Dinner @ Sushi Sasabune in Honolulu, HI

I happened to be in Honolulu for a wedding and decided I had to check out atleast one nice restaurant in the area.  My girlfriend and I eventually decided we wanted to get some nice sushi in the area and eventually settled on Sushi Sasabune after seeing their great reviews online, their 28/30 rating on Zagat, and (AFAICT before going there) their apparent lack of a menu (i.e. they only serve an omakase meal).

The restaurant is a bit off from the touristy Waikiki but an easy enough drive/taxi over there.  My recollection was in a pretty nondescript strip mall, next to a yarn/fabric store and about a block away from a storage facility .  When the restaurant called to confirm the reservation, they wanted to make sure I understood that this restaurant was  a traditional Japanese sushi restaurant and no tempura or California rolls were available.  I guess they get a number of tourists that wander in not knowing what they're getting into.

The restaurant offers two different omakase menus, one that is "eastern" and one that is "western".  Apparently the latter concentrates only (or mostly) on fish while the former contains more shellfish in the tasting.  The example the waiter gave us was that uni would be in the "eastern" menu.  We ended up going for the "eastern" tasting.

Before going through the photos, its perhaps important to note that at any point you can just tell the server you're done eating.  Unlike most omakase/tasting menus I've had, it's more the sushi chef serving you whatever off of the a la carte sushi menu.  So if you're full, you can just say you're full and they'll stop bringing you food and the bill at the end will be a bit cheaper.  I don't know if this is the way "authentic" Japanese omakase tastings are, but this is what they do here.

Overall, the meal was quite large, 1 sashimi course, 1 cooked appetizer, 1 cooked seafood dish, 1 soup, 1 oyster, 1 hand roll, and 17/18 nigiri, and some ice cream at the end.

1) abalone - steamed, sashimi w/ salt & lemon, liver

The first course was a tasting of abalone.  This course was my favorite of the night, as I've never had abalone sashimi style and never had abalone liver.  The liver was particularly delicious.

2) norwegian mackerel w/ miso

The second course was fish in a miso sauce.  The dish was served cold.  This was an ok dish.

We noticed another table get a calamari dish instead of this.  Unsure if it was because they ordered the "western" menu instead.

3) fatty toro

The first nigiri course was two pieces of fatty toro, one with a sweet sauce and one that was smoked.  Both were delicious.  I completely forgot to take a photo of the first nigiri course.  Because it's not a preset tasting like many other places I've gone to, I concentrated on taking notes and just simply forgot to take the picture.  This picture on Yelp is a good example of the first nigiri course.

4) snapper w/ plum sauce, halibut

Next up was some red snapper and halibut.  The red snapper had (what my notes said) was a plum sauce on top and the halibut had a sauce I cannot recall.  I think this is a good example of the type of sushi you get a Sushi Sasabune.  There's a lot of sauces and interesting things on top of the nigiri.

I'm not gonna comment on every nigiri as we move on.  I think the pictures are sufficient.

5) skip jack, amber jack

6) scallop w/ yuzu jelly, salmon w/ trout caviar & cream

The yuzu gelatin on top of the scallop was a little strong in my opinion, hiding flavor of the scallop.  I found the cream a surprising addition to the salmon, but it tasted really good.

7) shrimp w/ shrimp paste, geoduck, oyster w/ oyster sorbet

The oyster w/ oyster sorbet was quite interesting.  Before downing the oyster I tasted the sorbet by itself, and sure enough, it is oyster flavored sorbet.  It added exactly what you'd expect, extra oyster flavor to the oyster.  The geoduck was particularly tasty.  The shrimp wasn't sweet shrimp, which surprised me because that's the only raw shrimp I've ever had prior to this.

8) saba, aji

9) crab w/ ???, squid w/ uni sauce

I found the addition of uni sauce on top of the squid quite interesting.

10) uni, ikura

11) baked Alaskan king crab

A table close to us that also got the "eastern" menu got lobster instead of king crab.  Unsure why, perhaps it was a request of theirs.

12) tamago, anago

The anago was quite interesting, not the normal barbecue drenched unagi eel you usually get.

13) negitoro roll

Negitoro is apparently one of this restaurant's signature dishes.  We probably should have asked them to only serve us 1 negitoro roll which we would split, but we didn't.  The roll was fine, but my judgement may be flawed because I was getting stuffed by this point.

14) miso soup w/ shrimp head

The miso soup contained a shrimp head, which I assume came from the shrimp nigiri earlier in the meal.  The flavor of the shrimp was clearly in the broth.  I really enjoyed this, as it was different from the normal miso soup you get at most Japanese restaurants.

