Having decided that there had been an excessive number of 7:00 AM wakeups and an entirely insufficient number of frozen tropical drinks consumed on the beach, we decided to remedy the situation by sleeping in until the scandalous hour of 9:30 AM, then ordering fruity drinks and enjoying them in our cabana, and live-blogging it from the beach (courtesy of Verizon tethering and the fact that 4G is everywhere these days). The cabanas have cupholders, which is really brilliant. The original plan was actually to drink mai tai’s on the beach — Hawaii seems to have taken on the mai tai as its signature drink, even though we all know that the mai tai was invented at Trader Vic’s in Emeryville. However, it turns out that mai tais contain almonds, so our plan evolved to drinking “frozen fruity drinks” on the beach instead.
Speaking of Emeryville, we have encountered an awful lot of Bay Area folks on this trip, including a charming British couple where the husband works at Pixar. They chose Hawaii for their vacation because the wife was turning 50 and Hawaii was the timezone on earth where she could remain 49 for as long as possible. I did mention that I had read Creativity Inc., which the Pixar developer described as idealized. I also learned that the Cars series is the 2nd most profitable film franchise ever (after Star Wars, I guess?) and has sold more merchandise than any other film series, even though nobody really likes the movies.
Even among our tour guides, it seems like everyone has a brother or sister in someplace like Walnut Creek. I guess that if you are from Hawaii and want a job working in an industry other than tourism or the military, you have to move to the mainland, and the Bay Area is the closest place.
Anyway, back to the main plot. Having spent the entire day sitting in our cabana, periodically applying sunscreen and reordering drinks from the nice lady who came around asking if we needed anything, we decided that - contrary to popular opinion - we too can enjoy a beach vacation. Alex even took a long nap and concluded that the conditions were “perfect” for sleeping.
We capped off the day with a trip to Merriman’s, which was by far the best food we’ve had while on the island. This is probably because - unlike most places - local food doesn’t mean “good” in Hawaii. It just means, “what we have available to serve you”. When you’re on a small island 2,000 miles from the mainland, eating local is a matter of necessity, not a fad. We figure this might also explain the otherwise bizarre presence of cattle ranches — if you want to eat fresh beef, especially if you’re living in the 19th century, you need to raise it here.
Overall, our experience has been that Hawai’i is not-great for vegetarians. This should, I guess, come as no surprise - it’s an island with limited room for growing crops or importing food. Plus it’s a cuisine built around seafood, which, according to a recent survey, 50% of Alexes can’t eat. Nonetheless, multiple vegetarian options have consisted of “pasta plus some other random stuff we threw into the sauce, sometimes cooked - but rarely well” or dishes that include “cheese we didn’t bother to melt all the way through for you”. Also, you can’t really trust the Yelp reviews as they’re typically not written by vegetarians, and many are from locals whose palates are adapted to the available cuisine. You're also limited in terms of restaurant choices by the small population -- the Big Island really is quite rural and sparsely populated, with fewer than 200,000 inhabitants. To use a reference point I'm familiar with, the Big Island has about 70% of the area of Connecticut, but only about 5% of the population. A town like Hamden is a thriving and sophisticated metropolis compared to Hilo [pop. 43,000] or Kona [pop. 12,000].
However, there have been a few highlights from the trip - such as the shave ice mentioned earlier, which also came with a fairly decent black bean burger. We also managed the rare-in-Hawaii trick of finding a place where Alex’s vegetarian food was better than the non-vegetarian food - largely on the strength of a pretty tasty pasta sauce compared to fried (yes, fried and breaded) lobster curry.
Merriman’s definitely beat out all of them - the food was competitive with anything you’d eat on the mainland, they have a very tasty taro enchilada and an excellent dessert that was basically a deconstructed ice cream sundae (though not described as such on the menu, when you look at the ingredients - chocolate fudge, ice cream, caramel sauce and a light filo dough containing the chocolate sauce - that’s what it was). They also had a cocktail -the Mobeeto - that tasted an awful lot like a garden (mostly in a good way).
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