October 26th 2016
For dinner, we went to The Eating House – 1849 in the new International Marketplace in Waikiki. It is a Roy Yamaguchi restaurant. I met Roy and his wife on a trip to Japan earlier this summer. I had to make this one of our first stops and it wasn’t disappointing. The food was outstanding and the service was excellent. The hardest part of the evening was deciding what it was that I wanted off the menu. It all looked good!
Afterwards, we went to a Chef reception in the International Market Place. I let Denise know that we were having dinner at Roy’s restaurant and she was nice enough to invite us to the Chef’s reception. It was fun to go over and see her and her husband and have a few drinks. We ran into a few people we had seen at previous food and wine events and we saw a a few well known chefs. It is always interesting to see a celebrities in person, I find myself trying to figure out if they are like their TV persona or not. It was a fun way to wrap up the evening and to start off the Hawaiian Food and Wine Festival.
On the way back to the hotel, I tried to explain to Sophon how the International Market Place was nothing like the old one. I had a hard time explaining what the International Market Place (IMP) was like. It was a huge open air market with small small huts selling tacky souvenir items. You could find anything from Coconut bras, hula dolls, grass skirts, ukulele, fake leis, Aloha shirts, muumuus, t-shirts, tiki glasses, coffee mugs to carvings of Hawaiian gods. You could also get your fortune told or your palm read if you wanted to. Everyone went there to get their souvenirs!
Part of me was a bit sad when I saw that it had closed and was going to be turned into a shopping center. Waikiki has changed since my first visit in 1986. Stores and motels were torn down to build high end shopping malls. The International Market Place was around long before me and even in 1986 it reeked of a by-gone era before Waikiki exploded into huge resorts. Waikiki had changed significantly since my first visit and part of me hated to see the old IMP go, but I also knew that it needed to go. At least they kept Banyan Vine tree.
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