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Roy's Restaurant

Hawaii Kai Corporate Plaza
6600 Kalanianaole Hwy.
Honolulu, HI 96825
www.roysrestaurant.com
808-396-7697

This is where it all started: if there was one chef in the vanguard of Hawaii Regional cuisine, it was Roy Yamaguchi. Born in Hawaii, raised in Japan, educated in some top Los Angeles kitchens, Yamaguchi did as much as anyone to put Hawaii on the world culinary map. Yamaguchi now has rivals in Honolulu, some of whom may keep the flame of Hawaii Regional cuisine burning more brightly, but Yamaguchi's reputation and his restaurant empire are both now international. There are a more than dozen Roy's, from Tokyo to New York, and rumors are that Yamaguchi has financing available for perhaps 100 restaurants. But, remarkably, we often find him here, with his perennially youthful face and his baseball cap, laboring over a hot fire in the large display kitchen.

Yamaguchi's blend of French, Italian, Thai, Japanese, Chinese and Polynesian cuisine still has wit and excitement. You can tell that from a first taste of some of his classics like blackened ahi with soy-mustard sauce or Szechuan baby-back pork ribs. The real exuberance comes in the unending parade of new dishes: his half-moon dim sum with wild boar and morels in Pinot Noir sauce, his fish dishes like Hawaiian sea salt-rubbed moi or his meats, like the charbroiled mustard-garlic short ribs. Unlike some other innovators, Yamaguchi constantly hits on combinations that enliven rather than shock the taste buds.

Yamaguchi's food is truly a fusion...it has Asian flavors, but it's based on classic French technique, including intense reductions. It's a surprisingly wine-friendly food, but not always with the conventional Chardonnays and Cabernets. The list here is creative---plenty of Pinot Noir, vin Gris, Provensal, Rhene and Italian offerings. Ask the waiter for reasonably priced and unexpected wines that will go with this food---whatever you ordered, it's intensely flavored.