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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.
The Best Way to Serve Maine Lobster in Hawaii
Hapuna Beach on Labor Day Weekend 2015
The beach was fairly quiet for the Saturday of Labor Day Weekend in Hawaii, no sand castles, only one surfboard, piercing squeals of children almost nonexistent, in fact the birds shrieked more than anybody except maybe that overweight woman from Iowa waddling about. I strolled a long stretch on the shore, allowing the waves to roll over my perfectly manicured toenails and deposit grains of sand between my toes. On a firm spot that is still wet from the last wave but not hit so many times that your feet sink into its dampness. You don’t have to work quite so hard to put one foot in front of the other when walking there.
It was at this point I realized that it was entirely possible a spot on my back has had too much exposure to the sun. When you’re traveling solo, that’s a drawback, having nobody around to rub sunblock on those hard-to-reach spots. I suppose I could have asked the overweight woman from Iowa to help me out but I didn’t really want her pudgy hands on my back. And if she missed a spot, then I would blame her. Be hanging dead lizards on her door knob.
Not wanting to rollover in bed in pain in the middle of the night, I cut the walk shorter than I had planned and trekked to the gift shop to pick up what my friend Myrl suggested I do in the beginning, a can of spray sunblock. At that point I also realized I had given away my mango sunscreen lip balm to my friend Lisa from Texas when she was visiting me in Sacramento last week. I guess you can’t call it chapstick because that name is probably trademarked or registered or maybe that’s just another one of those things that change names over the years.
It’s how a suitcase turned into luggage. A purse into a handbag or the shorter term, bag. Your kitchen cupboards have morphed into cabinets. Blame it on marketing, trying to polish the sheen, pull that last scent from the bloom.
After buying spray-on sunblock and new lip balm, I headed to the bellman desk to check on the departure time for Mauna Kea. My room literature showed a 5:50 departure time and, since my dinner reservations for the clambake / lobster fest was at 7 PM, I figured I could spend time checking out the shops and wandering the hotel but it turns out the departure time was 6:50. Trust but verify. I’ve been anticipating Maine lobster in Hawaii, although I believe the Maine lobster in Hawaii originates in Kona.
This is a very different experience than my Maui vacation last year with Barbara Dow at the Fairmont Kea Lani in Wailea. Much more low key. The only shopping I could find here was in the lobby yesterday afternoon. I spotted a green turtle, a giant honu, on an aluminum print. There were dozens of other photographs of lava flows, dripping over A’a but I could not imagine such a thing hanging in our home. No, a honu was just fine and the right size. It will make me smile every time I walk by. Unlike red hot lava which strikes fear. My husband undoubtedly will prefer the honu as well.
Maine lobster in Hawaii comes from Kailua / Kona, served shelled at Mauna Kea
I have also discovered that when one dines alone, it doesn’t take nearly as long as you might think to devour 3 Maine lobsters drizzled with drawn butter. I was in the Mauna Kea and out in less than an hour. While I was standing in line with my plate, I wished I had my wristlet with my iPhone dangling so I could have shot photos of the workers cleaning up the lobster and shelling them before placing the succulent flesh on your plate. Randy Selland should take note. Much better way to eat lobster than having to mess with the shell yourself, cutting up your hands, and whatnot.
A Summer Rain in Kona is Still a Delightful Hawaiian Vacation
Elizabeth Weintraub at the breezeway of Coast Grille Restaurant in Hawaii.
Living in a paradisiacal state of mind for some people is utopia but not very realistic. I’m more the cup is overflowing sort of person than the cup is half full, but even I know that sometimes you’ve got to deal with a little rain before the sun comes out. I could not believe, however, that my hotel required a $30 deposit on an umbrella. That seems a little bit excessive and makes me wonder about the types of people who visit the island of Hawaii and why they feel compelled to make off with a four-foot instrument that would most certainly break if one clobbered a bellman over the head with it.
We’ve had a little bit of showers yesterday afternoon, a summer rain, in an area of Hawaii that rarely sees rain. If you want to experience a lot of rain, you go to the eastern side of the island of Hawaii, which is OK and lushly beautiful except for those darned singing tree frogs all night long.
There are times in Sacramento when I miss a summer rain because we don’t get rain in the summer either. We make up for it in the winter. During the summer, though, nada. The problem with rain is sometimes you get thunderstorms, and thunderstorms scare the bejesus out of me. If you want me to confess to a crime I did not commit, just strap me to a chair under a bare light bulb and fill the room with sounds of a thunderstorm, lightning rods, cracks in the sky, and I’ll admit to anything to make it stop.
But soft falling rain is delightful. Just not the heavy rain. Probably the most delightful soft misty rainfall I’ve ever had the pleasure of experiencing was in Ireland. It was so light and silky that it would not have astonished me to spot leprechauns dancing through the square in Dublin.
When I walked to dinner last night, to the restaurant at my hotel, it was a good 10-block hike from my suite. And very complicated, too. Walk 3 blocks to the elevator, and go down to floor two. Walk another 6 blocks and take the elevator to floor 8. Go through the lobby and around the corner to reach a third set of elevators and go down to floor 4, and then take the stairs to the restaurant. I feel like I need a GPS.
Fortunately, this particular restaurant, unlike Brown’s at the Fairmont Orchid, has a breezeway where guests can still dine outside if it’s raining. I enjoyed the theme for this month, which is Dragon Fruit. It comes in a dark cherry, a vanilla and a cotton-candy-pink version. The Dragon Fruit salad contained all 3 versions of this seedy fruit, along with Kamuela tomatoes, watermelon radish, and baby cucumbers, tossed with a garden citrus vinaigrette.
Grilled ono with Dragon Fruit salsa and pumpkin hash
The ono, pictured here, arrived with a Dragon Fruit salsa and pumpkin hash, surrounded by bits of exotic things — I can’t tell you what they were except mouthwatering. In my opinion, the chef glazed the ono a bit too long, and it made the soft, fleshy fish somewhat dry and tough. The waitress was very nice about it, and I almost didn’t even tell her except that she asked what I thought. She offered to take my photo earlier, and I didn’t want her to feel like I did not appreciate the meal, as it was lovely.
As I type this, an agent called to complain that her listing is on my Sacramento real estate website and she wants me to remove it this instant! LOL. As standard service, my website contains every agent’s listing in Sacramento, along with my own listings. Why do these agents not understand how the internet works? Just another day in paradise. I’ll be back home in 8 days.
