At the same time that California cuisine was transforming the way people eat on the American mainland, Hawaii was having a culinary revolution of its own. Honolulu native Barney Brown, the executive chef of E & O Trading Company, a Southeast Asian grill in Larkspur, was a product of this fertile moment in culinary history, and you can see it in every dish he produces, from the Misoyaki Butterfish (a black cod served with green tea rice, lotus root namasu, wasabi and pickled plum sauce) to the claypot duck simmered in broth of tangering, ginger, star anise and black mushrooms on sticky rice. Brown says that he is not a practitioner of “fusion cuisine,” in the modern sense of the word. Instead, he says, “We take direct inspiration from true recipes of countries in Southeast Asia. Actually, if you trace their history back to the 19th century, you’ll find that as these regions traded with Japan and with coastal China and Korea, some of the elements of each cuisine found their way into the others—and a natural, built-in fusion took place.”
Most of the dishes at E & O are meant to be shared, although the “big plate” entrées work as a meal for a single person. The large satay selection includes chicken, mushroom, lamb, salmon, steak and pork. (You can get a platter that offers several of these.) The Portobello mushroom in a ginger and tamarind soy sauce was the most interesting, but all were juicy and succulent. The perfectly cooked naans (an Indian bread) are delicately crisp pillows, hiding fillings like Panir cheese or lamb. The cooling Burmese ginger salad will remind you of Thailand’s classic green papaya salad, but less sweet and with the crunchy surprise of dried yellow split peas, peanuts and sunflower seeds tossed generously among shreds of ginger, green papaya and cabbage. On the small plates menu (which, be warned, are larger than most “small plates” ), be sure to try the meaty and satisfying mango-glazed Thai ribs and the restaurant’s signature Indonesian corn fritters—saucer-sized fritters of fresh corn in a delicate batter served in a chili soy dipping sauce.
E & O’s décor blends Imperial British and Southeast Asian influences. Its airy interior is divided into several spaces: the main dining room, with its soaring ceiling and elegant Thai silk banners; a bar and lounge; and next to the cookline, a long colonial-style table that seats 18 and can be subdivided into smaller spaces with ingenious, roll-down bamboo shades. The long table would be a perfect place for a fun after work get-together. That being said, you should know that E & O is a noisy throng of a place—dense with the sound of voices and loud music (In-dian pop music the night we were there). There’s also a quieter, private dining room up-stairs that would work well for company dinners and get-togethers.
