It's hard for me to grasp why anyone would wait more than half an hour, buzzer in hand, to eat at any type of restaurant, much less a chain. But here we are again, this time on a Saturday night at a place called Kona Grill.
The last time I was in this predicament was at a branch of Claim Jumper, also up here in the nether reaches of Summerlin. The new Cheesecake Factory, also in the sprawling Boca Park shopping complex, has even longer lines. I'm thinking there must be something in the water. At least I like the food at Kona Grill, or the idea of the food, anyway.
Because what this place does, in the very words of Michael McDermott, founder and president of the company that owns and operates the myriad Kona Grills around the Southwest, is: "American food with a Pacific Rim twist." And that's a good thing, not to mention a timely one.
That said, this is a nicely designed place, with an open patio, crowded bar (open on one side to some of Boca Park's snazzier shops), black granite sushi bar, and a nicely appointed main dining area constructed from copper, stone and handsome fabric.
A multitude of giant, canvas lamp shades, convex and alien looking, dominate the room with soft, glowing light. Behind the sushi bar are twin tanks stocked with an array of tropical fish, colorful denizens unavailable for hand-rolls.
A friend and I actually ended up at the sushi bar, as the list for a table in the dining room was distressingly long and the outdoor patio was virtually arctic. (The cheery hostesses told us that they would gladly serve us out there, anyway.)
For some unknown reason, the sushi bar was bone-empty, and when the chef, a wiseacre Eurasian-American wearing a John Belushi-like headband, told us we could have anything on the regular menu as well as sushi, we jumped at the chance to sit there. We started our meal by checking a couple of boxes on a sushi printout, and the sushi, which we probably would not have ordered at all in the dining room, turned out to be the highlight of the meal.
Not that anything was bad. We started with some nice Pacific albacore, and then progressed to a cut roll called The Wave, composed of good quality sushi rice rolled around spicy tuna; jumbo shrimp (always an oxymoron) tempura; and sliced avocado and sliced cucumber, with thin sheets of soy paper shielding the rice from the other ingredients.
Then we split an order of pad Thai, which looked like two full orders in any normal Thai restaurant. Kona Grill's pad Thai is a microcosm of the restaurant. The flat rice noodles were a tad overcooked, though not mushy, and the topping was a mixture of ground chicken and what tasted like chicken meatballs.
While pleasant and surprisingly spicy, the dish as a whole struck me as Thai food as interpreted by the Jaycees of Lawrence, Kansas; the dish had been all but completely de-souled.
Ditto for the Maui tacos, which look sensational in print. Here you get four hefty wraps, either macadamia nut chicken, or blackened catfish. Of the two, the fish is the better choice, but the kitchen generously will let you mix and match.
The chicken, in the form of breaded slabs, was bland, and I couldn't taste the macadamia nuts. The catfish, though, was delicious: crunchy, spicy bits with a taste partially obscured by all the avocado, tomato and sauce that envelopes them. In the end, I just tore the damned things apart and ate the fish plain.
For an entrée, we had the largest slab of ribs I have seen in some time, around a two-pound monster, spilling out over both edges of the plate. In order to like this dish, you have to like your ribs baked, and you'd better like cumin, which is used to excess. The plate happens to be loaded with good things, though, including Chinese long beans, a tasty Asian slaw, and wonderful Island fried rice shot through with shrimp, pineapple and bits of Chinese sausage.
A few other entrées are better than usual. One is Big Island meatloaf, served with more of that tangy Chinese sausage (the menu, for whatever reason, calls it Asian sausage), cheddar mashed potatoes, and wild mushroom ragu. One more to try is the sea bass: extremely tender fish with a nice miso-sake marinade.
Kona Grill's desserts are most fine, too. The lime pie is good, but would be better if the whipped cream topping lost the stabilizers. Instead, try passion fruit crème brulée, or better yet, Kona lava parfait: Kona coffee and macadamia nut brittle ice creams drizzled with a rich caramel sauce.
Yep, Kona Grill delivers bang for the buck, reasonably good food and a nice ambience. But is it all worth waiting for? The Summerlin crowd says yes.