If you're visiting Hawaii or live here, you must try Sugoi's garlic chicken. It's located in a small outdoor shopping complex. There is plenty of parking and really even if there wasn't the food is good enough to walk whatever distance to get.

Sugoi's was not designed to be a "family style" restaurant. You enter, place your order at a counter, and find a seat in the dining area. It's a fairly small dining area, so I recommend coming early to get a table. They give you a number and when it's called you can pick up your food from the counter your ordered at. They are very quick, so it's generally not a problem if you have kids.

The food comes all "to go" in meal boxes or bento boxes. The portions are great. You can either order a regular or large portion. For the bentos, the regular portion includes: White or Brown Rice, Teri Beef, Ume & choice of main entree. The large includes: White or Brown Rice, Teri Beef, Egg, Hotdog, Ume & choice of main entree. For the plate lunch, the large includes: 2 Scoops White or Brown rice with choice of mac or tossed salad, and choice of entree. The regular portion includes: 1 Scoop White or Brown rice with choice of mac or tossed salad, and choice of entree.

I'm getting hungry just writing this entry. For the main entree you have a choice of garlic chicken (the BEST!!!), mahi mahi, katsu, salmon, saba, pork chops, hamburger steak, or teri beef. If you're going to Sugoi and you've never been before, then I highly recommend the garlic chicken. It's a fried chicken with a special sauce that is sweet and yet also has a little kick that is lightly covered with sesame seeds ad furikake (flaked seaweed). I've tried a few of the other menu items, which are also very good, but the fried chicken is all around yummy goodness and heaven in your mouth.

You can eat in our take out. If you're heading to the beach, pick up some bentos and chow down as you bask in the sun. If you're going for lunch, I'd recommend getting there by about 11:30am because there is always a lunch crowd. Or waiting until about 2pm if you prefer a late lunch. I've picked up to-go plate lunches at dinner time as well and there is a line, but I've never stayed to see how truly crowded it can get.

As I mentioned before, Sugoi's is not designed for "family meals." That is the reason I'm giving it a 4 instead of a 5 star in Trekaroo. I don't believe I've ever seen a high chair or a bathroom, which could pose some problems for families. There is a big huge tank with 2 huge fish and absolutely no decorative items in the dining area, which is great for amusing the kids while the food is getting cooked. Other then the tank, though, it's up to the parents to bring paper, crayons, or books. They are fast, though, so the wait time is very minimal.

If you plan it right and make sure everyone uses the potty before heading to Sugoi, I am certain that you will very much enjoy the food.

If you live in Aiea, chances are you know about Ice Garden. It's a little shave ice place in Aiea Shopping Center run by two little, old, asian women. My husband and I have come to determine that they are really only running shave ice place for something to do. There's a "hours open" sign in their window, but the sign is so faded you can't read it. And it doesn't really matter because their hours are very inconsistent. They seem to come just any time they want to. I say this all with a smile because they are really nice old ladies.

The shop is very small. There's room for their refrigerator, a shave ice machine, and a small counter that can seat about 4 people. There is a sign with pictures of all the shave ice combinations you can order with mochi balls, cream, azuki beans, and ice cream that they offer... I'm pretty sure you can custom order as well, but I've never tried because the pictures look so delicious.

The line starts inside and after about 2 people goes out the door. The shop is part of an indoor mall/office building, so the line continues in the hallway outside. And I've never been to ice garden where there wasn't a line outside.

The ice is shaved very fine and literally melts in your mouth as soon as it goes in. Kind of like if you open your mouth to catch snow, how the snow instantly melts when it lands on your tongue. And the serving portions are huge. They serve their shave is in a bowl and the mound is heaping.

We usually sit on the benches in the hall to eat our shave ice. Our boys love it and generally refuse to share. Because the ice is shaved very fine, it's really easy to scop, which for my boys generally eliminates spilling... although they are kids, so I still grab extra napkins.

This is my husband's favorite shave ice shop in the island of O'ahu. I wrote a review for Waiola Shave Ice. I love it there, but have to admit that Ice Garden is a very close second. Plus, they are on opposite sides of the island, so no matter where we go we can get great shave ice.

If you head on to Pearlridge for a little shopping, be sure to make a pit stop at Ice Garden for some great shave ice.

The Counter is a nice custom burger place to eat at Kahala Mall. The setting isn't anything special. There is a bar you can sit at or tables. It was very spacious, which is very nice, particularly with kids. It was also clean. The service was great too. The server we had was extremely friendly and came back to check on us all the time.

The burgers are custom ordered, so the menu is "check box" style allowing you to choose meat type, meat weight, and various types of dressing. Or you can choose a "signature burger" which recommend different combinations of condiments and sauces in your hamburger.

