The Halekulani Hotel is considered among the best in Honolulu, it happens to be my favorite hotel and when you add the restaurant and bar, House without a Key where when the sun goes down you can hear true, old Hawaiian music and hula dancing as interpreted by a former Miss Hawaii, Kanoe Miller. During the day this beautiful restaurant overlooking the sparkling Pacific, serves a casual lunch and as of 2007, they mix in my opinion, the Number One Mai Tai on the island. You are right, I have not tasted them all and certainly I am not about to, but over the years I have covered a lot of ground. However, no Mai Tai surpassed the ones made by the dark-skinned, Hawaiian bartenders with shocking white hair who were resident for years at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel’s “Mai Tai Bar” on the terrace by the sea. They made the meanest Mai Tai I have ever tasted. They were delicious, and slipped down very easily; one would have you babbling and if you were brave enough to consume another you would be so to speak “under the table”.
Now, on to La Mer, which is the best top-quality, French restaurant in Honolulu that also happens to have a magnificent view to go along with it. It goes without saying that the restaurant is very expensive, though food products are expensive in Hawaii, due to importation of almost everything from the mainland, and a great deal of this has been first imported from somewhere else, and you are consuming these delicacies in the best hotel in the city as close to the beach as you can get with becoming wet. Chef Yves Garnier who previously was a chef in a top restaurant in Monaco and did the tour of a couple of Ritz-Carltons and to his credit has created a menu inspired by Provence, (South of France) that translates easily to the Hawaiian climate.