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In hindsight, our first “real” course was perhaps my favorite, but that
decision changes every time I talk about the meal so, who knows. Anyway,
Ivan, at this point, was tableside to announce and explain each course.
He told us that we were
At the end of the evening Ivan gave me his little check list which
under-described everything and identified the next dish as simply Uni
pasta. A small and delicate piece of Uni [sea urchin] rested on a
generous piece of
Our next gastronomic adventure might have appeared on a breakfast menu
from the “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” as it was loosely described
on Ivan’s
OK, with the first course being sort of a juice, then a seafood
appetizer, then a lettuce wrap, then an antipasto, then a
Did I mention that all these are coming out perfectly timed? By now
several different bottles of Sauvignon Blanc have been circulating and
enjoyed, the most memorable of which was a Whitehall Lane. D.K.
[Sansei's owner] was nice enough to send a lovely Fume Blanc whose name
escapes me and the last of the whites was a Muller Thurgau and this time
it's the grape's name eludes me, but it too was really delicious. Most
people were drinking the whites and all were offered tastes of each but
my favorite for the evening was a bottle of McLaren Vale’s
I’ve gone on far too long already, but no course could really be described in any less detail and none could possibly be skipped…
So there you have it. In a nutshell, if you ever
have a chance to eat at Sansei Kapalua,
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Last Friday I was lucky enough to be invited to another of
the off-the-charts, custom-made meals prepared by Sansei Maui Executive
Chef Ivan Pahk. This is the third time Ivan has done this, or at least
it is the 3rd time I know of, initiated and hosted by friend,
publicist and famous foodie Bonnie Friedman. The guests, Bonnie’s “A”
list, comprised eight enthusiastic friends, all of whom knew what to
expect and arrived dressed to the nines at Sansei Kihei. Ivan had agreed
to drive over from Kapalua to do his magic act in Kihei to save us all
the drive to the “other” side of the island… a feather in his cap and he
hadn’t even donned his toque yet! After the traditional exchange of hugs
and lei and salutations, our merry band of bread-breakers settled in
with a glass of Prosecco (Italian sparkling wine, newly popular in the
Our waiter for the evening introduced himself to the assembly as Bennett
and proceeded to tell us all the general plan…and seconds later put into
play the first little surprise from the kitchen, a Kunia watermelon [a
location on O'ahu] and sake shooter. Watermelon, long famous for
absorbing vodka seamlessly, was equally comfortable mating with sake.
Ivan included some texture with finely chopped watermelon cubes and some
chiffonade of shiso – a subtle Japanese herb in the mint family –
floating on the top. Unlike the name implies, this really wasn’t made
for shooting down because of the cubes and shiso needing to be chewed a
bit but, down they went and up came the smiles around our table… Nice
start! Side note – as I know I will be using it a number of times,
a chiffonade is actually a French term and refers to thin little strips
of something. Usually used to describe an “herb cut,” you roll up the
leaves and slice them really thin, sort of like a julienne cut for
veggies only thinner. 
about to have a potato-crusted oyster on a bed of sautéed baby spinach
on a crostini and topped with a spicy guava jelly. I wish a picture was
worth a thousand words, but this one isn’t so sharp and doesn’t come
close to telling the story. This was just delicious! The potato crust
was just thick enough that you caught the flavor, admit it, who doesn’t
like a good French fry, but the real treasure was a nanosecond later
when the oyster arrived on the palate with its salty juiciness. I’m not
as big a fan of raw oysters as Jane or Geri, for instance, but a
pan-seared or cooked oyster is without comparison in my book and this
one, from Fanny Bay, was just as good as it gets… but wait, there’s
more. The soft, sautéed spinach was the perfect companion for the
crunchy crostini. But wait, there’s more… Ivan had taken guava jelly and
kicked it up a couple of notches with some rice vinegar, fish sauce and
sambal etc.. Some chiffonade of cilantro on top for looks and a distinct
flavor charge and this little treasure earned Ivan his first round of
applause. I saw several among us with a fork and knife but this dish was
made to pick up and my only regret was that it survived only two bites!
