My computer situation is a little scattered right now, so I'll have to add the pictures later, but I wanted to post about Fresh Catch on Waialae while it's fresh in my mind.
Fresh Catch just opened maybe a month or so ago in the building that used to be Pizza Hut (you can totally tell that it used to be Pizza Hut, except that it's now blue instead of red). Click here to read Nadine Kam's review of Fresh Catch in the Star Bulletin. She gives it four stars, which is really generous for her, so I expected a lot.
One of my friends described it very succinctly as being like a Yama's (on Young Street), and I agree with her assessment. It's like a poke counter/take out restaurant/convenience store. When you walk in, there is a rack of pre-made bento, which wasn't all that appealing to me. I've seen better. There's also some shelves with other food items that I didn't look closely at, and some refrigerators stocked with drinks. There are also tables to sit down to eat your grub.
The main attraction here is the counter. There is a poke counter and a menu behind it if you want to order meals. It looks like they have some items every day, and each day of the week they have an additional "special" item. Be sure to ask if they have any other specials besides what's listed. The Sunday special is clam chowder, but he also rattled off a couple of other specials that weren't listed like a fried ahi belly and a baked salmon. I really want to try the ahi casserole (you can see a picture of it in the Nadine Kam article) because it looks a lot like the crab stuffed ahi I used to get from Masa's on King Street a long time ago. But that's a Thursday special. Today I had my heart set on poke.
The selections they offer are quite interesting and diverse. They had something that looked like a cross between tako poke and lomi salmon, and they also had some poke that were made out of smoked fish. I had my heart on something basic like ahi limu or ahi shoyu poke. I was a little disappointed in the quality of the fish, based on appearances. It wasn't as fresh-looking as I imagined it being, and not as high quality either. I could see the stringy stuff in the ahi limu poke, and it wasn't as red as really fresh fish is. Although, I'm not sure if they can get fresh fish on Sundays, so I will try again on other days to see if the quality differs. Based on appearances, the ahi shoyu looked the freshest, and also closest to being gone, indicating to me that a lot of people ordered it, so I asked for a half-pound (today it was $7.99/lb).
There was a woman in front of me when I arrived, who apparently knew one of the guys behind the counter. She had also ordered the ahi shoyu poke, but she ordered something called ahi dynamite. I looked at it, and it looked like something that would be on sushi -- chunks of ahi mixed with mayonnaise, what I presume is Sriracha sauce, and tobiko, and a few green onion slices. I thought it would be awesome over a bowl of hot rice, and I did need something for dinner tonight. So I got a half-pound of that too ($10.99/lb). They gave me exactly half-pound of the ahi dynamite, and .48 pound of the ahi shoyu poke -- this kind of impressed me because 90% of the time when I order stuff by the pound, they will always try to give me over the half-pound mark.
Service was friendly too. Not the fastest, but the two guys behind the counter were very nice and helpful. The guy who rang up my purchases knew the lady who was behind me, who I started up a conversation with, and we ended up talking to the guy behind the counter who packaged my food when he found out we were both first-timers to the shop.
I didn't really eat lunch since I had a late breakfast, so I snacked on the ahi shoyu poke when I got home. It was pretty good, but a little sweet for my taste, closer to teriyaki sauce than shoyu. For me it was above average, but I've had better at Yama's and Ruger Market (which is probably the best and freshest, but also the most expensive), and even Foodland.
But the ahi dynamite really is dynamite. I made a nice batch of fresh, hot rice (using my microwave rice cooker and my expensive rice that I thought was Japanese but is actually produced in California that I bought before the rice prices skyrocketed) and put a generous serving in a bowl. I sprinkled furikake over the rice, then topped it with not quite all of my ahi dynamite, then I sprinkled some additional green onions on it. It is an awesome meal! By itself, the ahi dynamite is pretty spicy. It's still spicy with the rice, but the rice tames it a bit. But be sure to have a glass of water on hand when you're eating it.
While I wasn't as impressed as I thought I would be with Fresh Catch, I haven't tried enough stuff to form a solid opinion of it. And I was impressed enough to want to go back and try other things. My only slight disappointment was the quality of the fish used in the poke. Hopefully I will be able to go back on Thursday for the ahi casserole, and maybe the fish in the poke will be a little fresher.
Their posted hours are 8:00 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., except for Sundays when they close at 5:00 p.m., and they are closed all day Wednesday. (I heard that they will instead be closed on Mondays instead of Wednesdays.)
