Offbeat Eats

Our third full day in Lisbon involved a trek up to visit Igreja da Graça, one of Libson’s oldest churches and convents, which sits atop one of the city’s tallest hills (and, coincidentally, has an extremely nice rooftop terrace for viewing the city). Before heading up there, we stopped for breakfast, settling on a small place we had encountered a few times before: Hello Kristof.

After we finished exploring Coimbra for 3 days, it was time to head back to Lisbon for the last several days of our vacation. After a relatively quick and pleasant train ride on the Alfa Pendular train, we arrived at Lisbon’s Santa Apolónia railway station (Lisbon’s oldest), checking into the quite posh Editory Riverside, which is actually built from the old in-station hotel. Checking in, the friendly clerk at the front desk offered up quite a few recommendations for dining in Lisbon, and particularly, a recommendation for breakfast: going into the Baixa district and having a proper Pastel de Nata at Manteigaria.

As we were wandering about Coimbra, our paths frequently took us through Praça do Comércio, which has several restaurants, bars, and gelato shops amongst the various furniture shops and churches that complete one of Baixa Coimbra’s main shopping areas. But there was once place that was impossible to ignore, since almost every daytime trip through the Praça smelled strongly of KFC. No, not Kentucky Fried Chicken, but it’s Eastern sibling, Korean Fried Chicken. Each trip through the Praça smelled richly of heavily spiced fried chicken, garlic, kimchi and gochujang. And while was was adoring Portuguese food, it isn’t exactly known for being particularly spicy, so after a half dozen passes through the area, we finally gave into the temptation and stopped in to Seoul Chicken for lunch.

On our second to last day on the Big Island, we got up early and drove out to Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park to see Kilaulea and hike along the shore. The road back to Kailua-Kona from Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park is a long drive (it’s over 90 miles, putting the ‘Big’ into ‘Big Island’), and we wanted to make sure we didn’t miss dinner. There’s actually not that many places to stop along the route, but the mainstay of local Hawaiian Cuisine was there for us: a location of L&L Hawaiian Barbecue in Ocean View.

If there’s a single place that really represents what “Hawaiian Food” is, the first place probably has to go to Zippy’s (their competitor L&L Drive Inn comes in at a close second). Zippy’s is a combination fast food and casual restaurant (literally, since most Zippy’s have both the fast food counter and a table service dining room) that started in Honolulu in 1966. Filling nominally the same sort of market niche that Denny’s does on the mainland, the key to Zippy’s is that just about every local Hawaiian food item I’ve talked about is on their menu in one form or another. Spam musubi? Check. Plate lunch? Check. Saimin? Check (both fried and as soup). Teriyaki burger? Check. Portuguese sausage? Check. Shrimp plate? Check. About the only thing I didn’t see on their menu was a malasada. So their motto is “All your favorites”, and at least with Hawaiian food, I think they’ve got that covered. So, on our last morning on Oahu, it was finally time for me to make some time for a stop in at Zippy’s, ducking into their Kaneohe location right by the Windward Mall.

I always enjoyed sub sandwiches growing up. Some meat, veggies, and cheese on a good Italian sub roll, and I’m ready to go. It’s really not a difficult concept, but as I’ve learned in my many years living in different states, and traveling around, there’s actually an art form to making a decent sub. It’s an art hasn’t been discovered everywhere, since several places I’ve lived (Michigan, Tennessee, and Minnesota, in particular) had items called subs, that while often decent, weren’t really in the same category as a proper Italian sub. The meat wouldn’t be right (Oscar Meyer ham does not a good sub make). And most importantly, a good sub also requires the right bread (and half of my challenge of making my own subs has been finding decent bread!). For a good sub, however, the best action is the middle eastern seaboard. New Jersey is well-recognized as having good shops, as are Pennsylvania (see my recent review on Tony Luke’s; one thing the Italian-American bakers of Philly can do is a good roll) and Maryland. But the real gem is Delaware, and the home of truly good subs, IMHO, is actually Wilmington, Delaware. Wilmington is choc-a-bloc little Italian-run sub shops, and it’s really hard to get a bad sub in that city. Unfortunately, I didn’t stop in Wilmington this trip. But luckily, Capriotti’s, one of Wilmington’s best-regarded sub shops, has an outpost in Rehoboth Beach…