Zaney's on Nuuanu Ave. just north of Chinatown, is supposed
to be a must-see for its famous garlic chicken. Experience
indicates that those who rate it as such must be regulars at
cheap buffets. Not that the stuff is bad - in fact, it's
quite palatable for cheap fast Chinese. Thigh meat chicken
is deep-fried and then coated in a sugary garlicky sauce: it
retains its lovely crunch despite the coating, which is a
bit of a feat; but there is way not enough shoyu in the
recipe, and a touch of ginger would have helped as well to
cut the sweet. A healthy portion, 2 or 2 1/2 thighs' worth,
on the mini lunch, which came with a quite good though gummy
mac salad and decent though gummy rice. I'd consider going
back but would get plain chicken. And maybe a vegetable -
though the custom of putting lettuce salad in plate lunches
makes me shake my head with dismay.

=

Angelo Pietro, 1585 Kapiolani Blvd., is in the ground floor
of an office-shopping type complex at the edge of a pink
light district. It's apparently part of a Japanese-based
chain, and its "Italian" food often comes with a certain
Asian, er, perspective. I came here for the famous bacon
natto spaghetti - spaghetti I understand, and spaghetti and
bacon I understand, but natto? Natto, for the uninitiated,
is one of the more exotic cultured soybean products - I
don't know what microorganism is to blame for it, but what
you end up with is salty beans with a nice furuish taste
held together with strands of ropy glop. What came:
spaghetti, not in its first youth, and rather non-al-dente,
coated with the natto slime (the beans had fallen to the
bottom of the bowl), okay but not at all crisp bacon (the
dish would have been better with the textural contrast of
good hard-fried bacon), and a huge pile of nori julienne
on top. The dish, alas, is not notable in any way; the
experience is similar to what I'd imagine would obtain if
someone sneezed in my carbonara. The nori added a vague
intriguing fishiness, but it took on moisture from the
spaghetti steam and became sticky and unpleasant, adding
more texture than the natto had done.

Thank goodness for Kirin; the waiter, though, seemed a bit
disappointed that I managed to down the whole dish
without having to wash it down with a second one.

A propos the location, halfway through the meal a truly
gorgeous mixed blood girl in her late teens or early 20s,
dressed rather provocatively, sat at a nearby table and
kept looking over at me, and I don't think it was my amazing
handsomeness nor that of natto spaghetti that caused this
attention. I decided to take it innocently and assume that
she merely wanted to lure the miraculous mandarin someplace
and have some thugs sell him lingerie at inflated prices.