Alan Wong's - Waikiki

I have a friend called Alan Wong, so when I found out that one of the top restaurants in Waikiki was called "Alan Wong's", I just had to go and try.

Alan Wong's

Having booked in advanced, I indicated that we were on our honeymoon. Thus, when we arrived at the restaurant, we were whisked away to a quiet table and they customised our menu for us saying "Congratulations Mr and Mrs...". I was amazed :)

We decided on this occasion to try their degustation. Although they are a Chinese restaurant, the degustation menu had a distinct Japanese flavour - as part of their profits were going to the recent Jap disaster.

To start, we had super warm, super fresh, fluffy white bread rolls with the most awesome buttery sauce! It was creamy, aioli-like with a hint of chili. Zomg, I ate like almost 3 bread rolls because of this buttery concoction.

bread and awesome butter mixture

A trio of appetisers soon met our table. There was the seafood Poke on soy milk panna cotta. The Poke is super popular in Hawaii - simply raw fish, usually of the Tuna variety. When mixed with the soy milk panna cotta, it was tasty and smooth, creamy yet cold and fresh tasting. It was a slightly weird combination, but it worked well. The abalone and tako salad with soy vinegar gelee was also fresh tasting - but I'm not a huge fan of abalone so this for me, was just average. What really blew me away was the cold chawan mushi with lobster gelee and uni. It looked so simple, yet, it was sooooo rich. The lobster gelee was strong with lobster flavour, a good biteful of fresh tasting lobster, and when combined with super smooth and tasty chawan mushi... simply gorgeous!

Trio of Appetisers

Abalone and Tako Salad with Soy Vinegar Gelee

Seafood Poke on Soy Milk Panna Cotta

Cold Chawan Mushi with Lobster Gelee, Uni

The next dish was less to my fancy. It was eel. I don't eat eel. BUT... it smelt soooo good. Sweet tasty potion of kabayaki sauce marinated the uni roulade. Sansho pepper was sprinked on top. I actually ate some of this which made my hubby super surprised. It didn't taste half bad.

Uni Roulade

The next dish was my favourite of the night. It was crab "tofu" agedashi. Pretty much, it was super silky tofu with hints of crab meat blended in then deep fried into a small ball... then there were chunks of lump and spanner crab meat and lobster medallions scattered throughout a super delicious seafoody flavoured broth. It was such an amazing blend of flavours. The flavours weren't overpowering, but it was so subtly sweet and everything just worked really really well.

Crab "tofu" Agedashi

The next dish was also very delectable. Kona lobster was poached in butter and accompanied with hamakua heritage eryngi mushroom, both swimming in green onion oil. You could tell that the lobster was poached perfectly and although I wasn't a huge huge fan of the green onion oil, the whole dish was still quite a winner.

butter poached kona lobster

I have to say that by now, I was full and my hubby was half asleep. We had gotten up early in the morning, hiked up a mountain, then went on a sunset cruise before dinner and we were both buggered. So buggered that I even forgot to take a photo of the next dish before gobbling it up. It was a fish dish - the Opakapaka en papillote. There was a small fillet of pacific short tail pink snapper with rice, miso, truffle butter and clams all wrapped up in an ovened foil bubble. To be quite honest, it looked and smelt amazing, but it didn't taste like anything too extraordinary.

Pork katsu was next. The pork tendeloin medallions were lightly crumbed. There were thin pork layers intermixed with red miso. Mustard sauce, pickled cabbage and roasted potato were scattered throughout to make for a visually appealing dish.

pork tenderloin "katsu"

Last but not least was dessert. My partner stuck to the original one which came as part of the degustation - the mochi hosomaki. There were soooo many different types of mochi! There was matcha mochi, okinawan sweet potatomochi, azuki icecream mochi, butter mochi, and kuromame mochi. Mochi overload for me (as I'm not a mochi person), but I was amazed nonetheless. I think that my partner was too tired by now to truelly taste it. LOL

mochi hosomaki

I changed my dessert to the waialua chocolate "crunch bars" and these were AMAZING. Super smooth chocolate with rice crisp throughout. Like a fresh gourmet version of "crunchy". Sooooo nice :) It came with deep-fried melting chocolate truffle balls. Even though I was super full, I still managed to gobble this one all up.

waialua chocolate "crunch bars"

To finish off the night, we got these big chocolate coated toffee macadamias. These were really really yummy too! An awesome finish I think... if only we weren't so tired!

chocolate coated toffee macadamias

Ratings:
Food - 8.5/10
Service - 8/10
Ambiance - 8/10
Value for money - 8/10
Overall - 32.5/40

Alan Wong's Restaurant
1857 South King Street
Honolulu, HI 96826
Tel: (808) 949-2526