Paradise, Long Beach style
Only the grating music keeps the Mai Tai Bar from being an island of bliss near the aquarium in downtown Long Beach
By Al Rudis, Restaurant editor
YOU'RE ON the North Shore of Oahu, or maybe it's Maui or the Big Island or Kauai.
Whichever island it is, you're on the lanai of a luxury hotel, relaxing with a mai tai and watching the sunset as a talented slack key guitarist softly plays and sings Hawaiian songs. Just another lousy day in paradise, you are thinking.
Now your vacation is over, and you're back in Long Beach. You're wandering around the new Pike at Rainbow Harbor and decide to go up the steps next to Bubba Gump's Shrimp Co. and get a view of the area around the Aquarium of the Pacific.
Wait! What's that verandah at the top of the steps with the sign that says no one under 21 allowed?
You walk in and you are transported back to the middle of the Pacific. It's as if they chopped out a chunk of that luxury hotel and flew it over to Long Beach.
You sit down in the outside area of the Mai Tai Bar and order some of the appetizers on the menu, or maybe one of the two entrees, and wow! Not only are they good, but they're very good and beautifully displayed on the plates. You sip your mixed drink, and you are relaxed, Hawaiian style.
You hear a few chords, and you think, they've thought of everything, even music. Then the music starts and you are jolted. What's this? Who's that person singing the hits of the '80s at the top of his lungs to the accompaniment of his overamplified acoustic guitar? It's totally inappropriate to the food, the atmosphere, the wonderful service, everything that makes this place special. Too bad!
It's not this way at the original Mai Tai Bar, according to General Manager Bagus "Goose" Anak-Agung-Gede. It came about when the owners of Bubba Gump's in the Ala Moana Shopping Center in Oahu were offered property across from the restaurant by the center's landlords.
"The concept was that they just wanted a lounge feel so that everyone could relax and enjoy the music," said Anak-Agung-Gede. What kind of music? I asked. "Hawaiian music in Hawaii," he said.
Why not Hawaiian music here? I asked.
"We do have some," he said. "Jerome Gray does a little Hawaiian music. But the solo music during the day is more like cover songs."
Here's my suggestion for changing the Mai Tai Bar in Long Beach from an unusually nice place to a nearly perfect place: Contact some of the huge reservoir of Hawaiian music talent in Southern California. There's more than enough to play tuneful, atmospheric music from 4 to 7 p.m. every Monday through Saturday and 3 to 6 p.m. on Sunday.
And if I'm wrong (I doubt it) and there's not enough good Hawaiian music around, how about some soft jazz or a crooner singing old Tin Pan Alley classics. Save the loud, edgy stuff for the bands that perform later in the night, when the mood is more enervated.
Meanwhile, my advice is to get a table as far from the bandstand as possible and enjoy the rest of what makes the Mai Tai Bar unique, especially such dishes as:
Onion rings. Vidalia onions are sliced and dipped in a batter of buttermilk, flour, eggs, salt, pepper and a special dry seasoning mix.
"It's used on a lot of our food," said Christine Hall, who's the chef of both the Mai Tai Bar and Bubba Gump's right below it. But even though the menu at the Mai Tai is relatively small, it's not cooked at Bubba Gump's and brought upstairs. Mai Tai has it's own small kitchen, and when Christine is needed downstairs, Sous Chef Jason Lloyd handles everything upstairs.
Hall said the Thai seasoning mix includes cumin, cinnamon and nutmeg and was developed by the Bubba Gump's and Mai Tai executive chef Martin Ibarra, whose home office is in Monterey.
The onion rings are served with homemade "Chinese barbecue sauce' for dipping. It's a strong sauce, containing hoisin sauce, chili garlic sauce, plum sauce, oyster sauce and a lot of raw garlic. Vegetarian potstickers. "We get them through a company called Berner Food Service," said Hall. "We picked out the ones we like the most that fill our need for a vegetarian product. The main ingredients are cabbage, onions, carrots, celery, tofu and eggs. We saute them in sesame oil for flavor and then flambe them to get them steamed and make sure they're hot." The potstickers come with another tasty homemade dip, Huli Huli sauce, which contains soy sauce, cilantro, garlic and the special Thai seasoning mix.
