I am sitting on a balcony at a hotel restaurant up at the very top of Wailea, Maui, looking out over the Pacific Ocean, the West Maui Mountains, and the islands of Lana’i, Kaho’olawe, and Molokini. The sun is just setting and I am sipping this pretty good cocktail made with Square One Organic Botanical Spirit, Aperol, Lemon Juice, Simple Syrup, Thyme, and Prosecco.
Has my life really become this foofy? Well, yes. Yes it has.
This is my 20th trip to Hawai’i. My 10th trip to Maui . How much money have I spent on this obsession in the last 10 years? Why do I keep doing this? Why won’t I do something like save money for my retirement? What is the attraction? I have written about Hawai’i so many times that there can’t be anything more to say on this subject, can there?
Yes. Yes there can. I have found more to write about. In fact I have an amazing story to share with you that explains the source of the attraction to Maui and a possible risk to its future! Read on, read on...
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Oh First Class, how I love you. Two bags, no charge? I’ll check an extra empty bag just because I can. After a quick and easy check in we walk over to the special TSA line for my people. Some new TSA person is slow and makes us stand in line with the tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free in the back of the airplane where they belong. Someone from First Class with Tourrette’s Syndrome is yelling, “Wretched refuse, get away from my suitcase or I will tempest toss you back to your teaming shore!” Golly, that was intense if not a little poetic. Oh wait, it was me yelling.
Finally I am in the front row of the very purple Hawaiian Airlines plane sipping champagne as Mark asks me please to stop misquoting the Statue of Liberty at the poor as they make that long, long walk of shame to the back of the plane.
After takeoff, more champagne and then lunch. The food is kind of OK, I guess. Not at all Hawaiian however. They have replaced Bev Gannon, chef at my favorite restaurant, the Hali’imaile General Store, as the executive chef of Hawaiian Airlines with someone named Chai Chaowasaree. He is the cook at Chai’s Island Pole Dancing Bar and Smoke House near the Aloha Tower in Honolulu. The focus at his restaurant is live music and dancing and this is reflected in his food. I miss Bev.
Whilst eating barbequed cheese and spam pigs in blanket with a pineapple soy reduction I sip really good Cava and watch the English language version of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I like this version better than the original for some reason, but I cannot figure out why they felt the need to make a movie set in Sweden where everyone speaks English. Chocolat anyone?
After that I watch Chronicle, this rocking good movie about these boys from suburban Seattle who get super powers from some crystal in the ground. Everything in this movie is perfect -- the story, the acting, the special effects. The shots flying around the top of the Space Needle are fantastic. I really love this movie. Watch this movie!
We have a brief stopover in Honolulu en route to Maui . Mark and I both note how nice it is not to have any girls traveling with us. No one disappears for huge lengths of time, keeps us waiting while they take the same photo 45 times, complains about prices, won’t eat seafood, or drinks beer from cans.
Oh Maui . From my window seat and I see you, first the far tip of Mâkena, then Pu‘u Ola‘i, then Haleakalā. We land. And there it is. That moment you get off the plane and all stress just starts to head down to your feet, then out of your body.
Where does the stress go? Hang on a bit and you will learn.
We check in at the condo. This is the 10th time we have stayed here. This is by far the best room, #815. Everything has been remodeled. New cabinets, marble counter tops, completely redone bathroom with a rain shower. Here is the view from the deck:
A couple quick drinks in the bar and then we head over to dinner at Sansei. We have some sashimi and some rolls, but then we order Sea Urchin, Uni. I have wanted to try this forever. It’s orange and very cold, which tells me it may not be local. The taste is not fishy at all. It’s kind of like peanut hummus. Hmmmm. I bet if you have this fresh in Santa Barbara it is a different experience. Not unpleasant at all, however. I am not against it. A walk on the beach at night then we crash. The next day is the day, the day of discovery.
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We’re up early due to the 3 hour time difference. Organic Kona coffee, some sprouted wheat organic toast with some of that Wagyu organic butter from Tasmania, a quick walk on the beach, and then we hit the road. The road to Pa’ia. After the drive across the isthmus we have breakfast at Café Des Amis, a crepe place we like. None of the shops in Pa’ia are open yet so we head to Ho’okipa to watch shark snacks.
