Since we just started our annual vacation, we decided to try Kakaako Kitchen's monthly "Picnic on the Lanai". The catering arm of Chef Russell Siu's restaurant business offers special dinner events on Sunday and Monday evenings. Table 13 is a dinner held on Mondays where you contact Kakaako Kitchen to arrange a special menu Created by Chef Siu along with your price point and it's served inside the restaurant complete with tablecloth and silverware - you pay for 12 diners and the 13th is on the house.
Then there's the monthly "Picnic on the Lanai" usually held on the last Sunday of the month where the meal follows a certain theme. Previous Sundays have highlighted the flavors of China, Spain, the Northeast, the Southwest and the Northwest. Last night's dinner highlighted Hawaii with a menu that looked like this:
Taro Poke with Chili
Pepper Water
Pulehu Prawns
Dusted with KK Chili Salt
Hawaiian Sweet
Rolls with Lilikoi Butter
Portuguese Bean
Soup
Long Grain Rice
with Scallions
Stewed Chicken with
Green Papaya
Soy Sake Glazed
Ahi with Pineapple Chili Relish
Guava Cheesecake
with Macadamia Nut Crust
All this for just $39.75 and it is BYOB (a big plus). When we first arrived, it seemed that most of the diners were regulars who dined at previous "Picnic on the Lanai" before as they were greeted by the servers on a first name basis. Because it's a "picnic", there's no silverware, just paper plates, plastic utensils, paper napkins and Govino plastic wine cups for your beverages. I personally have no problem with picnicware. It's the flavors that count and everything was great! Good tako poke with a "burn the mouth" chili pepper water, perfectly grilled shrimp (and we were served seconds), good Portuguese bean soup that wasn't too salty (sometimes bean soup can be quite salty and we were offered seconds but declined), very tender chicken papaya (and once again we were offered seconds on the rice and chicken by Chef Siu himself but declined) and perfectly seared ahi with a nice red center - we were stuffed by the last course and asked for a box for the last 2 pieces of ahi. Not only did our server bring a box, she added another 4 pieces of ahi to our box! If there was a miss, the only miss was the guava cheesecake didn't have a lot of guava flavor though we loved the airy consistency since we were quite full. The Kakaako Kitchen website doesn't list subsequent "Picnic on the Lanai" events but the next one is on November 22nd with this menu:
Though we're not on vacation on the 23rd, we plan on attending the next event because you get a great meal, the servers are very attentive, it's BYOB and the atmosphere is almost like you're at someone's home party just that there are several home parties all around you going on at the same time...
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