Honolulu, Hawaii - Day 3

Getting towards the middle of our vacation in Hawaiian paradise! The sky started to cloud up with some bouts of showers but it was still nice and balmy outside. By this time, my mosquito bites were growing in size and irritated the heck out of me so W decided that we take it easy today and do some simple sightseeing nearby.

We started off the day with lunch at Nico's. As the name suggested, it was located right on pier 38 in Honolulu Harbor.

Nico’s Pier 38

1133 North Nimitz Hwy, Honolulu

I learned about this place when I was watching Diners, Drive-ins and Dives on the Food Network! Guy Fieri visited this location for his TV show so I put Nico's on my radar ever since.

Since the restaurant is located right in an industrial, fishing pier area there is somewhat of a water view.

Nico's is a casual eatery where you browse the menu at the cashier, make your order, and then you find a table to wait for your food to arrive. They also have their own fish market beside the restaurant. If one prefers, people can buy fresh seafood to cook at home or get take-out items like poke, soups, and snacks.

It wasn't very busy when we had lunch there but I think they would be bustling around happy hour during the evening since they have a large bar area.

Grilled Ahi Tuna Sandwich ($12.95) – served on French baguette with spicy wasabi aioli, tomato, arugula

Back to the food! We ordered 3 items to share starting with the grilled ahi tuna sandwich. There was nothing wow about it but I gotta say that everything on the bun was nice and fresh. The wasabi aioli gave the otherwise bland tuna steak a bit of zing. 

Seared Ahi Poke Salad ($10.95) – tuna cubes, seasoned with soy sauce and sesame oil, flash seared and set upon ‘Nalo greens with plum vinaigrette dressing

I thought the salad was better than the sandwich. Aside from the fresh greens, the cubed tuna was marinated and quickly seared which gave a nice warm and cool contrast. The dressing was savoury and tangy; a nice meal to wake up the palate.

Bouillabaisse – herbed tomato soup with tuna and mussels

The soup was my choice and I loved it! The soup had just the right tartness from the tomatoes while there a was a slight taste of the salty ocean from the heaping chunks of tuna and large meaty flesh of the mussels. Since W does not like eating mussels, I got to eat them all too! Yay!

For our sightseeing activity of the day, we drove up to the Nu'uanu Pali Lookout. It wasn't the best of days to visit. It started to rain and the low lying clouds covered up the eastern horizon. However, the views of the windward side of Oahu and the Koolau mountain range were still breathtaking.

Since the weather wasn't too awesome, we stayed close to the city after leaving Pali lookout. For dinner, we headed back to our hotel for their seafood buffet. Unfortunately, the photos I took didn't turn out very well. I was also very irritated with my dozens of mosquito bites so I was pretty distracted and wasn't feeling particularly excited about the buffet overall. The live mermaid show inside the 3-storey tall aquarium in the restaurant was pretty cool though!

Well, it sucked that the rain and the mosquito bites put a damper on my mood but tomorrow's another day...another day in Hawaii!!