The burgers are nice and juicy. You can tell they cook them when you order them. The fries are the long stringy type. We orderedour fries with cheese. Yummy delicious goodness... just don't think how much exercise you'll need later.

One burger was good enough to feed both of my boys. The hard part was getting them to agree on whta condiments they wanted in their burger. Beware, though, the burgers do drip. You can tell yourself "that means it's juicy and delicous," but with kids it means "juicy and messy." We requested a pile of extra napkins.

The restaurant is not necessarily designed for kids because they do custom make the burgers, so you should be prepared to wait a little while for your food. We generally always take books, paper, and crayons when we go to restaurants. When we went to The Counter, we were happy we had these distractions.

I definitely wouldn't mind taking our boys to The Counter.

My son goes to school around the corner from Bubbies. We love to walk to Bubbies after I pick him up to have "quality time." It's kind of a "hole in the wall" kind of place because it's not directly on a main road. Still, it's easy to find if you know it's there.

There are a bunch of different flavors to choose from like the usuals of chocolate, vanilla, etc. But they have a few local flacors like macadamia nut, lychee, and green tea. I've liked pretty much every flavor I'd tried... although I must be honest that jamoca chip (jamoca with chocolate chips) is my favorite.

They also sell shakes, mochi ice cream (ice cream covered with mochi), and ice cream cakes. My boys LOVE the mochi ice cream. You just keep popping them in your mouth without realizing how many you ate. And they are made locally in Hawaii.

If you're looking for some really good desert one night to chill with your kids or friends, I highly recommend Bubbies.

Our boys love books and they love music, so I put this event on our calendar as soon as I heard about it. It wasn't until a couple weeks before that I discovered that the festival fell on the same weekend as my sister-in-laws graduation. I forgot how many ceremonies and events occur when one graduates from a higher education institute. Needless to say I was quite bummed.

After 2 days (fri. and sat.) of graduation festivities I was riddled with a mixture of various forms of guilt. On one end, I felt obligated as family to attend all of the graduation events. On the other side, I felt so bad forcing our boys to sit through all these boring speeches and lei ceremonies and so on and so forth. So, Sat. night I waffled and waved and broke out in a sweat debating on forgoing the Sun. activities to attend the Book and Music festival. In the end, we went to the festival and had a blast!

By any mainland standards of what a festival might be like (at least the ones I went to), the Book and Music festival was very small. There were two stages with various entertainment. One for children and one for adults. There were also a few overly priced food booths, bouncers, and book sellers.

We arrived when it started at about 10am and stayed until 1pm. We headed straight for the children's entertainment tent. The first performer was Steve Songs from PBS Kids. He was awesome! He was very energetic, funny, and all the kids loved him. My boys loved his songs so much we bought his CD to listen to in the car. The next performers were the Diamond Head Theater Shooting Stars. Let me just say WOW!!! They sang and danced to old Broadway and movie tunes. My eldest son who loves singing and dancing was on the edge of his seat. He's generally quite shy around strangers, but he liked the Shooting Stars so much he went up to a couple of them to tell them he enjoyed their performance. They also had story tellers who told folktales from memory and authors who read their books. We would have stayed in the entertainment tent until the end of the festival if my stomach hadn't started begging for food.

We walked around a little looking at the other booths before heading to get something to eat. There was an activity tent where kids could make and decorate their own Clifford ears out of red construction paper. You could also take your picture with various PBS Kids characters. My kids don't watch much TV, so we actually didn't recognize many of the characters. One activity my boys enjoyed was printing text onto paper using an old ink pounder and roller. The lady showed us how to press the ink onto the letters (kind of like an upside down stamp), moisten the paper, and then roll the paper for the ink to get onto the paper and thus "print" on the page.

The book booths... well, I wish this area had been better. There were a few small booths from publishing companies that were selling books. Unfortunately, most booths seemed to be based around ethnic groups. And the books seemed more like educational text books. I wish there had been more books that were a little more age appropriate for my kids. We have a bunch of foreign language books in our house, but there are still tons of pictures in them. Barnes and Nobles did have a good sized tent and were selling books. There were a few children's books my kids were interested in, but the books were being sold at retail value. I have a B&N membership, so we didn't get anything because it's cheaper for me to get the books on-line at B&N.com with my discount. My kids were a little bummed about that.

In the end, we also didn't buy any food. Everything was just a bit too expensive for the little amount of food you got.

Over all we really enjoyed the festival, but mostly because of the children's entertainment tent. I am certain that our boys appreciated the festival way more than if they had sat through another graduation event. At times they do have ants in the pants, but I'm quite certain that if I plan correctly for next year we will enjoy ourselves again. I hope the Book and Music festival does return again and when it does I'll pack some drinks, snacks, and lunch and we'll picnic under the entertainment tent all day... well, we might take a break to run around the Honolulu Hale grounds and burn off energy, but we'd end up right back under the entertainment tent.