Then we decide to go to Upcountry because I want to get some pictures of Jacaranda trees in their purple bloom. Rather than drive back to Pa’ia and then take Baldwin Avenue up to Makawao, Mark finds this mysterious road we have not known before, Holomua Road. It should take us up to Makawao. It should. We’re driving through fields of sugar cane when suddenly trees cover the road like a tunnel.
It feels like we are driving into a sand worm.
Kind of creepy. Then the road gets gravely. On the left is an old building. A series of buildings actually. The roofs are gone. I see a sign that says “Old Maui High School.” Mark and I look at each other. Our eyes get wide. “Turn around.” He says. I do. We park and get out. This is the original high school. It’s abandoned. Something has happened. Something bad.
I have seen this before.
We all have.
You know the story.
The school.
The location.
Sunnydale.
The wind blows. The old trees and the sugar cane seem to whisper.
Into every generation a slayer is born
One girl in all the world, a chosen one
Mark and I look at each other. We both know now. The reason. The answer to Maui's power. I open my mouth to speak. There is only one thing to say. “Shpadoinkle!”
We go back to the car, grab our iPhones, and start researching the volumes, the texts. With a limiting 4G connection it is challenging, but finally I am able to reroute the encryption algorithms at the state of Hawaii’s central database. It’s true. Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, but also I learn that in 1972 there was a major incident at this site.
For a few years prior there had been ongoing disappearances of local farm workers. Occasionally there were sightings of something large with many legs. For some reason it seems that the people of the nearby towns of Haiku, Makawao, and Pa’ia knew there were weird things going on but just pretended not to notice. It seems that finally a teenage girl, Maki Makaha, and her friends learned that the source of the disappearances were a large number of giant centipedes. The centipedes, large, aggressive, vile red creatures with pincer-like appendages dripping with venom had been feeding on the local farm workers for years. Maki seems to have had unique and powerful fighting skills that enabled her to successfully combat the centipedes. Nights, weekends, holidays were all spent in the hunt for the disgusting arthropods.
The following year Maki and her friends discovered a new problem. Large, eyeless subterranean creatures with giant maws started burrowing up from below and devouring locals playing on the beach. In the early 1970’s Maui was not yet a major tourist destination so there was not a lot of press coverage of these incidents. Once in a while a United Airlines employee would get eaten, but the consensus was this was a good thing.
Maki and her friends again took on the task of fighting this new threat, the sand worms. An entire year was devoted to the elimination of this menace.
1972. Maki’s senior year in High School. She and her gang discovered a large steaming pit beneath Maui High School. This caldera, this hell mouth was the source of the centipedes, the sand worms, golfers, Republicans, Wal-Mart, and numerous other horrors too insidious to mention.
Details are sketchy, and while the high school was destroyed in the ensuing battle, it appears that Maki and her gang were able to not only close the hell mouth, but in fact to reverse it. Instead of being a source of evil spewing forth out of Maui, it became an anti-hell mouth. Badness, evil, stress, fiscal and social conservatism, all just suck out of your body and into the anti-hell mouth once you set foot on Maui .
While most pronounced on the Valley Isle, the effects of the anti-hell mouth are felt all over the Hawaiian islands. Thus the tourist industry.
So then we headed over to the Hali’imaile General Store for lunch. This is Bev Gannon’s signature restaurant and still my favorite place for lunch on this entire planet. Its close proximity to the anti-hell mouth may explain some of the appeal, but mostly it’s the crab pizza.
We are seated immediately at a nice window seat. Instead of ordering Mango Margaritas like usual this time we just have some yummy Basque wine and order two crab pizzas. Mark is not sharing and neither am I.
Do you remember a few years ago when I was in Provence and I had those magic potatoes? They were so good that they caused me to astrally project out of my body. I floated up and over the south of France and drifted towards Maui . I crashed into another me that was astrally projecting out of my body after having had my first bite of crab pizza on a trip. You remember this right?
Well, when I was in Provence I did not have a recollection of crashing into another me yet over Maui because it had not happened yet. It happened this time. Space / time is confusing, but this time I was floating up over Hali’imaile when I saw a slightly younger skinnier me heading my way. We crashed into each other and were sent flying back to our own bodies in the appropriate space / time continuum.
One odd thing here though, just before I got back into my current body and time, while I was falling back down to Hali’imaile, I could see the anti-hell mouth glowing nearby. I see glowy things like this all the time when I astrally project, but something wasn’t right this time. The color seemed off. Did the energy that was released when I crashed into the Provencal version of me do something bad? What if I caused the anti-hell mouth to get a little less anti?
