The Weekly Eater: Honolulu’s first vegan izakaya Tane offers sushi that satisfies

In the early days of vegan sushi in Hawaii, nearly a decade ago, what we got was a piece of cucumber, lotus root or tomato on rice. That just didn’t cut it. How could topping such a plain substance as rice with something equally plain be acceptable?

Given the dominance of meat- centric meals here, I respected the attempt to offer an option of healthful, nutritious meals, but found that sushi without fish was not enjoyable. Predictably, those pioneering restaurants did not last.

Fast-forward to the present, and diners are becoming more health conscious, reading ingredient labels, green-juicing and insisting on more transparency in the food chain.

We’ve already seen the rise of farm-to-table izakayas — testing the waters further is Tane, Honolulu’s first vegan izakaya. Tane is a spinoff of San Francisco’s popular Shizen restaurant, where lines are out the door for vegetable-only nigiri and sushi rolls that don’t resort to such soy “meats” as Chik’n and Sea Nuggets.

Whether a line materializes here remains to be seen, but partners Kin Lui, Ray Wang and Casson Trenor are willing to try.

Lui, born in Hong Kong, moved to Hawaii at 15 and almost immediately went to work as a waiter at Sekiya’s Restaurant & Delicatessen. Even then, he had ambitions of one day opening a restaurant, learning to cook at Sekiya’s before moving to the mainland.

He worked at a number of restaurants, the most influential, he said, being the now-shuttered Kyo-ya in San Francisco, where he picked up a lot of the techniques he uses today. “I worked with so many different chefs who all had their own philosophies and techniques,” he said. “I learned it all and developed my own style.”

His first restaurant, opened in 2008, was Tataki Sushi and Sake Bar in San Francisco, credited as being a pioneer in sustainable sushi, thanks to Trenor’s influence.

Trenor, author of “Sustainable Sushi: A Guide to Saving the Oceans One Bite at a Time,” met Lui through a friend of Lui’s wife.

“At that time, I didn’t know what sustainable sushi was,” Lui said, “but I was reading a newspaper article that got me thinking about how we eat our fish and the decline of bluefin tuna. It was just bad.”

Envisioning a future with no fish, he came to the realization that change was needed immediately.

WHEN TRENOR examined the Tataki menu, the ocean activist ended up crossing out most of the fish offerings based on overfishing, or because they were caught or farmed in ways that harmed other marine life or the environment.

All of a sudden, Trenor said, a burst of heated conversation broke out between Lui and his wife in Cantonese.

Lui said he knew it would take some creativity, but he thought, “We can do this.”

Three more restaurants followed Tataki’s success. By the time they opened Shizen, Lui said he was challenged to take sustainability to the next level, with a vegan menu.

“When we opened Shizen in January 2015, our immediate clientele was the vegan community,” Trenor said. “Now, in March 2019, 50 percent are vegan. We consider that a victory, when we can feed vegan food to omnivores. That’s how we can make a difference.”

“Tane” translates as “seed” in Japanese, and though humble in their expectations, Lui and Trenor hope the restaurant’s arrival prompts thoughts about food safety.

Researchers from Malaysia and France have found that people consuming fish dried and sold in and around Malaysia could be consuming up to 246 pieces of micro plastic a year. In the online journal Scientific Reports, the researchers suggested that the level of contamination be monitored.

Closer to home, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a floating island of trash described as twice the size of Texas, is believed to contain 79,000 metric tons of plastic.

“It’s scary,” Trenor said. “We want to deliver a space where people can feel safe for themselves, their children and the health of the planet.”

WHEN I heard these seafood scares decades ago, I was sad, realizing that fish stocks would die out or be rendered inedible within my lifetime. In the days before we became empowered by the idea of “sustainability,” my solution was to eat as much seafood as I could and commit the flavors to memory before such a day arrived.

I thought there could be no satisfying substitute for fish. Tane proves this theory wrong.

My initial response to the nigiri menu ($6 for two pieces) was a bit of a frown, as it merely lists names of the fruit or vegetable ingredients, with no nod to all of Lui’s flavor components. I quickly turned to the next page of the menu for more ambitious sushi rolls that turned out to be a joy.

At the top of my list would be the gluten-free Point Reyes ($15) roll of eryngii mushroom with avocado, layered with spicy shredded tofu, pickled jalapeno, pickled pineapple and habanero sauce. The orange color gives it the appearance of uni, the tofu gives it structure, and the sweetness of pineapple and heat of chilies create a flavor explosion.

The Point Reyes is very spicy, so those with timid palates may lean instead toward the Leahi ($14) with creamy tofu, asparagus and avocado, layered with the ahi-like coloring of smoked beets. The Baker ($15) combines asparagus tempura, shredded gobo, marinated eggplant and sweet potato crisps with torched kochujang aioli.

The first time I tried the rolls, I found them so flavorful that I neglected to create the usual dipping pool of wasabi and shoyu. I wondered if the illusion of the traditional fish sushi would be stronger with the sauce, so I tried it on a repeat visit. That added a familiar element, but again, it wasn’t necessary. The flavors of the rolls are appealing on their own.

The Sunset ($13) offers the dramatic element of a small flame set next to the roll of spicy tofu, avocado, cucumber and seaweed pearls, sprinkled with Japanese shichimi togarashi pepper.

Honestly, because so many sushi restaurants go overboard in stacking ingredients, sometimes it’s impossible to get a sense of fish beneath it all, and this has prepared our palates for these nonseafood creations.

EMBOLDENED BY these encounters with deliciousness, I made my way back to the nigiri menu for selections of avocado and eggplant. Fatty avocado combined with smoked beet aioli, and similarly smoky eggplant combined with saikyo miso delivered all the savoriness one could want from nigiri.

Other nigiri options include yuba, bean curd, mango, sweet corn and shiitake. Shiitake also turn up stuffed with shredded tofu in a tempura dish ($9), and again grilled along with eryngii and enoki in a grilled mushroom trio ($8), another of my favorites.

On the downside were sweet-potato croquettes ($8) over-fried on my visit, chilled oden ($6) that was more like nishime, and ramen — best left to noodle specialists.

Meals can be accompanied by sake, shochu or wine.

The restaurant is an eye-opener as to what vegan cuisine can be. I would love to see more specialists in the future focused on other ethnic cuisines such as Mexican and Korean fare. But Trenor is simply content to be here.

“Our job isn’t to change Hawaii but to express ourselves and say this is our contribution, our vision.

“We didn’t open a vegan restaurant because we wanted to sell vegetables, but because we wanted to be healthier, so it was good for us. And anyone who wants to come and be a part of this, we’re happy to have you.”

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