15) green tea ice cream

Finally you get your choice of several flavors of ice cream at the end of the meal.  We chose to share one scoop of ice cream at the end as two scoops would have overdone it.

Online, I saw a review that called this restaurant "sushi fusion", which is maybe an accurate description.  I've never seen yuzu gelatin, oyster sorbet, uni sauce, cream, etc. on sushi before.

Unlike most other tasting menus I've had, the pacing of the food was quite quick.  The food came out one right after another, so there wasn't a lot of time to let previous courses digest a bit.  The first 10 courses were done within an hour and a half easily, maybe it was closer to 11-12 courses.  Only by eating slowly on the last few courses did we stretch this out closer to 2 hours (but still under 2 hours total).  I've been told that sushi in Japan can be very rapid pace.  I don't know if this is like what you'd get in Japan.

Overall a great experience.  The only other high end sushi place I have to compare to is Kusakabe in San Francisco, which was 1 Michelin Star at the time of my dining.  I think the individual nigiri was better at Kusakabe and I might lean to Kusakabe for the overall better balanced meal with different dish types and a slower pace.

Dinner @ The Pineapple Room in Honolulu, HI

While my girlfriend and I were in Honolulu we wanted to go on a fine dining trip somewhere.  We had originally thought of going to Alan Wong's, a generally highly regarded restaurant in Honolulu.  The reviews of Alan Wong's were mixed amongst friends that had been there.  Some said it was great, others said it was meh.   I'm sure some amount of it was based on personal tastes of Hawaiian flavors.  We ended up going with Sushi Sasabune after deciding we wanted a sushi fix instead. 

My girlfriend and I were looking to grab dinner near our hotel in Waikiki one evening but everything was packed and had long lines.  So I went to my good friend Opentable and the first restaurant listed was The Pineapple Room by Alan Wong, a more casual offshoot of the flagship Alan Wong restaurant.  So we figured ... why not.  Getting there in 15 minutes is better than waiting an hour for a table in Waikiki.

This restaurant is very casual and the most casual restaurant that I've reviewed on my blog.   The restaurant is inside the Macy's at the Ala Moana mall.  Yes, inside the Macy's.

I'm only writing about it because it happened to have a small four course tasting on the menu and there were enough ingredients I had to look up, I figured it'd be interesting to write up.

1) Ho farms tomato and watermelon salad w/ Hawaii island dairy goat cheese, ume dressing

First off, a light salad with a ume sauce.  I didn't know what ume was, but it's a plum.  The dressing was a bit sour, which is simply the flavor of ume (which once you're in Hawaii long enough, you'll see on a lot of menus and as snacks and flavoring for shaved ice).  Interesting, but not my particularly taste.

2) Sizzling "hapa" poke - w/ garlic aoili, bubu arare, chirashi musubi

So the name of this dish confused me.  I know "hapa" is a slang word used to describe a person of mixed ethnicity.  I guess the "hapa" here is the fact that the poke (tuna) is half cooked on this sizzling plate.

The chirashi musubi also confused me.  Definitions online say that "musubi" is a ball of rice with meat on top (which is what I was most familiar with, such as with "spam musubi") and "chirashi" is typically raw fish on rice.  I'm not sure what this means, because there's clearly no meat on top of the rice.  Perhaps it's mixed into the rice  ... I have no idea.

Anyways, I thought this was a good dish, everything was quite tasty.  My favorite of the four courses.

3) Hoisin sriracha glazed short ribs w/ Prawn, choi sum, tobanjan sauce, big island goat cheese

These ribs were really soft and there was a kick to the dish.  However, I felt that the all of the flavors together didn't really mix well though.  Hoisin, sriracha, and tobanjan ... not the mix I typically think of with ribs.  This also came with a bowl of rice (your choice of white or brown), which I didn't take a picture of.

4) Waiaula old fashioned chocolate pudding w/ David murdock's private estate 70% chocolate

The dessert of chocolate pudding was good, but I couldn't finish it.  It was quite rich.

Keeping in mind that this is the far more casual restaurant compared to Alan Wong's flagship, I'm sort of glad I chose Sushi Sasabune instead of going to Alan Wong's.  It's not necessarily a knock on the restaurant itself, but there were Hawaiian flavors that weren't flavors I was familiar with.  If it's an indication of what would be at Alan Wong's, I might have left Alan Wong's not too happy.  Those more familiar with Hawaiian flavors or tastes may not be caught off guard as much as I was.

I will say, the tasting menu is a pretty good deal for $49 before tax & tip.  A lot of the entrees were in the $30-$40 range already, so that's an extra three courses for not much more.

UPDATE: The Pineapple Room closed in July 2017.