prosciutto over a bed of angel hair pasta [in a light cream sauce]. From
the bottom up this time, the pasta was al dente and perfect and the
sauce sublime. Everyone loves prosciutto but Ivan had made this thin
delicacy completely crispy and under the tiniest pressure from your fork
it cracked into a dozen pieces. I am actually eating from the bottom up
and so far we’ve gone from an Alfredo sort of thing to a Carbonara sort
of thing but it was when I got to the Uni that it clearly became an Ivan
sort of thing. Uni has a flavor I am not qualified to discuss, in truth
I didn’t taste it by itself. That said, it’s got sort of a
seafood/nut-like flavor going on that worked beautifully with the
“prozhoot”[as my wanna-be-Italian friends pronounce it] and added a
totally unique quality to this pasta dish. I would never have expected
it to be as good as it was because I so love Italian food and would have
thought this almost perfect Carbonara dish defiled by such a strange
ingredient but indeed it was a fantastic complement to it and so too to
Ivan’s ingenuity! I wondered if there was some seafood base to the pasta
sauce that escaped me so I called Ivan and he surprised me, 1) there was
no cheese at all [I thought there was a little Asiago] and 2), he
had indeed used some Uni in the sauce – no doubt why it all hung
together so well. 
Our next course was a small piece of foie gras paired with a piece of
black cod in a caramelized miso /sake sauce served on a palm-sized leaf
of Waipouli lettuce. Foie gras, when cooked, is usually cut very thin
and very quickly either sautéed or pan-seared at high temperature
leaving the center just a bit pink and that’s exactly how Ivan’s was,
perfectly pink and moist. The black cod [sablefish/butterfish] is
actually the highest valued finfish in
notes
as poached egg and sausage, but it was much more than just that. Ivan
had handmade some duck sausage and poached the cutest little quail egg
your ever saw, rested them on a bed of goat cheese polenta and leaned a
slice of stuffed green olive against the egg. As Bonnie pointed out it
was like a not-so-poor-man’s version of Loco Moco [a popular dish in
Hawai‘i with a hamburger patty topped with a fried egg on a scoop of
white rice and smothered in gravy. Is there a cardiologist in the
audience?]. The sausage was amazingly juicy and delicious with
lots of subtle flavors rising up in the background. He described it as
sort of duck chorizo and it had hints of cumin, garlic, ginger, chili
powder and apple vinegar sneaking through. The polenta, made pretty
typically yet somehow as light as foam, had some goat cheese in it that
leant to its creamy texture and the egg had just enough liquidity left
to the yolk to send a sliver of bright yellow across the sausage and
onto the polenta. The little slice of green olive brought a sharp but
superb contrast to the mixing of the egg, sausage and polenta and the
colors were as festive as the flavors! This dish disappeared all too
fast, a trend that was repeated all night long.
breakfast…
Ivan described this next course as our “salad” course. In fact it was a
tempura[ed] piece of Brie on a puff pastry cracker with tiny chopped
green apples, strawberries and sliced red grapes drizzled with honey
butter… The whole thing was warm and soft and delicious and this time
not really appropriate finger food. I looked at Ivan as I was about to
pick it up and he made a gesture implying “go for it” and so I did…
apples and grapes everywhere, but it tasted divine and I was not to be
put off one bit. I reassembled the fruit back on top and went for a
second bite. I was surprised at how a piece of puff pastry could survive
this brutal attack and when asked he explained that he rolled it out on
a sheet pan, topped it with some parchment and put three more sheet pans
on top of it to “press” the pastry while it “puffed.” Salad course??
I’ve scoured salad bars for decades and never seen anything remotely
like this!
Can
you believe it, we’re about to have a seventh course, so we’ve just
passed the 2/3 mark, but who’s counting?? Soba gnocchi and seared
scallop, say Ivan’s check list, with little wedges of grape tomatoes.
