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Day 8: Mmm-mmm good!
Lissa We met in the Lido, as usual, to plan out our day and have breakfast. And I want you to know that Cathy had her own agenda in mind. Fortunately it tied in with our theme for the day—it’s all about the food!
Cathy Agenda?
Lissa You bet, man! You and your obsession with the waffle.
Cathy That wasn’t an agenda, that was a habit! Anyway gimme a break, it was so light and airy there was hardly anything there. Almost every morning the guy at the waffle station would see me and say, Mrs. Lee, I have your waffle coming! It was golden light and crispy on the outside and moist and soft on the inside, and I would drizzle on syrup and smother it with whipped cream and strawberries. The only thing that was missing was macadamia nuts, which I would have loved.
Lissa And that morning, we found out we were finally going to get our chance to meet Chef Nobu! From the start we knew that this voyage was the launch of Nobu’s newest restaurant. It had taken five years for Nobu to open another restaurant on Crystal.
Cathy Nobu has one on the Crystal Serenity, but on this particular sailing, Nobu’s new Silk Road and Sushi Bar had their grand opening!
Lissa So we immediately started trying to get an interview, but he was so busy we could never get an appointment.
Cathy We wanted to interview him for our website. We were hoping to have Nobu himself in his restaurant.
Lissa We wanted to talk to him about the design…
Cathy And the layering of colors and textures, and when it comes to cuisine, how he’s able to layer his flavors and colors and textures on his dishes.
Design concepts, whether we’re talking about interiors or clothing or food, they can’t be flat and they can’t be one-dimensional. It’s about layering. I wanted to hear his thought process as he’s putting his dishes together.
I thought our readers and members would find it really fun and fascinating to hear him in his own environment. And I wanted to interview him over sake and sushi!
But there were press people from around the world—Japan, Korea, China, Hong Kong—so his schedule was jam-packed. But we did steal a moment—
Lissa From that day’s Reflections we found out he was doing a book signing, so we made sure we were going to be there—
Cathy To meet him, since there was no other opportunity to get penciled into his schedule. We had brought along some goodies from Hawaii, like macadamia nuts and chocolate, and we packed a little bag so we could take a little extra moment of his time…
Lissa He had a long line, oh my God. He started signing at 11:15. We went there at 11 and all his books were sold out already.
Cathy The only copies left were in Japanese! So we took our goodie bag and told him how much we love Nobu’s in Waikiki, and he promised to call us next time he comes to Hawaii. We’ll be waiting by the phone!
Lissa I have to say, I had been drooling over Nobu’s for a long time now…
Cathy Speaking of drooling, a bad habit that a lot of us got into was the afternoon ice cream bar at the Lido Cafe. The girls had more ice cream on this trip than I think they’d ever had. They met up there with a friend they made at Fantasia, Dani from California. Girls always love being with older girls—Dani is 13 and I think because she didn’t have a lot of other kids her age, she put up with our girls, and they just thought she was so cool!
That night we ate at Prego, Crystal’s Italian restaurant. I asked the waitress, what does prego mean? She said it’s kind of like aloha in Hawaiian, it could be welcome, or please come in, or my pleasure.
Lissa A nice thing about Prego was the girls all love spaghetti!
Cathy They said it was the best pasta they ever had!
Lissa The part that was beautiful was sailing into Kobe. When we were eating dinner and looking out the window, oh, it was breathtaking to see the lights of Kobe, this famous city with Kobe beef, that I’m going to look for tomorrow morning!