Dinner @ Ad Hoc in Yountville, CA

Ad Hoc is the far more casual restaurant from the people behind French Laundry.  Apparently the story is that the head chef of French Laundry wanted to create a burger restaurant in a new location they acquired.  Before they were ready to open their restaurant, they kept the location busy by offering casual family style dinners.  The concept was so popular they ended up just keeping the format and put the burger restaurant on the back burner.

Ad Hoc offers a daily four course set meal, an appetizer/salad, a main course, a cheese course, and a dessert.  Everything is served family style except for the dessert.  So keep in mind the portions are for two people in most of the pictures below.

Here's an overview of the meal.

1) Summer Melon Salad - valbreso feta, roasted corn, frisee arugula, scallions, basil lemon vinaigrette

First we had a melon salad, with watermelon, cantaloupe, and honeydew sprinkled in.  This was really tasty and refreshing.

My date and I actually spoke of how the melon was so good and you just can't get fruit this good from Safeway or your average supermarket. The table next to us asked the waiter how the melon tasted so good.  The waiter said that they used a sous vide technique to effectively infuse the melon with the juices from other melons.  So it ends up that not only can you not get fruit this good from a supermarket, you can't get it at all!  It can only be concocted in a kitchen.

2) Smoked Pork Racks - toasted farro, tfl tomatoes, romano beans, piquillo peppers, english cucumber, cilantro pistou

Next up up we some pork chops.  I'm usually not a fan of pork chops, as I always consider it to be too dry.  Ad hoc did a great job and it was quite juicy in the middle.  The vegetables, especially the romano beans and cucumbers, were especially delicious.  While the pork chop in the picture looks gigantic, it's not quite as big as you might imagine.  It's a very good/nice sized pork chop but not too much you can't finish it.

3) Cabot Clothbound Cheddar - cornichons, dijon mustard

Next up was a cheese course.  This cheese was really really rich and creamy, it was hard to eat all of it.  My date & I gave up with about 1/2 of a chunk left over from the two original chunks.  One table over from us, the couple ate only about half of one of the chunks and that was it.  I think one "cheese chunk" would have been good enough for the both of us.

4) Ice Cream Sundaes - vanilla ice cream, chocolate, butterscotch & strawberry sauces, roasted pecans, whipped chantilly

Finally a do it yourself ice cream sundae was served for dessert.  The various sauces appeared to be made in house and were delicious with what was likely house made ice cream.

Overall a delicious casual meal.  The portion sizes were overall good.  Not too much and not too little. 

As of this writing, the four course meal is $52 before tax & tip.  I think this is a great deal.  At other restaurants of this quality, it could easily be $70-$80 for the four courses.

Looking back at "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine"

I recently read the famous paper "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine".  It's a paper written by the Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin circa 1997/1998 about their web search engine research while they were students at Stanford.  The very first sentence of the paper summarizes its contents quite well, "In this paper, we present Google, a prototype of a large-scale search engine ...".

The paper is very interesting looking back on it 17-18 years after it was published.  I thought I'd comment on some of the fun things I read.

Improved Search Quality

November 1997, only one of the top four commercial search engines finds itself (returns its own search page in response to its name in the top ten results)

If the above is true, it is truly comical by today's standards of web search quality.

Major Data Structures

Throughout this section, Brin & Page continually do "bit stuffing" to save storage space.  Typically only done by those dealing with firmware, I find it a little ironic that they had to go to such lengths.  Given the amount of data they had to deal and the amount of hardware resources they had, it was obviously justified.  But it's sort of funny to think about it given today's data sizes and hardware resources that Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Bing, etc. have.

Servers to Crawl the Web

The original Google used a single URL server to serve lists to 3 web crawlers.  Insanely tiny by today's standards.  Of course, it was a much tinier web in the 1990s.

Social Consequences to Web Crawling

Perhaps the best part of the paper, Brin & Page talk of the social consequences of their crawler.  Most notably, some website owners were confused at what a web crawler was and why they were looking at their page.  Some would e-mail them asking questions ... some even called them.

Storage Requirements

Apparently the original Google had a compressed repository of just 53GB of data.  Insanely puny by today's standards.

System Performance

In addition, it took only 9 days to download all of the data on the web at the time.  It's not clear how many machines were at their disposal, but it did not appear to be more than maybe a dozen (as said above, they only used 3 for web crawling, and they note they used 4 for sorting the index).

"Advertising and Mixed Motives"

In this appendix section Brin & Page talk about the conflict of interest that search engines have when advertising is involved.  They specifically site the search of "cellular phone" as a keyword and say

It is clear that a search engine which was taking money for showing cellular phone ads would have difficulty justifying the page that our system returned to its paying advertisers. For this type of reason and historical experience with other media [Bagdikian 83], we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.

