The Weekly Eater
The Weekly Eater
CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARBULLETIN.COM
Bert and Annie Lum enjoy the tea, served by waiter Thomas Lee, and artwork of John Young at Maple Garden.
Shanghai food critic
compares Maple Garden
to homeFROM HERE to China, the restaurant reviewer's lament is one that can only be understood by another.
Over dinner at Maple Garden, Maggie Lu, dining critic for the English-language weekly Shanghai Star, shared the details of her job, including the fact that people she meets often tell her she has the best job in the world. "Everyone else is enjoying the food, but I can't enjoy because I am working," she said.
My job is easier than hers though, in that I typically write only one review a week to her two or three.
"Sometimes I have to go to two or three restaurants in one day," she said, though I envy her youth and fat-free figure.
Even though she's not working here, save for her University of Hawaii studies, I can hear the stress in her voice, just thinking about such easy access to an excess of food, so I didn't mention the extra 15 pounds that eventually comes with the job.
I thought it would be fun to compare notes, though, so I invited her to come along, with Frank Zhishen Lin of the Beijing-based Xinhua News Agency. The two are among nine journalists from China studying at the UH through the Parvin/Freedom Forum Journalism Fellowship. Maple Garden has become a headquarters for the journalists, who meet there monthly for a series of China seminars.
Every food aficionado knows that cuisine changes with distance from the source, and Lu said the fare served at Maple Garden and other Chinese restaurants in town is more sugary than food served anywhere in China.
Not that that's a bad thing. Lin said, "Even in Beijing, food from other areas tastes different from the place it came from."
Cuisine evolves with the preferences of a community, and after 28 years in business, Maple Garden owner Robert Hsu and his chefs must understand what diners want. The restaurant certainly has the titles to prove it, voted a "Hawaii Top Restaurant" by the Zagat Survey, a "Best Neighborhood Chinese Restaurant" by readers of Honolulu magazine, and accolades from Travel Holiday and the L.A. Times as well.
Artist John Young was a great fan of the restaurant and friend of Hsu's so the interior turns out to be a gallery of Young's museum-quality work. There is also a gallery of photos of movie stars and Chinese dignitaries who have dined here.
WE STARTED with a tofu and crab soup ($7.25), which Lu thoughtfully sipped before commenting on the crab, little balls shaped from shredded white meat, more likely to have come out of a can than fresh out of the ocean. It was plain but gratifyingly warming for anyone feeling chilly or run down.
Maple Garden has some unusual names for dishes such as "Lion's Head" (a giant pork meatball surrounded by a mane of cabbage, $7.95) and "Beautiful Lady Rolling Bottom" -- a name coined by a New York Times reporter who covered President Richard Nixon's momentous trip to China. The reporter couldn't understand a chef's explanation of the braised pork thigh ($22.50), and coined the name after watching the chef's motions as he spoke.
It works the other way too. A simply named long rice with mincemeat dish ($6.75) is accompanied on the menu by Chinese characters that translate to "Ants on a Tree," the tree being the sinewy strands of noodles and the many lumps of ground pork dotting the plate like a colony of ants. Of all the dishes we tried, Lu said the noodles -- browned with a mixture of soy sauce, garlic, sugar and sherry -- came closest to matching a dish served back home in Shanghai.
An elegant tea-smoked Szechuan duck ($8.75) is a specialty, but for those forced to avoid such rich fare, there is also a drier, though equally flavorful smokey chicken ($8.75).
MORE INTERESTING to the Chinese journalists than Chinese food in Hawaii is a dearth of American "cuisine" in China.
"What is American food anyway, McDonald's?" Lin asked. "In Beijing we have many different kinds of cuisine, Italian, French ... but American food is not so distinct."
In Shanghai, American restaurants are extensions of chains such as McDonald's, KFC, T.G.I.Fridays and Tony Roma's. Lu is a fan of the latter. And, as much as she needed her six-month break from frequenting restaurants, the downside of being away from her job is that while here, she's had to cook her own meals, and that too, she admits, can get a little tiring.
909 Isenberg St. / 941-6641 MAPLE GARDEN
Hours: 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5:30 to 10 p.m. daily
Food Service Ambience Value Cost: About $30 to $40 for four
See some past restaurant reviews in the
Columnists section.
Nadine Kam's restaurant 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.
