The Weekly Eater
SITTING IN MY LAIR at Restaurant Row, I feel like a spider in waiting. There's no reason to hunt down restaurants when every few months the food just comes to me. So goes the cycle of life, death, life in the restaurant biz, and we are all witness to its brutal nature. The law of survival of the fittest is evidently at work here. Whenever the newcomers have failed to impress Honolulu diners with their moves, they wound up alone, then gone. You’ll want to spin
’round and back again
to BoomerangsNow Boomerangs has dropped into the territory, and the staff is dancing as madly as it can to make a go of it. Really. Stop in at night and you'll find some staffers dancing and singing along with Staind and other bands while they work -- testosterone runs amuck! win the Harley out front! high fives all around! YAH! -- simply because there's not enough to do. This isn't the cheeriest of times to be opening.
I really hope they make it, because beyond simply trying, the food is excellent, and no one should be prejudiced by the log cabin-meets-cave restaurant-chain decor. It's an ambitious first effort by chef/owner Tim Dare.
Boomerangs
Food 
Service Ambience Value Where: Restaurant Row (across Sunset Grill) / 537-5525
Hours: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Mondays to Fridays, and 3 p.m. to midnight Saturday
Cost: About $7 to $12 per person
The room is geared toward a casual lunch crowd. It's roomy, with modular, stackable table and chairs. Look close and you'll notice the hand-painted, glittered floor with its inset boomerangs, and the stone counter lit from behind with the glow of purple and green lights like one giant lava lamp. In front, an art deco black light also aims for that nightclub effect.
This is not enough by night to steer a young and thirsty crowd away from the Row Bar and Ocean Club. And although the name plays on the notion of having customers "boomerang" back, the word unfortunately begins with "boomer," bringing to mind a certain generation whose own members often wish to distance themselves from the label.
The decor is also too plain to suit a dinner or date crowd that generally requires ambience worth leaving the house for. And no one likes to be perceived as a cheap date, even though the food is superior to places where costs are doubled.
The best bet is to lure the movie crowd for an early dinner. Boomerangs is fast and relatively inexpensive, so I wasn't expecting much. I thought it would serve typical overcooked, underwhelming bar or cafeteria food, and I was so wrong. It's quite clear Dare has taken time to develop his recipes, as with specials of chicken marsala or pot roast pork ($5.95) layered with wine-imbued mushroom gravy. As I oohed and aahed over baby back ribs ($7.95), a friend of mine marveled, "I've never seen you so happy eating. You're always so jaded."
The ribs are marinated in a savory sauce of maple syrup and onions boosted with a hint of cilantro. As an example of how tender this stuff is, Dare's sons were eating these ribs at 8 months old, before they had teeth.It looked bleak when I opened a Styrofoam box to unveil, on the crab cake plate ($9.95), a lone 5-inch patty with rice. This was not exactly eye candy, but the patty was golden, made with fluffy, pasteurized Maryland blue crab meat with the lightest of coatings. Less discerning types have been distressed by the seemingly small portion, unable to appreciate its authenticity, purity or the notion of quality over quantity. Perhaps they'll continue to content themselves with the solid hockey puck "crab cakes" they can buy in bulk elsewhere.
Even the teriyaki sandwich ($6.50) is sublime, thin-sliced prime rib which Dare chose over the cheaper, tougher cuts of meat that permeate the fast-food world. It's served on a toasted, buttered sesame-topped bun.
Ahi salad ($7.95) features a block o' fish dredged in spices and sitting on a bed of tender greens. And the goat cheese salad ($5.95) didn't stop with mere dabs of the creamy cheese. Instead, a 3- to 4-ounce round of sesame seed-and-blackened walnut-crusted goat cheese sat atop the greens. With goat cheese selling for the price of the salad in the supermarket, another friend said that if he owned another restaurant in the complex, he'd simply buy 10 salads here and serve the goat cheese in his own restaurant.
I hoped this wonderful newcomer wouldn't wise up to the fact that he's spoiling us, but he's already clued in.
"I don't care about the money," Dare said. "I only care about my reputation. I don't want to be embarrassed."
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Nadine Kam's restaurant reviews run on Thursdays. Reviews are conducted anonymously and paid for by the Star-Bulletin. Star ratings are based on comparisons of similar restaurants:
To recommend a restaurant, write: The Weekly Eater, P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, Hawaii 96802. Or send e-mail to nkam@starbulletin.com
excellent; very good, exceeds expectations; average; below average.