It's ironic of course, b/c this is nearly the exact opposite of modern day Google.  A search for "cellular phone" on the site returned for me (in order)

• An iPhone ad on apple.com
• An ad for cell phones off a retailer site
• An ad for Sprint
• A Google Maps result for several retailers that sell cell phones
• The Wikipedia article for "Mobile Phone"

This doesn't count all of the ads that are on the right hand column.

Dinner @ La Folie in San Francisco, CA

I finally got the chance to hit up La Folie in San Francisco.  La Folie is one of San Francisco's most famous French restaurants, having been there since 1988.  It's been awarded a Michelin star since the first guide in San Francisco in 2007 and has a four star review from the San Francisco Chronicle.

La Folie offers either a tasting menu that's 5 courses (plus the amuse, petites, palette cleansers, etc.) or a "pick-n-choose" price fixe menu.  You can pick anywhere from 3 to 5 courses out of a list of about 20.  It includes appetizers, entrees, and desserts.  The only rule is you can't pick more than one entree item.

We elected to go with the pick-n-choose and we both decided to stay conservative and order just 3 courses, an appetizer, entree, and dessert.  That was a wise choice.  We would have been stuffed with more.  If you go with more than 3 courses, I'd recommended choosing dishes that are a bit more light and small (such as soup).  We did however, add a small course of a half of an ounce of caviar, just for fun.  So it was pushing 4 courses anyways.

So first we got some amuse dishes.

1) foie gras soup / cappucino

The waitress said this was one of the chef's specialties, a foie gras cappucino, although I think it I would liken it more as a foie gras soup.  The waitress even called it a foie gras soup to the table next to us.  I thought it was really tasty.  Admittedly, I haven't had enough foie gras in my life to discern the foie gras flavor, but it was a very tasty broth.

2) quail egg w/ corn soup

Next was another amuse dish, a small poached quail egg in a corn soup.  I thought it was an interesting dish overall.

3) russian osetra caviar w/ lobster potato blinis and creme fraiche

Next came our caviar tasting.  I was actually a bit surprised how much caviar there was, as I thought a half ounce was gonna be a lot smaller.  The picture perhaps doesn't do it justice.  I didn't know what lobster potato blinis was, but it apparently was just some lobster between two small potato-like pancakes.  It was an actual nice chunk of lobster claw, not just little lobster pieces which I thought it would be, so that was nice.  I thought the caviar was delicious. I probably would have enjoyed it more just by itself, although everything else was nice as well. 

4) day boat scallop, with uni, crème beurre noisette, braised young leeks - w/ corn

My date and I couldn't figure out what to have as an appetizer and we both really wanted the scallop, so we got the same one.  It was delicious.  The picture doesn't do this scallop justice as it was quite large and sizable.  Not the normal "entree" like scallops you normally see.  I had this feeling that corn was in season, as there were numerous corn dishes on the menu.

5A) Liberty Farm Duck Breast, Tokyo Turnips, Confit Cockscomb, Stone Fruit - Duck Jus - w/ Plums, Bok Coy, and Foie Gras

I got the duck breast as my entree.  It was cooked rarer than I think I've ever had duck before.  It was quite soft and far better than the duck I recall having a Cotogna.  There was a small bit of foie gras that was added (it's the small roll at the bottom of the photo) that was infused with some citrus flavors.  It and the grilled plums were particularly delicious.  I wasn't particularly enthused with the cockscomb, which had a bit of a muschroomy like texture to them (which I hate mushrooms).  I didn't even know what the ingredient was and had to ask the waiter at some point.

As an aside, I almost ordered the lamb as my entree.  I'm glad I didn't when we saw another couple order it at another table.  The rack was probably twice the size of the duck breast.

5B) Trio of Devil’s Gulch Ranch Rabbit, Chanterelle Mushrooms, Summer Vegetables, Natural Jus - w/ rabbit liver

My date got the trio of rabbit for her entree, which ended up with a bonus of an extra part of the rabbit.  Included were the rack of rabbit, a wrap of the rabbit loin, rabbit liver, and another part of the rabbit that I can't recall.  I thought the coolest part of the dish was the garden of vegetables lined up at the back of the dish. 

It was a lot more food than my duck breast.  The waiter actually told my date, "It's a lot of food, you don't have to try and finish it all".  I actually had to help her eat a nice chunk of this plate and we still couldn't finish.

6) summer berry soda

Then we got a light refreshing summer berry soda as a palette cleanser.

