Hawaii Food Tour – Dinner at Marukame Udon

That’s right – we said “Hawaii Food Tour”.  We’re spending a week in Honolulu, on the island of O’ahu.  When we first moved to Indiana, twenty years ago, we began taking February vacations – to go someplace warm in the middle of winter.  Somehow, we fell out of the habit over the last ten years, but decided that in 2019 we would start again. So here we are, back in Hawaii.  We’re looking for places that are off the tourist maps, where the locals go, that let us eat well without costing a Hawaiian king’s ransom

This is the latest in a series of posts to report on what we saw, smelled and tasted.  So, “Aloha” – here we go!

What is “udon”?

Sometimes you want a fancy meal and sometimes you just want comfort food.  I’ll confess to knowing practically nothing about Japanese cuisine, but I’ll bet that udon noodles in a warm broth qualifies as comfort food.  It certainly was for us when we ate at Marukame Udon on Waikiki.

Udon is a popular type of noodle in Japan.  It is made from wheat flour, and is usually served in a warm broth.  The noodles are cut wide – about ¼” to ⅜”. I think of them as the cousin of soba noodles, which are made from buckwheat and are usually served cold.  We have a soba recipe in the regular rotation at home, so I’m familiar with them, but udon was a new thing.

Let’s go someplace close tonight

It was the end of our first full day on O’ahu.  We had hiked about 10 miles, criss-crossing Waikiki amid gale-force winds and sudden rain storms.  We weren’t up for a long walk to dinner, so finding someplace close to the hotel was a priority. Mary had read some reviews of Marukame Udon and thought it sounded good.  It was a short walk from the hotel, so off we went.

Marukame Udon is on Kuhio Avenue, just across from the International Marketplace – a multi-story indoor shopping mall where you can buy anything from jewelry to a Harley Davidson motorcycle.  Kuhio runs parallel to Kalakaua Avenue, a block inland from the beach.

Waiting Our Turn

We had read that there was usually a line out the door at Murakame Udon, and this evening was no exception.  We arrived at 5:50pm and found a line that stretched to the end of the building and doubled back past the door.  The line moved quickly, so it was not a problem.

As you approach the front door, you can watch a man making noodles in a small, glass-walled room.  Large sacks of flour are stacked behind him. On this shift, the guy was working continuously – pulling big sheets of dough out of proofing drawers, running them through the press, folding them and passing them back through.  Occasionally he would put one of the big sheets through a slicing machine that turned a 2’ x 3’ piece of dough into dozens of long, fat noodles.

At the next station, another man was continuously cooking noodles. He put the raw noodles in a big net and dipped it in a vat of boiling water.  After a few minutes, he would drain and rinse the noodles and separate them into large coiled portions.

At the next station, two women made the noodle dishes.  The first woman placed a coil of noodles in a large bowl, then added a large ladleful of broth.  The second lady added whatever other ingredients were needed – beef, curry sauce, raw eggs, whatever.  She then handed us our bowl and we proceeded around a corner to the tempura station.

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There were at least ten different tempura choices – including fried vegetable strips, shrimp, calamari, chicken, sweet potato and pumpkin. Mary picked sweet potato and chicken.  I got the vegetable and an inari – a fried pouch of tofu stuffed with rice and vegetables.

At one point the serving line stopped moving.  This happens whenever the dining room gets full.  When it clears out, the line starts again. In our case, we waited less than ten minutes.  We were seated and ready to eat 40 minutes after we first got in line outside.

This is really good!

Mary had udon with beef.  I had one with curry. Both were good, though we would have liked the broth to be a bit hotter.  The curry was mild and was a nice complement to the fat, succulent noodles. Mary’s had a rich flavor of beef combined with the green onions and slightly salty broth. I fumbled with the chopsticks, but the hearty taste kept me going.  (Warning: Don’t wear a clean white shirt to eat udon.)

The tempura was very good.  Mary’s chicken was our favorite.  The batter was light and crispy and the chicken was cooked just right. (Is it wrong to say it reminded us of KFC?) My veggie ball – a big bloomin’ bouquet of cabbage and onions – was slightly sweet, like a good fried onion ring.

Now here’s the best part:  Our dinner – two full meals of delicious, made-from-scratch food – was less than $20.  In the middle of Waikiki, they could have charged twice as much and still had a line outside the door.

Coming soon to a town near you?

If we had stayed in Hawaii longer, we would probably have gone back for another meal at Marukame Udon.  We saw a second location in downtown Honolulu later in the week, and I had read a review of a location in Los Angeles, so I guessed it might be part of a small chain.  But while doing the background research for this post, I learned that these shops are part of a larger restaurant group, the Toridoll Holdings Corporation.  Toridoll operates over 1,600 restaurants in Japan, China, Thailand, Korea, Australia, Indonesia, USA, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia, Kenya, Italy and Myanmar.

They have an ambitious goal – “To become one of the world’s top ten restaurant brands with 500 billion Yen sales [approximately $4.5B USD] and 6,000 premises in 2025”. According to a chart on their web site, that would make them comparable in size to Chipotle Mexican Grill and Bloomin Brands (Outback Steakhouse, Carrabba’s Bonefish Grill, Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse) and a bit smaller than Darden Restaurant Group (Olive Garden, Yard House, Capital Grill, Longhorn Steakhouse and others).  Clearly, Toridoll have big ambitions.

So… while we didn’t get a second chance to eat there in Hawaii, maybe someday soon we’ll get a chance to visit one of their restaurants closer to home.

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What’s your favorite memory of a surprising meal while traveling? Leave us a comment below to tell us about it.

We’ll be back shortly with another update from O’ahu.  Mahalo (thank you) for coming along for the ride.

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