By Mari Taketa

Oahu Market — the grand dame of Chinatown markets — has been at the corner of King and Kekaulike streets for 102 years. Photos by Randy T. Fujimori

START - King and Kekaulike streets 1 - Song Huong 2 - Hometown Noodle 3 - Penny’s Ice Dessert 4 - Lee’s Bakery 5 - Yi Xuan 6 - Lin’s Lei Shop 7 - Shung Chong Yuen 8 - Bo Wah Trading Co. 9 - Ken Fong 10 - Vietnam Cafe Saigon 11 - Kim Trading 12 - Po‘ohala Lei & Flowers 13 - Fortuneteller 14 - Royal Kitchen 15 - Thang’s 16 - Chau’s Fresh Fruits 17 - Galilee Seafood Mart 18 - Maunakea Beauty Salon END - Maunakea Marketplace

This isn’t about the art galleries. It’s not about the best pho or cheapest apple bananas. That would be Chinatown for beginners. The 15 blocks between downtown Honolulu and Nuuanu Stream hide back-of-the-shop, bottom-of-the-menu, pan-Asian finds known only to initiates. For a taste of the housewares, unique home accessories, omiyage and other discoveries of this Chinatown, clear three hours on a Saturday morning, park in one of the municipal garages and start at the corner of King and Kekaulike streets.

This intersection is Chinatown’s historic fish and produce central, smack in the middle of the dizzying smells from Oahu, King and Kekaulike markets. If hunger pangs spark your daring soul, head past the fishmongers down Kekaulike toward the water. Your aim is Song Huong, an easily missed Vietnamese hole-in-the-wall. “You gotta try their goat curry,” enthuses Kelly McGill, a businessman who lived in Vietnam. Not long ago, goat meat was reserved for men hoping to emulate the particular prowess of goats. Now McGill feeds it to his 4-year-old daughter. “We just came from there — bought goat meat for the grill tonight,” he says. “Ngon lam (delicious)!”

Not in the mood? Try King Market. The back corner of the cavernous indoor space belongs to Hometown Noodle Factory, which sells ropey bundles of fresh organic pasta and Chinese wheat noodles. Ask and you can get a bowl of cooked noodles in broth with your choice of dumplings. For the health-conscious thirsty, Hometown makes fresh organic soy milk.

The plain thirsty can cross Kekaulike to Penny’s Ice Dessert at the outside corner of Oahu Market, the coral-and-brick grand dame of the markets at 102 years. Penny’s displays of Thai sweet drinks stun the eyes with glinting layers of red and green. Anthony Chang, official Chinatown guide for the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, swears by the pineapple-papaya slushes. (If navigating obscure menus and signage in Chinese and Vietnamese unnerves you, Chang will craft food, shopping and special-interest tours for $50 a group. Reach him at 227-6008 or woktalk@hotmail.com.)

Follow the traffic flow down King a few steps to Lee’s Bakery & Kitchen, a dream stop for lovers of custard and pumpkin pies. Lee’s specialty? Pumpkin-custard pies, the two fillings swirled together for heaven on every fork. Pies come out of the oven at 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. and often sell out.

Just beyond, you’d pass Yi Xuan name chop booth in two paces if it weren’t for the golden dragons twining up the blood-red columns of the C.Q. Yee Hop building. Yi Xuan custom-carves names on inch-square chops still widely used in Asia as signature stamps. Examples march across the window in neat red rows: lotus and horse pictographs, ALLEN, Asian names by the dozen.

Your path now brings you to Maunakea, one of Chinatown’s busiest shopping streets. On the Diamond Head side, shady in the mornings, Lin’s Lei Shop is busy servicing walk-in customers and packing neighbor-island orders for designer-crafted nouveau lei with names like Green Christina and Pink Butterfly. Further on is Shung Chong Yuen, unchanged much after 43 years. Along with candied fruit and moon cakes, it sells puffed rice reputed to better San Francisco’s, and an only-in-Hawaii macadamia nut brittle.

The same block houses Bo Wah Trading Co., whose narrow storefront masks its depth. Bo Wah bills itself as a grocery store and its sidewalk frontage is crammed with dry goods. It’s a virtual treasure trove for those seeking authentically unique items for a gourmet kitchen. Delve into the bowels and you’ll find bucketsful of cleavers, giant woks in long-handled northern and short-handled southern styles, bamboo steamers, 12-inch spider strainers, great sandstone pots for braising and clay pots for casseroles. Oversized bamboo baskets, used to separate rice grains from husks, are big enough to hold magazines, towels or toys.

