The Weekly Eater Nadine Kam

FL MORRIS / FMORRIS@STARBULLETIN.COM Waikiki residents Joyce and Gene Giardina enjoy an early dinner at Longhi's.

Will Longhi’s
win over Oahu’s
discriminating diners?

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Longhi's built its reputation serving the millions of visitors passing through Lahaina and Wailea. Talk about an easy crowd. I mean, they had found their way to paradise. What more could they want?

Now Longhi's has planted itself on Oahu, smack dab on top of Morton's Steak House at Ala Moana Center, in a bold and ambitious move. But the crowd here is tougher. For one thing, we're not in holiday mode so we can be fairly finicky and prickly at times. We work two or three jobs to remain solvent so we expect great luxury or great value. And there's a lot more competition for our dollars, not just from other restaurants but theaters, concert halls and the malls.

The new Longhi's seems to be aiming for a comfortable sort of luxury. The dining room is breathtaking, with the ambiance of a neo-classical Italian palazzo, with its arches and dramatic black-and-white diamond floor. It's quite a dramatic walk to your table as the expanse of floor stretches before you. As beautiful as it is, it's nonthreatening. You don't feel you're strolling a catwalk because you're distracted by the view. The room is designed as one long rectangle to maximize the view of Ala Moana Beach Park, ocean to sky, but you still can't miss the mall parking lot so baddies should think twice about ripping off cars or beating up on people below. There will be witnesses.

The menu seems to reflect Longhi's history. It was opened by Bob Longhi in 1976, a time when restaurants served tourist fare -- no great expectations attached -- or kama'aina fare. Save for colossal hamburgers, the two types of menus had little in common.

Then the Pacific Rim revolution came along in the late '80s and what do you know -- now everyone's eating portobellos, goat cheese, arugula and fruit and vegetable coulis. At Longhi's they learned to speak the language while taming the wild ingredients for the masses. The result is an overall meekness that won't appeal much to foodies but proved exotic, sexy and mysterious enough to folks passing through Maui to have made this Oahu leap possible.

BY ALL MEANS start with lunch. The prices of appetizers and salads are the same day and night, but you'll save $10 to $15 on the cost of entrees during the day, and that's no small spread. Another good thing, they continue to serve lunch between 3 and 5 p.m. when other restaurants are closed.

You probably can't go far wrong with Manila clams ($14) steamed in white wine, garlic and herbs, ahi carpaccio ($15) or grilled portobello ($9), but I wanted to try something a bit more complex. I ended up with the frutta di mare ($16) a small mound of poached scallops, shrimp and calamari sitting on a heap of lettuce. The seafood had been marinated in olive oil, garlic, lemon and herbs, tossed with a bit of onion, but the flavors were as weak as bottled salad dressing. Even the accompanying kalamata olives were stripped of their usual bitter-tart sting to offend as few as possible.

Potato-crusted crab cakes ($15) comprised more breading and potatoes than Maryland lump crab meat, though members of a nation raised on freedom (formerly french) fries will likely find the julienne-cut crispy potatoes divine. Use them to soak up the accompanying red bell pepper coulis and creamy mustard sauce.

There's a considerable pasta menu, but now that everyone's on some variation of the Atkins diet, we can forget about that.

Go for the steak instead. Again, there's little that can go wrong with a grilled 14-ounce New York steak ($29.50, evening prices) or 14-ounce prime New York strip ($31) served with basil butter.

I was impressed by veal scaloppini ($30) served with a Marsala sauce accented by basil and mushrooms. Perhaps more so after trying the treacly one-dimensional prawns Amaretto ($28). The prawns themselves were excellent, so they should try not to tamper with them. The better choice would have been prawns Venice, simply sauteed in butter with lemon, parsley and slivers of garlic.

Desserts are as rich as you want them to be. In tribute to summer's bounty, we tried a sour cream and cream cheese confection topped with raspberries and blackberries, a winning combination of vice and vitamins.

LONGHI'S Ala Moana Center, above Morton's / 947-9899 Food Service 1/2 Ambience Value Hours: 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily Cost: Lunch about $16 per person; dinner for two, from 5 p.m., about $90 without drinks

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See some past restaurant reviews in the
Columnists section.

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Nadine Kam's restaurant reviews are conducted anonymously and paid for by the Star-Bulletin. Star ratings are based on comparisons of similar restaurants:

	excellent;
	very good, exceeds expectations;
	average;
	below average.

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