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I have no doubt charcuterie would have become the hottest food trend even without the pandemic. By 2018, butchery and charcuterie had already been deemed “the sixth most innovative category” in food, reported by “Hospitality News & Business Insights” by EDL Hospitality. But in 2020, the charcuterie trend went into hyperdrive as a lifeline for many.
The mouthwatering sight of a charcuterie board stocked with patés, sliced meats, nuts, cheeses and fruits, was a day brightener for those in isolation, a salvager of stay-at-home date nights and, when delivered to friends and distant family members, a reminder that someone out there cared about their health and well-being.
Several businesses popped up to serve the sudden demand for charcuterie boxes, and among the most successful has been Fig & Ginger, which expanded this month into a brunch café on the ground floor of McCully Shopping Center.
Husband-and-wife Edmund and Yim Kwok had already spent years in the restaurant industry and were working at Uncle’s NY Deli, Pizza, Pasta & Subs, and Vintage Cave Café, respectively, before being furloughed due to shutdowns, and needed to figure out a way to survive the upheaval in their lives.
Partnering with one of Yim’s longtime friends, Jackie Park, Fig & Ginger took off as an online business offering a variety of charcuterie, cheese and graze boxes. Park left the company a year ago, once businesses started returning to normal, and in her place the couple partnered with another family friend, chef Palm Amatawet.
A kindred spirit from Yim’s native Thailand, Amatawet had worked in restaurants throughout Southeast Asia and Australia and was working in Boston when Fig & Ginger launched. Yim saw the company’s potential to bring their vision of food and hospitality to life and the two kept in touch, finally making that vision a reality early this month.
Both Yim and Amatawet shared an affinity for Australia and wanted to bring that nation’s spirit of fresh food and casual ambiance to the table.
Spending time in Sydney while working as a Japan Air Lines flight attendant in the early 2000s, Yim said, “I felt their vibe is similar to Hawaii’s, laid-back, where people spend their leisure time at the beach or outdoors.
“They have a grazing lifestyle, eating food that’s so fresh, so healthy. Just simple, real food. Everything is homemade and unprocessed.”
The centerpiece of the new café is a communal table where people can converse with strangers.
“We expected people to make friends there, and they do,” Yim said.
With that friendly, community spirit, those in the know have already turned the café into a home away from home, bringing bottles of wine to accompany a menu that includes three graze boards: the cheese graze ($30), charcuterie graze ($35) and F&G graze ($40), which features the gamut of day’s charcuterie, three cheeses, fresh fruit, dried fruit, truffle-salt Marcona almonds, bread, crackers and housemade fig jam.
Corkage is free while the restaurant goes through the process of obtaining its liquor license.
Before even thinking about food, you can order up fresh-pressed fruit juices, smoothies and shaken iced teas in flavors of lilikoi, pomegranate and coconut. I loved the antioxidant quality of the Girly Berries smoothie, a blend thick with strawberries, blueberries and blackberries.
As for the food, little flourishes throughout the menu are appreciated, such as the verdant fresh pesto and handful of pine nuts — too expensive for most chefs to consider using — that grace a burrata salad ($18). And bananas are not simply sliced onto a cinnamon-poached fig waffle ($14.50) with Nutella and Chantilly cream, but are brûléed for a crackly sweet finish.
A key component of the menu are “toasties” popular in Australia. My favorite of these loaded toasts is the ocean ($16), featuring smoked salmon layered over a heap of fluffy scrambled eggs, and finished with sour cream, capers, pickled red onions and pearls of ikura.
The mashed avocado ($12.50) includes poached egg, tomatoes, zucchini and hollandaise sauce, while true to its name, the caprese ($16) comprises heirloom tomatoes, mozzarella, basil and balsamic vinegar with an added touch of prosciutto.
A skillet of roasted mushroom baked eggs ($15) is similar to shakshuka, the ingredients sitting in a mild tomato stew.
Rounding out the menu are sandwiches including grilled steak ($18) with arugula, chile aioli, cilantro and cucumbers, and croissant scrambled eggs ($16.50) with ham, mushrooms, arugula, goat cheese, tomatoes and onions.
I’ve always left here too full for dessert but for those who live for sweets will find lilikoi crème brulée ($8), banana cake with coconut caramel ($8), and a Big Island chocolate brownie ($8) with cacao nibs and berries, served a la mode.
Coming soon will be pizzas, and the owners also envision dinner pop-ups that will sometimes draw focus to their expertise in the cuisines of Southeast Asia. With such cuisines in short supply here, I can’t wait to see that happen.
Fig & Ginger
McCully Shopping Center
1960 Kapiolani Blvd., Honolulu
Food: ***½
Service: ****
Ambiance: ***½
Value: ****
Call: 808-351-3424
Hours: 7 a.m.-3 p.m. daily
Prices: About $50-$80 for two
Nadine Kam’s restaurant visits are unannounced and paid for by Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Follow Nadine on Instagram (@nadinekam) or on YouTube (youtube.com/nadinekam).
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