Blackened chicken spring rolls. Blackened translates to Cajun spices, including Cayenne pepper, that are burned onto the meat for the blackened effect. But this is a surprisingly mild blackened appetizer, and Hall thinks it's because of the pesto made from honey, cilantro, pine nuts and rice wine vinegar, all pureed together.
The already blackened chicken is wrapped into spring roll wrappers with the pesto. Then the rolls are deep-fried and cut up and served like sushi rolls. "Once you roll the chicken in the sauce, it really evens it out," said Hall.
The rolls are served with some more of the pesto for dipping, and also a Thai vinaigrette made from sweet chili sauce, chili garlic sauce and fresh mint.
Barbecued baby back ribs. The ribs are cooked at low heat for six hours and then topped with the same Chinese barbecue sauce that's served with the onion rings.
Edamame. The soybeans are tossed in olive oil, sea salt and pepper and then steamed in a bamboo steamer and served in the same steamer.
Flat Iron Steak. Executive Chef Ibarra created this dish, Hall said. "Flat iron is a shoulder cut," she said. "It's really popular right now and it holds up well to being broiled at high temperatures." The steaks are cooked on a gas charbroiler with a simple seasoning of kosher salt and pepper. Then they are cut into strips and served over rice, topped with a Chinese mustard sauce of mustard powder, horseradish, rice vinegar and wasabi.
Hoisin glazed salmon. The 8-ounce filet of Atlantic salmon marinated for two hours in hoisin sauce and then charbroiled to medium rare. It's served over rice with the Chinese barbecue sauce.
Three-cheese panini. Tim Busuld, the vice president, developed this dish, Hall said. It's a hot sandwich of fresh baked ciabatta bread with the house cheese spread — cream cheese, parsley and lemon juice — plus a baby spring mix of salad greens, tomatoes, onions and mozzarella, Monterey jack and provolone cheeses. All of this is cooked in a panini press ("It's like a flat top with teeth — that's what makes the lines in it," said Hall.) until the cheese is gooey hot.
Caesar salad. Petite romaine lettuce, homemade croutons from baguette bread that's toasted with a garlic herb oil, fresh grated parmesan cheese and a dressing made for Mai Tai by a food company.
Daikon slaw. This comes with almost every dish as a garnish, but don't just look at it. It's daikon radish, carrots and cucumbers grated and marinated in the Thai vinaigrette, and it's delicious by itself.
Chocolate torte. These are actually baked in the small kitchen first thing in the morning from bittersweet chocolate melted in a double boiler and combined with eggs, sugar and water. It's cooked in a ring and then reheated before serving with vanilla ice cream and raspberry sauce. "Our whole goal is when you cut into it with a fork, you kind of get a molten lava effect," said Hall.
Key lime pie. Also homemade, it's lime juice, sweetened condensed milk, egg yolks and cream cheese baked in a graham cracker crust.
The prices are reasonable at Mai Tai. There are only two entrees, the flat iron steak, $16, and the salmon, $13, but there are so many appetizers, dinner salads and sandwiches — even shrimp tacos — that it's easy to create a full meal from several small dishes. For instance, the chicken Caesar salad and barbecue baby back ribs will fill you up and probably leave you with leftovers for a total of $17. That's not cheap, but this is gourmet food disguised as bar snacks.
Service is excellent. The company philosophy is to "hire off personality, because we can train anybody as a cocktail server, but you can't train personality," Anak-Agung-Gede said. My servers had both personality and efficiency.
Another qualification seems to be the knack for looking good in short denim skirts that are the uniform in the day and early evening. Later the uniform changes to black skirts, said Anak-Agung-Gede, who refers to the employees as cocktail servers, even though — at least in the early evening — they are carrying more food than drinks around. He said that he has "all female servers right now," but it's definitely not a Hooters type operation.
So on the plus side there's the food, the service and the setting. What more could Mai Tai offer? Well, maybe some inclusive — rather than intrusive — music in the early evening.
Then it would really become like a bit of the islands re-created in Long Beach.