Waikiki Visitors Bureau

I've been feeling sick for the past few days. Head congestion...you know. Needless to say, I hadn't had the energy to want to do much of anything but I felt I needed to be at this function for Hawaii since I plan events there.

It was AWESOME. Jake Shimabukuro, the grand master of the ukelele performed along with Hapa. But back to Jake. This kid is AWESOME. He brought the noisy room to dead complete silence while he played. check him out... www.jakeshimabukuro.com

Then I had the pleasure of meeting Roy Yamaguchi of the Roy's. He made some lau lau with mango sauce that was delish!!! http://www.roysrestaurant.com/

That was before I met ALAN WONG (Pineapple Room). He's even more awesome!! He made poke over guacamole over crispy fried wonton sprinkled with micro-shiso. His level of spiciness of the poke was PERFECT. Not too hot not too mild. Here's the embarrassing part - i joked with him about giving me a bento box for the poke...and he did!! see picture below. He's awesome. I think i gave him a kiss before i left. Many, many people were yelling at me as I left with my big @$$ container of poke.
http://www.alanwongs.com/pineroom/pine_room.html

goodie bag - i got more food & candy from there PLUS an autographed copy of Jake Shimabukuro's CD. I'll give a listen to it and let you know what I think!!! :) oh yeah...also got a stickpin from Ferragamo's!!

Napa Valley Weekend...

raye, bert, and erin in line for Golden Gate Bakery

Me & Chuck. Charles Shulz' hometown is Santa Rosa!!

I went up to Nor Cal to celebrate my belated birthday. An early wake up call of 3:00am to get to the airport for our 6:00am flight left me a bit loopy.

Bert had wanted to get an early start up North so booked us on a 6:00am (YIKES!!) flight. Needless to say, I was a bit tired. We started off our day with a breakfast at The Omelette Express in Santa Rosa. Great breakfast joint if you're looking for someplace to eat in Sonoma.

My omelette at Omelette Express

We followed that with a visit to Hartford, Davis, Alder Brook (YUCK), and Viader. I swore up and down to Erin, quite self righteously that I wasn't planning on joining a wine club. Yeah. I'm now a member of Viader. Don't ask, kids. It makes no sense to me at all, but for the fact that I tried all of their wines and liked each of them. Very solid wines that I felt comfortable buying.

Some weird art work at Davis Winery

Darn...could my joining the winery club have something to do with the cute dog??

or could it have been the magnificent views??

We finished up our first day at Greystone, the Culinary Institute of America's restaurant in conjunction with Wine Spectator. It was a delightful experience. Very expensive but I really enjoyed the dinner so I thought it was ok. Actually, i enjoyed everything around the actual main course but I think I was so full by the time I got the main course that it was almost wasted on me. (I had the duck, which I deduced to be around $6 per slice). The great stuff was the chef's hors d'oeuvres (yes, miles, that is the way you spell it) and dessert. everything else in between could've been just more hors d'oeuvres and more dessert. :)

erin's french onion soup...

bert's birthday creme brulee

The following day found us with rain and large crowds. We had a late start and I think I got a bit sick from too much coffee. We made it to only 2 wineries because we spent a lot of time at Miner's - another favorite wine of mine. Sadly, I can't remember how many cases of various wines are being shipped to my office. My boss is totally going to think he pays me too much and that I'm a complete wino. *SIGH*...we had a relaxing evening back at the hotel and decided to watch a movie - Letters from Iwo Jima. Pretty good, but I still had to read the subtitles because there were a lot of military words that I didn't understand. Some of the translation wasn't as good as the words they were actually using.

Erin and I decided to go for another movie and watched The Holiday. We both decided that th movie rated, "cute". nothing spectacular or gut wrenching. just mindless cutesy-ness.

We finished our weekend up in San Fran enjoying Chinatown. Yum yum dim sum. We went to a place called Lychee Gardens. Very Crowded...very greasy. but it was yums so I was happy. Bert let us run down to Golden Gate Bakery to pick up some baked goods. again...more pockets of deliciousness.

this is what I love about chinatown...underwear on display everywhere!!

all in all a very good weekend!! can't wait to go back!