Catch a wave

There comes a time in a young chef’s life when he yearns to leave a comfortable nest to realize his capabilities. In the past a chef, backed by family and/or deep-pocketed investors, simply opened a restaurant. That was the expected path.

The new economy has resulted in more novelty and invention, with chefs announcing their work through temporary pop-ups, trucks and shared spaces. In another unexpected move, Alan Wong alumnus Wade Ueoka has traded white tablecloths for a stint at Tsunami, a pau hana and late-night lounge, where he’s revamped the menu in his signature bold style. Last year Ueoka was named one of Hawaii’s 14 Rising Star chefs under 40 by StarChefs.com. Read more at bit.ly/TQ2Be8.

If you’re entertaining out-of-towners, consider this the CliffsNotes of Hawaii dining. Where many chefs try to flatten out flavors to make them more palatable to the masses, Ueoka doesn’t shy away from bringing all the intensity of authentic local flavors to the plate, though not in formats your grandparents would recognize.

The menu is dinner-worthy if you don’t mind the aesthetics of dartboards, sports on flat-screen televisions, a mix of high tables and lounge sofas with coffee tables, and the idea of staffers holding on to your credit card while you run a tab, even before huge crowds materialize. Seriously? Do I look like a person who would run out on the tab? I guess in this economy, people do, so it’s better for them to play it safe.

And the tab can grow to be hefty, even if you’re not a big drinker. Food prices reflect the upscale ingredients Ueoka brings to the table. While you can get french fries with kalbi sauce for $5, won ton chips with avocado salsa for $7, soybeans with garlic chili oil for $6 and various veggie dishes for $5 to $8, the serious food will cost you $12 to $20 per dish.

In traditional restaurant style, the menu is a two-parter, broken down to a roster of starters and entrees. Also, check the neon boards around the room, where there are lines of daily specials as long as the regular entree list, giving chef and patrons a change of pace. I found myself gravitating toward the daily specials, which appeared to be lighter than the meat-centric regular menu, with its offering of lemongrass Jidori chicken ($15), twice-cooked pork katsu ($16), kalbi short ribs ($18) and grilled rib eye ($20), whether plain or marinated in chili sauce.

As it turned out, the only things I tried off the regular menu were the "Beer and Nuts" braised pork belly bao (three for $12) and roast duck sandwich ($16). On the former dish, the beer-braised pork was dressed with red pepper and an oxtail soup-style "pesto" of ginger, green onions and ground peanuts. The bao had the perfect fluffy texture and sweetness of any Chinatown offering.

The roast duck sandwich, with a touch of anise and served on crisp buttery toast, was one of my favorite dishes, though less creative than some of the other ones. A mash of garbanzo beans lifted the four pieces of half-sandwiches above a pool of gravy, though not enough to prevent my hands from getting wet.

The bean mash has been gaining popularity as an alternative to the same old potato, and here I enjoyed the mung bean mash accompanying a special of adobo pork chops ($14) more than the main attraction. I like my adobo with more pepper and less fat, but I enjoyed the crunchy texture of the mash.

Two other favorite dishes of mine were off the daily specials menu. One was an unagi-and-grilled-eggplant salad ($18), in which two pieces of the eel sat on a mound of diced eggplant, all drenched in a sweet gochujang sauce and sprinkled with sesame seeds. The other was shrimp and uni pasta ($20), featuring three large shrimp on angel hair pasta stirred with uni. I’m not a big fan of uni, finding its pungency overwhelming at times, but here the essence was unmistakable, with a palatable sweetness and an assist from toppings of green onions, crispy fried onions and slivers of nori. Way to go — I just picked up another craving.

The new menu is exciting, but given the cost of the dishes there’s a limit as to how far Ueoka can push it in this venue. On the one hand, it’s great to see food elevated to this level, but on another, I also miss old-school bars like Shinsho Tei, where you could once get a $8 plateful of fried ahi, with nothing more than a dash of salt and pepper, and share it with three of your besties.

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Nadine Kam‘s restaurant reviews are conducted anonymously and paid for by the Star-Advertiser. Reach her at nkam@staradvertiser.com.