Chinatown: Now that you know about it there’s no excuse not to go:

Unless you are staying in a friend’s condominium, there’s a good chance you’ve chosen to stay in one of Waikiki’s many hotels. There’s also a good chance that sooner or later you are going to get hungry. Depending on the length of your flight to Oahu’s international airport and the reclaiming of your luggage, all of which probably came by you on the conveyor belt in less than 15 minutes, except the last piece which inconsiderately left you standing around another 45 minutes wondering how that could possibly happen. Since nothing you learned in high school or college physics could possibly explain such a phenomenon (and it’s not that you weren’t paying attention) you gave up guessing the quantum laws that could explain such a thing happening and instead mentally recalled every person in an official or semi official capacity you might have met at the airport who you could have pissed off and then decided whoever it was, did this to you on purpose. Because this clearly was an act of revenge.
With all pieces now accounted for and in hand you make your way to the taxi stand and depending on your time of arrival, you may have been lucky to have missed the rush hour traffic to your hotel, but then again you may not have and after 1 hour of slow moving traffic that clearly should only take 20 minutes you arrive at your new home away from home. Let’s say for fun’s sake it’s another 30 minutes to check in and get your luggage up to your room before you can take a shower and wash the irritation of the day away and collapse on the bed.

Then it hits you. You’re hungry! And you don’t have a clue where to go out to eat. You’re too tired to go exploring Waikiki, besides whoever did that to your luggage has totally ruined the rest of the day. So you decide to eat in and somewhere in that mess of advertising flyers covering every flat surface in your room, there is a leather(ish) embossed, 10 lb room service menu. The weight of it alone tells you it’s not going to be cheap. Glancing through the pages in wide-eyed shock and disbelief you find the only thing you don’t feel guilty about ordering is the $25.00 hamburger which the kitchen was nice enough to point out is served with slices of locally grown organic tomatoes, which totally justifies the $25 price tag and besides, it’s not cheap eating healthy.

Now if you had gone downstairs and taken a cab to Chinatown you would have had the most amazing Chinese food you probably never had. Unless you live in someplace like San Francisco. That same $25 at a restaurant like Mei Sum would have given you 10 different courses of the most delicious dim sum east of Hong Kong. The food is consistently fresh as evidenced by the amount of time it takes for your first dish to arrive at the table. Then all of a sudden everything shows up and you’ve just been introduced to family style eating. A Chinese and Chinatown tradition. Don’t expect your soup to be served first and when conversation has slowed and you’ve finished the 1st course, the second course is waiting for your signal that you are ready to have it served. But if you like the idea of trying a variety of different foods during your meal and you think it’s cute that everyone shares their favorite dish they ordered thinking it was for themselves and they are forced to try what you ordered, even when they made faces as you gave your order to the waiter, you are in for a treat. The other 49 states have nothing to compare to the authentic dishes with their exotic ingredients and complex flavors that seemed to work off each other to perfection and no one does it better than Mei Sum in Chinatown.