What a relief, this dish was actually as simple as it sounds. A
perfectly seared scallop was the basis for a simple sauce and the
gnocchi, made with buckwheat flour – the kind used for soba noodles –
and potato, just like a “typical” gnocchi only much, much tastier.
Several people at the table commented on how “earthy” the puffy little
pillows tasted, like the “terroir” of a good wine. The dish also
included chives and maybe a little garlic and probably four or five
other ingredients I didn’t catch. My notes are a little messy and I am
not certain that these were in the right place but I think the cream
sauce had a little
Dead
Letter Office Shiraz [try it sometime, it is a great red!] The
dinner's courses seem to be coming out about every 15 minutes or so.
There’s no rush here, we’re on a Gastronomic Safari and have miles to go
before we sleep… Interestingly that word is often misused and I am sort
of guilty of doing so just now. Gastronomy is actually the study of the
relationship between culture and food, not just of food itself. So, in
the sense that there were many interesting conversations taking place
throughout the evening and we were in a contemporary Japanese/sushi
restaurant in Hawai‘i and food was the central theme of the gathering
maybe calling it a gastronomic safari wasn’t all together a misuse of
the word… Anyway, here comes Ivan and now – back to the food. Ivan
introduced Moi with tempura[ed] Hamakua mushrooms and a smoked tomato
vinaigrette sauce.
I
can’t believe I have made it this far without yet resorting to the most
overused word at the table that Friday night; WOW! With the runner-up
“unbelievable,” “WOW” kept popping up with every course. Let’s start at
the bottom again. Most people’s immediate questions went to the
mushrooms, but mine went to the pool of smoked tomato at the bottom. How
was it possible to impart such a strong smoky flavor to a tomato? It
literally had that subtle taste of bacon probably because we’re all so
used to smoked bacon. Had I not known Ivan I would have gone with my
first guess that he cheated and used half a bottle of liquid smoke
[available in the spice department of most supermarkets] but this was
Ivan, he would not be so crass. When I spoke with him this morning he
told me did it the old fashioned, right way and smoked the tomatoes in a
smoker with “green’ applewood chips. Wow, now that’s what I call SMOKE!
Moving up, the mushrooms that caught everyone else’s attention caught
mine now, they weren’t like wimpy mushrooms they were almost like meat!
They had been tempura-battered and deep fried and still had a firmness
to them that surprised us all. Turns out to be a member of the oyster
mushroom family called Ali`i Oyster and were cultivated over in Hamakua
on Hawai‘i Island. But wait, there’s moi!! Moi is a delicate, flakey
white fish and forever prized in Hawai‘i. It was moist and delectable,
but to me, this dish will always be the smoked tomato sauce with that
other stuff on top. I was just captivated by that flavor and while I
loved it all, it was that part which made the biggest impression. I
might even buy a smoker some day!
OK, I’ve got to wrap this up, it is getting far too long and there are
two courses to go – and a surprise finish… I wouldn’t call this a
“do-over,” but the next dish is something that Ivan has treated us to in
the past, a lobster risotto. Geri had been hoping all week for a risotto
– she thinks Ivan makes the best she’s ever tasted – and we were all
happy she got her wish! Any good risotto takes a while to prepare and
this one was no exception. Ivan started with some roasted garlic and
Our final course, at least the final one on Ivan’s check list was the
meat dish… a Moroccan-braised short rib on cauliflower puree and topped
with raita and micro-croutons. This would have made a killer entrée in
itself, well, most of the dishes would have, but this one had it all.
The cauliflower was just great – especially the creamy texture – and
sort of a surprise on the tastebuds, it looked more like a traditional
bed of mashed potatoes but has the flavor of pure cauliflower. The meat
was predictably perfect with a robust flavor enhanced by typically
Moroccan seasonings – cumin, cinnamon, and the like – and the raita [a
popular Indian yogurt-based topping with cucumbers and onion, cilantro…]
added a creamy nature to the juices from the meat. Really, dare I say,
scrumptious! 
But wait, there’s 