[DELICIOUS READS]

PHOTO COURTESY DONOVAN DELA CRUZ Donovan Dela Cruz, left, and Jodi Endo Chai documented their passion for hole-in-the-wall restaurants in "The Puka Guide." Readings take place 1 to 3 p.m. Sunday at Waldenbooks Windward Mall and 2 to 3 p.m. Jan. 12 at Borders Ward Centre. Here, Dela Cruz contemplates a menu while Cheryl Ferito, center, and Holly Quilit wait to take his order.

New isle books feed
bodies and minds

"The Puka Guide: Oahu's Hole-in-the-Wall Restaurants"
By Donovan Dela Cruz and Jodi Endo Chai
(Watermark), paperback, 112 pages, $8.95

Far from the glorified realm of Hawaii Regional Cuisine, there's a whole lotta cooking going on. Find it in tiny, hole-in-the-wall restaurants, without which there would be a serious hole in our collective culinary experience, or at least in our lunchtime choices. And that, to further belabor the homonym, is the whole story.

Except that we haven't yet used the word puka. But Donovan Dela Cruz and Jodi Endo Chai do, in "The Puka Guide: Oahu's Hole-in-the-Wall Restaurants," a concise, easy-reading speed-walk through the island's best-loved small eateries. These are the places everyone knows about but no one has ever bothered to catalog.

Dela Cruz and Chai are passionate about these low-key, noncommercial, word-of-mouth haunts. Their first book, released last year, was on okazuya, the Japanese point-and-pick delicatessens. Their next, Part 3 in a trilogy (think "Lord of the Rings," da kine style), will be about omiyage, gifts from tiny places we all know about but no one ever bothered to catalog.

"The Puka Guide" represents a tremendous amount of research, the two authors having apparently eaten their way around the island several times. It captures a bit of history about each place, as well as critical points (address, hours, parking, best things to order, places to sit ...)

Hints are included, such as when the family owners go on vacation. And did you know that Yama's Fish Market packs "Hawaiian Care Packages" in coolers for mainland transport?

Serious restaurant criticism this is not, and does not attempt to be. What the authors advocate is a respect for the role these places play in our sense of localness and for the small comforts they provide through their warm, "home"-cooked meals.

-- Betty Shimabukuro

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"Oxtail Soup for the Island Soul"
By Peter S. Adler (Ox Bow Press), paperback, 178 pages, $12.95

This collection of writings originally published in ISLANDS magazine by a visiting writer from the mainland who wrote a correspondence column from here for three years is not a self-help book. Rather, it's the musings of Adler on life in the islands, gathering little everyday stories from his travels in and around Hawaii.

For instance, in "The Neighbors Drop In," Adler describes a peaceful Saturday evening, when "Suddenly, the tranquility explodes. ... A car has come down the hill above us and punched through our kitchen."

Adler obviously fell in love with our cosmopolitan culture and rhythm of life, and brings a welcome perspective for any reader who has made a connection to the state, whether as a resident or visitor.

-- Gary C.W. Chun

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