Kahumana Cafe

Friday nights are date night. Like our back-and-forthing with movie selections, I told Matt I wanted to pick our first Oahu date night locale, and he could choose the second one.

I get these nice little Yelp updates once a week, and last week's held the answer: a cafe on an organic farm up in Waianae. "Matt!" I yelped. "This is the place!"

Waianae isn't an area recommended in the guidebooks. To get to Kahumana Cafe, we drove through neighborhoods with lots of mangy dogs and barefoot kids running in the street. Matt looked at me dubiously and told me that one of his co-workers took her daughter to this place, but, on arrival, decided it looked so sketchy, they didn't even get out of the car.

To our right, mountains. To our left, miles of narrow beaches where the plan for the night seemed to be pitch a tent and fire up the grill. 

"Charming!" I insisted. "Local color!" 

After a couple of missed attempts (aka, "Surely this cannot be a restaurant ..."), we located a cook-ish looking person in a kitchen-ish looking room of a house-ish sort of place and asked if they were open for a dinner. Yes, indeed, we were promptly shown to one of three tables on a screened porch overlooking a small-ish sort of farm.

Matt got quiet. I'm not sure if he was more alarmed by the overturned cement mixer or the breeze wafting up the scent of cow manure.

"Five stars!" I fiercely whispered. "Five!" The other two tables were occupied with diners happily chowing, and more guests trickled into a hall-ish looking room, bringing bottles of wine and animated conversation with them.

In defense of funky little restaurants the world over, the food was superb. We sipped a pale pink concoction that tasted something like a ginger-jasmine-lemon-water. Since all was organic, I had some sort of white fish (ono? obo?) in a curry sauce on a bed of greens and rice. I don't remember what Matt ate, other than, between mouthfuls, he grinned. And for dessert, we shared a tiny square of tart cheesecake that was ... I'm not exaggerating ... the best I've ever had.

We scooted back to the car, slapping the mosquitos off our thighs. I could tell next week's date night would involve air conditioning and standard light fixtures.

When company's coming? Oh, we're going to Kahumana Cafe. And I will not be sharing my cheesecake.