If you haven’t had lunch yet, two prime choices lie one block Diamond Head on Smith Street. Ken Fong’s between Hotel and King is widely praised for its duck noodles and oxtail soup. Chang claims the aging hole-in-the-wall, which boasts only one eight-seat table, is something of a power scene. “Ken Fong is the kind of place where judges, bankers, attorneys come,” he says. “It’s the home cooking they remember from their mother’s table.”

Three reasons Chinatown is a great place if you’re hungry: (Left) Lori Lau of Royal Kitchen shows off a fresh batch of freshly baked manapua. (Center) Chow Hop Ng, owner of Shung Chong Yuen, serves up a tray of her famous puffed rice. (Right) Wendi Lee of Lee’s Bakery & Kitchen with her trademark pumpkin custard pie.

The other choice is bright, spanking clean Vietnam Cafe Saigon. Gleaming at the corner of a stretch of Hotel Street that harks back to its World War II heyday, it’s not a hidden gem, but sunny days can make sidewalks wiltingly hot, and some of us could use a well-ordered break. Vietnamese fare is not all pho, spring rolls and goat — although Vietnam Café’s pho with rare beef has reputable proponents. For variations on noodle soups, try the spicy bun bo hue with cooked beef and herbs (hold the blood cake), or bun mang vit, rice vermicelli in a light broth with bamboo shoots. Boiled duck is served on the side atop sliced cabbage and herbs, all of it dipped in a tangy, sweet garlic sauce.

Penny’s Ice Dessert (top) offers refreshing Asian treats, fresh produce is abundant in Chinatown (above) and Zong Chen Liu (below) shows off his handcrafted name chops at Yi Xuan.

Belly happily fortified, head back to Maunakea and continue mauka to Kim Trading. Half the shop is packed with porcelain vases, buddhas and other home décor imports. “What I like is you can bargain,” says J. Kalani English, a state senator from Maui. “If you go in and talk story, they tell you what each thing is for, and then we haggle for half an hour.” The rest of the shop, hidden against the mauka walls, is a beader’s paradise—aisles cascading in strands of glass, ceramic, stone and jade beads, which can be discounted for volume.

Continue up Maunakea across Pauahi to the corner of Beretania, the northern boundary of Chinatown. You’re only a block from the breakout point of the fire that razed Chinatown in 1900. To your right is Po‘ohala Lei & Flowers, purveyors of the traditional. The leimakers are generous with recommendations. Something for the mother of the groom in a September wedding? “It depends if she likes smell or not. Sometimes older women don’t like smell,” Holly Reiplinger says. “Micronesian ginger — it’s quite elegant, lies flat and has a lighter scent. Some-times tuberose is too strong, even for people around them.”

Kitty-corner from Po‘ohala on Beretania, hidden among the warren of stalls in the Chinese Cultural Plaza’s indoor market, are signs for palm and card reading. Too many customers will tire out the Vietnamese fortuneteller, so no groups, please. From here, head past the assortment of mom-and-pop restaurants toward daylight at the River Street exit, to Royal Kitchen, home of baked manapua. Royal Kitchen’s are deserving of interisland transport — moist and fluffy hours after the oven’s warmth has left the bun, with fillings of kalua pork, lup cheong, vegetarian, sweet potato and char siu.

It’s the home stretch now, time for indulgence. One and a half blocks down the street is bustling Maunakea Marketplace, a relatively recent addition to the historic district. At this point, your body craves something arctic, like fresh avocado blended with ice and sweetened condensed milk—the Vietnamese version of a smoothie. After nine years behind the counter of Thang’s, piled nose-high with shiny avocadoes and spiky soursop, Thang Le is still complaining. “He say why men have to work so hard,” laughs his wife, Mai Nguyen. “In Vietnam men don’t work!” For a lighter chill, squeeze through the handbag and clothing stalls to Hotel Street, where Chau’s Fresh Fruits to your right and Galilee Seafood Mart to your left boast hand-cranked Vietnamese sugarcane presses that expel the stalk’s pure juice.

Refreshed, retrace your steps through the courtyard for a pedicure at Maunakea Beauty Salon. Lay down your packages. Let your feet throb. You’ve been initiated. HS