We create moments for learning, for opportunities, for teaching, for exploring, for experimentation, for dialogue, and for sharing. If you are not in it at the moment, to hear about it and read about it is, I guess, second best, but it's still not the same. In order for the cooks to understand me better, they need to eat what I am eating, see what I am seeing, and do what I am doing, amongst many other things that happen. A lot of it is not planned. It happens at the spur of the moment, and it is very spontaneous. But it just needs a spark, or a thing that leads to discussion and then other ideas are spawned. I give small assignments to the cooks, or others make something as simple as staff meal, or just have a question, and these "sparks" lead to bigger sparks and sometimes we get a fire of an idea.
In this photo, there are several ideas that need to get finished, and these ideas led to discussion of the possibilities. A combination of all the soy we tasted last week was not thrown away but turned into a steeping of dried shiitakes, katsuobushi, dashi, and mirin. An appetizer coming onto the menu soon will include some sort of noodle - somen, soba, ramen, saimin, or pasta - dragged into a gelatinous form of the soy mixture and then some. We also had cold brewed coffee, and we are looking for a refreshing iced coffee drink for the summer either at Alan Wong's Honolulu or, especially for lunch, at the Pineapple Room. There was talk of Thai Iced Coffee, or a maceration with cinnamon, cardamom, and maybe saffron. Candied Clams on a skewer sparked a conversation of a previous idea for the Pineapple Room Bar called "toppers." A local person with a strong pidgin accent will pronounce it as sounding like , "tapas." This created a series of toppers on drinks that were spieled as "tapas." Staff meal of hot dog fried rice sparked a conversation on what was "weenie royale?" It was a dish actually born from the Japanese American internment camps.
We also talked about what our impact is on Dick Threlfall and his goat farm, Hawaii Island Goat Dairy, when the dish, "Four Cheeses from One Farm" finally makes the menu and how we tell that story. In the end, Dick is motivated to make more than just one type of cheese now for us and the state has someone going into making more cheeses for all and maybe inspire someone else, because the demand is growing and because we teach what is available and what it tastes like.
Last night, Okolehao Oysters flew out the door and had to be 86'd because there was a story told in addition to the dish being very tasty.
~AW