Fresh Catch just opened maybe a month or so ago in the building that used to be Pizza Hut (you can totally tell that it used to be Pizza Hut, except that it's now blue instead of red). Click here to read Nadine Kam's review of Fresh Catch in the Star Bulletin. She gives it four stars, which is really generous for her, so I expected a lot.
One of my friends described it very succinctly as being like a Yama's (on Young Street), and I agree with her assessment. It's like a poke counter/take out restaurant/convenience store. When you walk in, there is a rack of pre-made bento, which wasn't all that appealing to me. I've seen better. There's also some shelves with other food items that I didn't look closely at, and some refrigerators stocked with drinks. There are also tables to sit down to eat your grub.
The main attraction here is the counter. There is a poke counter and a menu behind it if you want to order meals. It looks like they have some items every day, and each day of the week they have an additional "special" item. Be sure to ask if they have any other specials besides what's listed. The Sunday special is clam chowder, but he also rattled off a couple of other specials that weren't listed like a fried ahi belly and a baked salmon. I really want to try the ahi casserole (you can see a picture of it in the Nadine Kam article) because it looks a lot like the crab stuffed ahi I used to get from Masa's on King Street a long time ago. But that's a Thursday special. Today I had my heart set on poke.
The selections they offer are quite interesting and diverse. They had something that looked like a cross between tako poke and lomi salmon, and they also had some poke that were made out of smoked fish. I had my heart on something basic like ahi limu or ahi shoyu poke. I was a little disappointed in the quality of the fish, based on appearances. It wasn't as fresh-looking as I imagined it being, and not as high quality either. I could see the stringy stuff in the ahi limu poke, and it wasn't as red as really fresh fish is. Although, I'm not sure if they can get fresh fish on Sundays, so I will try again on other days to see if the quality differs. Based on appearances, the ahi shoyu looked the freshest, and also closest to being gone, indicating to me that a lot of people ordered it, so I asked for a half-pound (today it was $7.99/lb).
There was a woman in front of me when I arrived, who apparently knew one of the guys behind the counter. She had also ordered the ahi shoyu poke, but she ordered something called ahi dynamite. I looked at it, and it looked like something that would be on sushi -- chunks of ahi mixed with mayonnaise, what I presume is Sriracha sauce, and tobiko, and a few green onion slices. I thought it would be awesome over a bowl of hot rice, and I did need something for dinner tonight. So I got a half-pound of that too ($10.99/lb). They gave me exactly half-pound of the ahi dynamite, and .48 pound of the ahi shoyu poke -- this kind of impressed me because 90% of the time when I order stuff by the pound, they will always try to give me over the half-pound mark.
Service was friendly too. Not the fastest, but the two guys behind the counter were very nice and helpful. The guy who rang up my purchases knew the lady who was behind me, who I started up a conversation with, and we ended up talking to the guy behind the counter who packaged my food when he found out we were both first-timers to the shop.
I didn't really eat lunch since I had a late breakfast, so I snacked on the ahi shoyu poke when I got home. It was pretty good, but a little sweet for my taste, closer to teriyaki sauce than shoyu. For me it was above average, but I've had better at Yama's and Ruger Market (which is probably the best and freshest, but also the most expensive), and even Foodland.
But the ahi dynamite really is dynamite. I made a nice batch of fresh, hot rice (using my microwave rice cooker and my expensive rice that I thought was Japanese but is actually produced in California that I bought before the rice prices skyrocketed) and put a generous serving in a bowl. I sprinkled furikake over the rice, then topped it with not quite all of my ahi dynamite, then I sprinkled some additional green onions on it. It is an awesome meal! By itself, the ahi dynamite is pretty spicy. It's still spicy with the rice, but the rice tames it a bit. But be sure to have a glass of water on hand when you're eating it.
While I wasn't as impressed as I thought I would be with Fresh Catch, I haven't tried enough stuff to form a solid opinion of it. And I was impressed enough to want to go back and try other things. My only slight disappointment was the quality of the fish used in the poke. Hopefully I will be able to go back on Thursday for the ahi casserole, and maybe the fish in the poke will be a little fresher.
Their posted hours are 8:00 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., except for Sundays when they close at 5:00 p.m., and they are closed all day Wednesday. (I heard that they will instead be closed on Mondays instead of Wednesdays.)
No comments:
Post a Comment