First taste: Hale Macrobiotic Restaurant

We found the zen in this Japan-style fare, sans red meat, refined sugar and dairy

By Wanda A. Adams

Advertiser Food Editor

The first time I encountered macrobiotic food was when I was a food writer in Seattle.

I drove deep into the forest at the foot of the Cascade Mountains and found a neat, weathered cedar cabin where a macrobiotic cook/caterer lived.

She greeted me quietly and calmly, sat me at a scarred butcher block table where a spray of cherry blossoms were arranged in a small vase and served me the macrobiotic equivalent of afternoon tea: brown rice cakes stuffed with ume (pickled plum) and kukicha (twig tea, the quintessential macrobiotic beverage).

I have never forgotten that peaceful hour with the soft-spoken woman, the smoky flavored tea, the moist, salty-sweet cakes and the sense that all would be well.

Dinner at Honolulu's new Hale Macrobiotic Restaurant gave me the same feeling, even if there were a few false steps along the way.
Even half full, the restaurant is blessedly quiet with muted music covering an equally muted buzz of conversation.

Hale is a Japanese macrobiotic restaurant, owned by Motoko (known as "Moco") and Isamu Kubota, on the site of their ground-breaking restaurant, Kai, which taught Honolulans to love okonomiyaki, Japanese pancake-omelettes.

Chef-co-owner Moco Kubota is the one in glasses behind the counter who marches halfway up one side of the long, skinny room. She stirs pots, calls out orders, presides over fried items with deft flicks of long chopsticks and bows whenever she catches a patron's eye. You can sit at the extra-wide bar and watch her or choose a table.

In an interview after I'd visited the restaurant twice clandestinely, Kubota said she'd grown up with a vegetarian mother and meat-eating father and a combination of allergies and dislikes bar her from enjoying dairy, eggs and most meats, though she does like beef.

Born and raised in Kyoto, where the style of cooking is lighter, less saucy and more vegetable-oriented than Tokyo, Moco was a natural to study macrobiotics.

The Kubotas, who had restaurants in Tokyo, moved to Hawai'i in 2004 and opened Kai, an immediate hit. A few years later, they opened Kaiwa in Waikiki, transferring the Kai chef there.

When they could neither find a chef to take over the Kai kitchen, nor a partner to help run it, they closed Kai and Moco Kubota went back to Tokyo to learn macrobiotics.

The idea of Hale ("shining" or "bright" in Japanese; "house" in Hawaiian; a word for a special celebration in the Zen tradition) was already taking shape in her mind.

While Isamu operates Kaiwa, Moco presides at Hale. Here, she says, she follows a philosophy of gentleness. Although she uses no dairy, no refined sugar, organic produce and no red meat, she is no rigid food-cop.

"Most important is balance," she says in her heavily accented English. "If you like have beef sometime, then you make balance by serving with daikon."

She is speaking of the macrobiotic of ying and yang — counteracting the effects of foods with strong ying by eating foods with strong yang or, preferably, remaining in the center, focused on vegetables, soy products and certain other foods considered healthful.

Don't be afraid that eating at Hale means encountering things that appear or taste strange. In fact, the fare closely resembles that of any casual Japan-style Japanese restaurant (as opposed to local Japanese).

My friend and I started with vegetarian gyoza dumplings ($7.25 for six, with lemon, grated daikon with ume and a soy-based dipping sauce) and quinoa and tempeh salad with balsamic dressing ($12.75).

We could have had kale and Maui strawberry salad with sesame tofu dressing, a version of familiar shira ae (mashed tofu dressing for cold vegetables; $10.45) or a mixed greens and hijiki salad with Italian dressing ($11.45).

Other starters include edamame ($3.95), local avocado and myoga (tender young ginger) with wasabi-soy sauce ($5.95), veggie meat karaage (fried; $9.50) or sushi cakes ($3.25-$3.85). Soup is very important to the macrobiotic diet; Moco offers a miso soup of the day ($3.25), "creamy" brown mushroom soup (but no dairy; $8.25) and Maui onion mochi soup ($8.45).

The gyoza were perfect, filled with minced vegetables, garlic, ginger and seitan (wheat gluten) — just as tender inside and crisply browned outside as you could wish.