You will recall that it was after I crashed into my other self over France was right when those horrible cicada aliens started taking over the EU. And remember when I was in London and had that really good halloumi at that Lebanese restaurant, and I was floating over the UK? And then I crashed into this post-crab pizza version of me, and then bird flu broke out in England?
Anyway, after the amazing crab pizza we ordered the Sashimi Napoleon, the second best thing on the menu. I will tell you now that I went to several other newer, much more expensive restaurants on this trip and nothing even comes close to Hali’imaile. However, I did have quite the amazing lunch the next day. More on this later!
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Dinner tonight is at Spago. The Wolfgang Puck restaurant in the Four Seasons Hotel. I hate hotel restaurants, but this one comes so well recommended I decide to try to have an open mind. Open minds are overrated.
So we walk up at 7:00 and explain we have reservations. Hostess says it will be a few minutes and that we can wait in the bar. I just hate this trick. It’s not like I was not going to have cocktails before dinner. Before we can ever order however we have to get up and get escorted to our table. Not sure what the point of all that was other than to piss me off.
We are seated in a wind tunnel blowing off the Pacific so that we can get an unobstructed view of the skirts of many, many blond women from California blowing up and confirming they do not have underwear on. Yes, I just threw up in my mouth again reliving this.
Our waiter is a robotic person incapable of original dialog. I order a lychee martini, which is muddled with real lychee and does not suck. Mark has some kind of cucumber thing he seems to like.
We order the famous tuna cones. These things are the primary reason we came here. They are the stuff of legend. Hand made little sesame cones filled with ahi and some kind of mysterious chili for some heat.
Do you remember the recent controversy about McDonald’s chicken McNuggets being made out of this processed pink foam?
Chicken parts processed with formaldehyde or something like that? Well, imagine taking ahi tuna, the most perfect wonderful food on earth (something that shouldn’t even need to be near to a candle flame before it’s consumed, let alone cooked through) and putting it in a Kitchen Aid food processor (OK maybe it was a Cuisinart), mixing with it with Miracle Whip, then stuffing it into this burnt little brown cone of sesame seeds with some jalapeño stuffed into the bottom.
This is a crime against humanity. I had to go back to watching the girls skirts fly up so I would be distracted enough to keep from vomiting.
Welcome to Spago. Enjoy the rest of your evening!
Our service was hurried, perfunctory, and forgetful. I asked for more bread 3 times. Mark finally had to get up and go rescue our wine bottle from its icy bucket and refill our glasses lest we sober up and walk out.
We both had fish entrees that were OK, but not for $50 each. The only thing that was done well here were the vegetables. I had a nice Kula tomato salad to start and the vegetables that came with my entree were cooked perfectly. Maybe this is a good place to come if you are a vegetarian and you want to pay $400 for two people.
What a stupid dining experience. Oh forgot about the $16 French press of coffee that did not even have coffee grounds in it. They poured regular drip coffee in! Did I mention how stupid this place is?
We go home and walk on the beach and drink pineapple wine. I see a slight glow on the left side of Haleakalā. The anti-hell mouth I assume. Is the glow a good thing or a bad thing?
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It’s spa day! Spa Day at the Grand Wailea. I just love this place. Giant sit down waterfalls that pound on your back and neck, differently flavored soaking pools depending on what toxicity you want removed from your body, a super-hot Japanese tub and a pretty hot Roman tub.
After an hour of this you get scrubbed down by some cute Hawaiian guy and then whisked away for a massage or a facial or a body wrap. My life does not suck. I am so aware of the not sucking.
After three hours of spa bliss we stumble out of the Grand Wailea and drive over to West Maui. We are going to lunch someplace new. Star Noodle is the brain child of the people who run the Old Lahaina Luau. The Old Lahaina Luau is a great thing. Fun, authentic, culturally relevant. Up until this point it has been the only reason to go to Lahaina. Lahaina is an old Hawaiian word for Cruel Sun. Formerly a whaling town, today it is a tourist town filled with t-shirt shops that suck the life out of you like a vampire. The cruel sun seems an apt name for this vampire town. I hate this place. I used to come here to buy masks at this great little shop run by The Universal Church Of The Life Force. They have packed up town and left. Star Noodle better be good.
It is! It is so good! Across the highway, in an industrial park climbing up the hill is Star Noodle. It has kind of an Asian / Modern décor. Several small tables, a large communal table, and a bar with a view of the kitchen. We are the only white people here, which is always a good sign.
