Manta Pavilion at Mauna Kea Hotel is No Great Shakes

Lobster salad with a spicy kick at Manta Pavilion, Mauna Kea Hotel

“Look lady, I am NOT the one who works for a company that misspelled the name of the Coombsville Napa Winery on the wine flight list,” I wanted to say, but it wouldn’t have made any difference. Would not have registered. May as well be talking to the candle in oil on my table top. When the graying-haired server at the Manta Pavilion restaurant in the Mauna Kea Hotel read off the day’s specials, she did so with such disdain, as though it was beneath her to recite the menu, that I almost felt like I should suggest she go home for a nap, except she wouldn’t get the irony because I’m probably older than she.

Look, I dressed for dinner. Better than other diners. I did not know her from Adam. She spit out the words in disgust. Some mumbled garbage about miso soup and the rest of the stuff made no sense whatsoever. I stuck to the menu. Yes, I would very much please like to have the lobster salad as a first course, which arrived with far less fanfare. Except for when Peppercorn Boy showed up to ask if I wanted pepper but was pepperless. You’d think a pepper grinder is an instrument one would keep close at hand in one’s arsenal if one was a peppercorn boy.

The tomato burrata at the Mauna Kea should not contain onions.

Now, wait, before you say, here she goes griping again about dining at fine restaurants in Hawaii, and I’m sick and tired of it, let me point out that I don’t call it complaining. I was explaining that to my sister on Sunday when we talked by phone — she in Minneapolis and me in Hawaii — how I like to improve things, make everything better, which is why I’m so thrilled that About.com wants to pay me extra to revise and update old articles I’ve written about homebuying. I love remodeling. I can make anything a bit more enticing, even my own work.

I offer sincere improvement tips. However, when I informed Ms. Nose-in-the-Air server at the Manta Pavilion Restaurant that the tomato and burrata dish did not deserve to be ruined by the addition of onions, and that the swordfish would have been a more pleasant dish without the onions as well, her retort was . . . wait for it . . . “I suggest next time you tell the chef you do not want onions!”

Look, Lady, it’s not me. There should be NO onions in that dish. Trust me. Yeah, right, her eyes said, and her mouth moved: Perhaps you would like some coffee?”

Perhaps you would like a punch in the face.

She was too late coming back after describing dessert that I had no time for dessert before catching the shuttle from the Mauna Kea Hotel back to the Hapuna Beach Prince Hotel. I left her a tip over 20% anyway and probably should not have. It’s only encouraging that haughty behavior.

Swordfish served at Manta Pavilion, Mauna Kea Hotel with ICK, onions

When I asked another server why the restaurant is closed at Hapuna Beach Prince, something they don’t disclose at will, she said the fine dining at Mauna Kea used to be closed several days a week as well. Why? Is it because of attendance at the hotel, and that nobody frequents fine dining enough to make it viable to stay open?

Yes, probably, she confessed. Well, no wonder.

There are many good things about the hotel, but just about as many bad things. Take the mold on my wall for example. Now I know why my 2-room suite smells musty. While prancing about yakking on my cell about a counter offer in negotiation for a home in Sacramento, I do my best work walking on my feet and talking, I noticed a line of black mold from almost the floor to the ceiling, had expanded in the corner by the balcony doors.

I called housekeeping. Black mold is crawling up my walls! Ack. An employee showed up, barely speaking English. I showed her the corner. She grabbed her broom. No, no, no, you are NOT sweeping that black mold on the floor, I screamed. This is not some kid’s chalk drawing on the wall, this is not dirt, this is a health issue. Yes, she politely smiled, for Sparkle and Easy. No, no Sparkle and Easy. TILEX. This is a living breathing organism destined to wreak havoc and you must KILL it. You need bleach, you need TILEX.

Yes, ma’am, Sparkle and Easy. Hell, I had to go catch the shuttle to the Mauna Kea. I don’t know what happened.

All of this is my fault. Three years ago, after a lovely vacation at the Fairmont and the Four Seasons over Christmas, my husband and I stopped by this hotel. It smelled musty. I wrote it off my list. Yet, here I am. Three more days and I am home in Sacramento. But I still love Hawaii.