Hawai'ian Style Home Cooking
(Yeah! A Marvin Gaye classic played on the ukulele[1]. I love this guy's little back-up singer/helper, too.)
This was only my second time eating breakfast at ONO GRINDZ (see last 'blog-entry from July 4th, 2012); they have just been open for a little over four months now, anyway. It's nice to have another great breakfast place to go to on Clement Street, which makes it very "local" for me. It's funny how I seemed to have gone there during the week on holidays only so far; I told them they can expect me back on Columbus Day next.
ONO GRINDZ actually has a "Happy Hour Menu" for breakfast (well, it's really two hours) from 8:00-10:00am, Monday through Friday. There are several items that are offered at discounted prices and the portions would be a bit smaller than the same items that appear on their standard menu (as described by the owner-lady, at least). Their standard menu fare is pretty interesting as it is. I know I will have to get back to check out all of these: Apple Banana Pancakes, Kimchi Huevos Rancheros (so that would be a Korean/Mexican/Hawai'ian fusion sort of thing), and Hawai'ian French Toast. They also have something called Spam & Cheese Waffles for those of you that are a little adventurous and partake of the potted dead, decaying animal flesh. As it were (as it was?), I ordered the Kimchi[2] Fried Rice Omelette ~ kimchi, Chinese sausage, shitake[3] mushrooms, green onions, lomi[4] tomatoes, and plantation potatoes. I also completed the meal with a decent cuppa coffee (Bicycle Coffee Co. is the house brand) and a glass of orange juice.
I know what you're thinking (and just stop it right now!), "Kimchi Fried Rice Omelette"? When I asked, the owner-lady explained to me that they like to incorporate cuisines from most of the countries and cultures that make up Hawai'i. (Is "Spamelot" an actual country?) Now this omelette will not be for everyone (especially if you are allergic to eggs), but I really enjoyed it. It was quirky enough and tasty enough to really get my interest. Think of this as a "deconstructed" fried rice dish, where the eggs surround the rice and other ingredients instead of being scrambled into the mix. This is made with brown rice, not plain ol' white rice (which I actually like better, but brown rice is supposed to be healthier ~ who really goes out to eat a "healthy" breakfast, though?).
ONO GRINDZ just has as bottled hot sauce condimentary supplementation Tabasco® Brand Pepper Sauce (the standard red), but they do have their own home-made Hawai'ian Ketchup upon request, and upon which I used liberally on half of the plantation potatoes; this ketchup almost has a barbecue sauce flavour to it. I also used some of my own Cholula® Hot Sauce (Thanks, Brian!) on the omelette and a little Youk's Hot Sauce (Thanks again, Brian!) on the other half of the plantation potatoes.
With all of these interesting choices and their proximity to my apartment, I really am thinking of adding ONO GRINDZ to my Breakfastary Rotation in 2013. We shall see how the next few visits go before signing the Shane Victorino of restaurants during the off-season.
Glen Bacon Scale Rating: Kimchi Fried Rice Omelette ~ 7.0
[1] Stupid, useless cunning linguist/pseudo-musicality pointer of the day, numba one brah:
"Ukulele" roughly translates as "leaping/jumping flea" in Hawai'ian, perhaps due to the movement of the player's fingers on the strings. According to Queen Lili'uoakalani, the last Hawai'ian monarch, the name means "the gift that came here", from the Hawai'ian words "uku" (gift or reward) and "lele" (to come).
Additional information from Wikipedia:
"The ukulele originated in the 19th century as a Hawai'ian interpretation of the machete, a small guitar-like instrument related to the cavaquinho, braguinha, and the rajao, taken to Hawai'i by Portuguese immigrants. It gained great popularity elsewhere in the United States during the early 20th century, and from there spread internationally."
[2] Stupid, useless cunning linguist/pseudo-culinary pointer of the day, 두 번째:
Here's a little known Cliff Clavin factoid: "Kimchi" was named after two warring 12th Century Korean families, the Kims and the Chis, (much like the Hatfields and McCoys of their time). It seems they were disputing who had the rights to a local cabbage patch, and to settle the dispute they developed a way of pickling the vegetable with beef stock and this way they could stretch the harvest and both families could share it.
Now if you believed a word of that cockamamie story, I have a really nice International Orange bridge for sale at a very reasonable price.
Actually, "kimchi" is just Korean for "pickled/soaked vegetables". The most popular version of kimchi is made with pickled cabbage.
[3] This is an acceptable spelling, but the preferred spelling/transliteration is "shiitake". However, the "mushroom" part is superfluously redundant and completely unnecessary; shiitake means "tree mushroom" in Japanese already. I am not including this as another stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer as I have done so a few times already in the past.
[4] Stupid, useless cunning linguist/pseudo-culinary pointer of the day, numba t'ree brah:
"Lomi-lomi" means "to massage/crush" in Hawai'ian. The tomatoes here were just roughly chopped, as in a good pico de gallo, and served on top of the omelette.
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