We start off with cocktails. Shocking I know. I have this Asian Pear martini and Mark has a watermelon thing made with whiskey. Both are outstanding. Then we get these steamed buns filled with pork belly, hoisin, shitake mushrooms, and cucumber. If you ever get to taste these you will just fall down and wet your pants. They are that good. Fall down and wet your pants good. Then we get these Brussels Sprouts pan roasted with bacon in a kim chee puree. And we fell down and wet our pants. Again. And then we got this tuna belly sautéed in some kind of magical dashi ginger lemon olive oil ambrosia with Maui onions, and some garlic noodles with fresh and fried garlic, dashi, and green onions.
As I laid on the floor in my little puddle of pee I thought, yep I can just die now. This is the perfect way to go. No need to go on living now. I started to leave my body again, for good this time, but I saw another me from yesterday floating around and thought about the crab pizza over at Hali’imaile and I decided that my work here was not done yet. Star Noodle.
Worth the trip to Maui all on its own. Fly over in the morning, have lunch, fly home. It’s worth every penny.
I don’t really like West Maui . I am a South Maui boy. Ka’anapali, Napili, Kapalua, it’s all just golfing hell to me. You do get nice views of Lana’i and Moloka’i however. And the drive back to South Maui is gorgeous.
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Back in South Maui we try to go find this wine / cheese shop called Who Cut The Cheese? They have moved and changed the name to the not very helpful Guava, Gouda, and Caviar. We find them finally and go in.
The owner comes up and makes us taste some yummy pecorino and Humboldt Fog. We talk about our trips to Europe and how we stopped drinking American wine because of the vile oak problem. She agrees and we talk about Sancerre. Our eyes all close and we smile.
I decide to buy a little split of Sonoma-Cutrer to see how bad it is. The woman’s eyes grow wide in horror until I explain it’s really just a joke to see how bad our taste used to be. She gives us her card and a free gay guide to Maui . What made her think we were big homos? Doesn’t everyone close their eyes and sigh when they talk about Sancerre?
Dinner tonight is at Capische? I have been hearing about this place for years. Very highly recommended. It’s in the Hotel Wailea up the hill. After the disaster at Spooge-o, I mean Spazz-o, I mean Spago, the last thing I want to do is have dinner at a hotel restaurant again, but we have had reservations for weeks and this place is supposed to be great.
Eating Italian in Hawaii seems kind of dumb, but I know people who go to Italy all the time and rave about this place.
Again we get kind of a stupid response from the front desk, but other than that the service was OK. Way better than Spew-go.
We have cocktails and watch the sun set. Oh, that’s where you came into this story, isn’t’ it?
We go with the 11 year old waiter’s suggestion of a split appetizer of truffle risotto and pumpkin gnocchi. Both very good. We order a bottle of Gavi, which seems to impress the waiter. I get Crimini crusted Ahi as an entrée and Mark gets Opakapaka. Both are better than fine, but again the vegetables are amazing.
The bus boy tells us to order the Lilikoi panna cotta for dessert. This did not suck. Magic, ethereal, perfect. I did not pee, I did not leave my body, but this was one of the best desserts I can ever remember.
Would I come back here?
No. Eating Italian in Hawai’i is stupid, and this was really expensive, but I am glad I did it. Check that off the list.
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Last day. We walk on the beach to say goodbye to Maui . Then we are off to Mama’s Fish House over near the anti-hell mouth for a final blowout lunch before we get on the plane. Mark has graciously volunteered to pay for this.
Mama’s is the source of much controversy. Amazing location and views, incredibly fresh fish, great food, great drinks, but sometimes it does feel like this machine that just cycles people through in and out.
Not today. We have no wait at the front desk (unheard of!), and we get the perfect table: set aside from the main room, underneath its own bamboo canopy, with an unobstructed view of the beach and ocean. Drinks are great. Service is great and not rushed.
Poke and Opa ceviche to start, then I have Panang Curry and Mark has Ahi. Everything is just perfect.
Yes, there are little puddles of pee under our chairs.
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So at the end of my 20th trip to Hawai’i I need to start thinking about my next trip. November? I can’t stand not to have a trip planned. That assumes Hawai’i is still here. I sure hope I did not break it. Hopefully somewhere a young girl just discovered she is stronger and faster than everyone else.
Into every generation a slayer is born.....
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