7A) Tasting of Melon, Watermelon Consommé, Cucumber Granite, Espelette - w/ Cantaloupe Sorbet

For my dessert, I specifically wanted something light.  Normally this dish comes with pineapple, but since I'm mildly allergic I asked them to remove it.  Overall, a nice refreshing sorbet with fruit.  It was a nice end to dinner.

7B) Mousse Au Chocolat, Smoked Chocolate Cremeux, Chicory Ice Cream, Cocoa paper

My date went and got something a bit heavier for dessert.  From what I tasted, also quite tasty.  The cocoa paper was particularly nice.

8) petite fours

And finally we got some petit fours.  The strawberry gelatin was particularly good.

The meal took about 2 hours total, which was perhaps a tad fast by most fancy restaurant standards.  It's perhaps part of the reason we were a tad stuffed after our entree course.   The heavier meat entree dishes definitely stuffed us.  The portions for every course at La Folie (with the exception of the dessert) were quite sizable, which was a surprise.  So for those looking to head over there, be careful of ordering more than 3 courses.

The All Star Game Should Be an Exhibition

I was talking with a co-worker the other day who told me that viewership for the MLB All Star game is down nowadays.  I used to love watching the All Star game, but my interest over the years as waned.  I believe it's for several reasons:

A) The rosters have exploded, so being an All Star doesn't mean as much as it used to.  Including those players who were injured, both the NL and AL rosters had 38 players on them each, well in excess of the normal 25 man rosters.  As a completely arbitrary comparison, the 2000 rosters had 35 and 34 players on the NL and AL rosters respectively.  In 1990 they were 29 for both the NL and AL rosters.

B) The game "meaning" something, means that players can't be loose and have as much fun as they used to.

Some of the best moments I can recall in All Star history are just fun moments.  The best players in baseball coming together for one day to show off their talents.

Two of the most memory moments I recall in the All Star game involved Randy Johnson.  One in which he psyched out John Kruk and the other in which he threw behind the back of Larry Walker.







Another great scene was when Torii Hunter stole a home run from Barry Bonds and Bonds playfully tackled him in center field afterwards.





The 2015 game had several fun highlights such as Jacob Degrom and Aroldis Champman striking out the side in their innings.  But for some reason, it just doesn't seem to be quite the same nowadays compared to years past.

HPC Clusters vs Big Data Clusters: Two Different Worlds

Recently, I was thinking about why it's so hard for "HPC" cluster users to understand why "Big Data" cluster users do what they do, and vice versa. 

I wrote down this chart with a comparison of the software sometimes/often used on each:

Software	HPC Clustering	Big Data Clustering
Schedulers/Resource Managers	Moab, Slurm, LSF, Torque, PBS	YARN, Mesos
File Systems	Lustre, GPFS, pNFS, PVFS	HDFS
API "Framework"	MPI, OpenMP	MapReduce
Main Programming Languages	C/C++, Fortran	Java, Scala
Interconnect	Infiniband, Myrinet, ...	GigE
Higher Level Scripting	???	Pig, Hive

I could probably go on, but hopefully you get the gist of things.

Basically, everything listed under the "HPC Clustering" column isn't used on the "Big Data Clustering" column, and vice versa.

Here in lies the issue why the users of both don't understand each other.

I believe HPC cluster users look at the list on the right and immediately think things like:

• "Why would you use HDFS, it's not a Posix file system."
• "Why would you use Java, it's so slow."
• "Why use GigE, that's so slow."
• "Why did you write a whole new scheduler, why not use the schedulers HPC users developed years ago."

 In contrast, Big Data cluster users think nearly the opposite:

• "Why would you use a Posix file system, that API/interface is ancient."
• "Why would you use a networked file system, it's so slow."
• "Why waste money on Infiniband, it's completely unnecessary to spend money on unused bandwidth."
• "Why use MPI, the API is so complex, you can't develop programs quickly."
• "Why use C or C++, the programming language is so complex, you can't develop programs quickly."

The problems users face are so different, that neither side can really understand why the other user would even bother to use the software/hardware that they are actually using.


So what happens when users in one world want to run in the other world?  I think what often happens is you hear "Can you port your code/application to work here?"  The answer is likely "No, that's not reasonable."  I believe you get these answers because most don't understand the difference between these two worlds because they don't understand the chart above.

So for those who are trying to mix environments, I think the most important thing to do is to try and accept the differences listed above and work for solutions that bridge the two worlds.

To some extent, that is part of my goal when developing Magpie (github).  Accept that the traditional HPC world isn't going to change and the Big Data world will not change either.  Better to try and get the Big Data world into HPC clusters with as little change as possible.

Update: See "Big Data vs HPC" follow up.