My salad was a large plateful of mixed greens topped with a mound of steamed quinoa (a tender, healthful grain), a scattering of fried tempeh cubes glazed with a mahogany-colored teriyaki tempeh and drizzled with sweetish balsamic dressing. Close your eyes and you'd be sure you were eating pork, but without the stringiness that often characterizes that meat.

As we munched contentedly, my girlfriend, as she often does, voiced my very thought: "This is the kind of vegetarian food where you don't feel deprived."

In fact, if I'd finished the whole salad, I would have felt too full.

I soon was looking at what, if you encountered it unprepared, you'd assume was tempura shrimp, dredged in panko and golden brown.
Actually, it was kuruma-fu, another form of gluten, with an apple-miso sauce ($15.45), the thick, brown paste nicely balanced, sweet to salt, with the acid tang of good, fresh miso. Moco uses a rice-based miso; she tasted many to get just the light, fresh flavor she wanted.

The kuruma-fu wedges were every bit as tasty and indulgent as tempura shrimp, and not at all greasy. (Kuruma-fu is sold in sliced rolls that resemble dried bread rounds; exposed to liquid, they become yielding and silky; bits of kuruma-fu often found floating in miso soup.)

My friend ordered the teriyaki tempeh but this dish wasn't very successful; the flat, rectangular slices of tempeh were thin and had dried out in the cooking. It was difficult not to think about overcooked Spam.

Both dishes came with a selection of roast vegetables — thin-sliced kabocha pumpkin, carrots and daikon with dabs of ginger miso sauce in my case.

Her garnish included fried lotus root slices, which were better than the entree, crunchy and delectable, and the thick-sliced daikon was so melting and sweet, you'd never think it was a radish.

I had ordered a slice of the restaurant's trademark whole-grain bread (whole oats, brown rice, soy beans, sesame seeds, walnuts and corn in whole wheat bread; ($3.25) but the waitress forgot, and I was so pleased with my dish, that I did, too.

So I went back next day and ordered a lunch special, salmon salad ($10.45), which came with bread. The bread, made for Hale at a small, Kailua wholesale bakery that can barely keep up with their demand, was thinly sliced, lightly toasted, warm and satisfyingly yeasty and crunchy. I want this recipe!

The salmon salad consisted of four squares of salmon, lightly fried with some kind of thin coating (arrowroot, perhaps), lots of greens, cashews and a lemon-herb dressing that I'd like to emulate at home. (Moco, bending toward me over the counter, was careful to ask if nuts were OK — a smart move since so many people are allergic to nuts.) This plateful of salad is an ample meal served with an oniony, no-mayonnaise tartar sauce.

At dinner, we stuck with tea, but they serve organic wines, local beers, organic sake and shochu ($6 and up per glass). There is also a four-course macrobiotic dinner ($33) that allows you to choose from two soups, two appetizers, five entrees and five kinds of dessert.

We weren't thrilled with our desserts, made with no eggs, no dairy and no refined sugar.

My friend chose pumpkin pudding, a molded treat closer to a gelatin than a pudding; it was just so-so ($3.45). At our charming and attentive waitress' suggestion, I ordered tofu tiramisu with couscous ($3.45).

All I could taste was tofu, except when I bit into a dark brown bit that appeared to be the closest they could come to the coffee cake that's usually tiramisu's centerpiece.

Macrobiotics are not necessarily vegetarians; many eat fish and Hale offers both a fish burger ($15.45) and a grilled fish ($18.45), both served with veggie mayonnaise and basil sauce.

Many of the same dishes are on the lunch menu. Macrobiotic lunch plates run $12.95 with five types of vegetables dishes and tempeh and a small miso soup and organic brown rice.

Hale Macrobiotic Restaurant
1427 Makaloa St. (just makai of the back wall of Wal-Mart, between Sheridan and Keeaumoku streets on Makaloa) 944-1555
www.halemacro.com — Web site and blog
Lunch: 11 a.m.-3 p.m.
Dinner: 5-9:30 p.m.
Closed Mondays
Other details: Limited parking or on street; beer, wine, shochu, sake; takeout and catering available