogpatch, I was ecstatic that it was only a short walk away. While there was a wait involved, the hostess was friendly and, more importantly, accurate with her projected wait times, allowing us to do a little bit of pre-gaming at Mr. and Mrs. Miscellaneous (yum!). So on to brunch:
I chose the kalbi loco moco. Knowing kalbi as a wonderful Korean marinated shortrib dish, I didn’t know exactly how it would come together with ingredients like mushroom, eggs, and tomato. The end result was a lot of great flavors on the plate, from the bright tomato-cilantro, the decently braised shortrib, and the egg-rice combo. But while each bit was good on its own, but I can’t say that there was harmony on the plate. Eggs and pico? Great. Rice and egg and shortrib? Great. But put it all together and it was a bit of a mishmash. Don’t get me wrong – nothing was left on the plate when I was done, but if I went back, I’d certainly keep on trying out the other items on the menu.
g did the Portugese sausage hash. Now that was really good. The sausage, with some kind of paprika or cumin spices in there, was a wonderful addition to soupy eggs and bright greens. I don’t know how “Hawaiian” this one was, but if it portends what breakfasts will be like when we visit, we’re all in! As you can guess, g won breakfast (she wins so much; she must be sick of winning).
Now here is the loser of breakfast. Hard to believe, right? These doughnuts, covered with a coconut sugar and filled with guava looked wonderful. Maybe your mouth is watering right now as the picture taunts you. You can see why I figured it’d be a no-brainer of a win … but it wasn’t. The dough was quite chewy – not really offering either a cakey or flakey texture that I’d expect a doughnut to have. Meanwhile, the guava was overwhelming – I had to squirt out half of it to bring it back into balance with the sugared dough. We couldn’t even finish the three! Sorry Aina – the doughnuts were a huge miss.
So brunch at Aina was pretty good, but I can’t say that it’s Plow-good. What I’m really looking forward to, however, is dinner; I’ve heard it’s amazing. As I look at the dinner menu, I have to say that I see a ton of potential. There’s seafood and kimchi everywhere! That gnocchi dish looks crazy! So we’ll have to pay them a revisit soon … even if the doughnuts were heart-breakingly sad.
after dinner sneeze 
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