Munching across Maui: 5 Favorite Maui restaurants (and more)

If goat cheese and salmon tartare make you salivate, send me an email here!  I can tell you about my Waterfall Guru, cool guesthouses, and even treehouses! 

I went to Maui on a mission - to experience the island's GAStronomy.  There's a gal who does Foodie tours to -- you guessed it -- the island's gas stations, sampling BBQ, sushi, and other pumpside provisions.
If you love Foodie travel, but dream of more than GAStronomy,  here are my top 5 stops for Maui restaurants!










MAUI RESTAURANT STOP 1:   Surfing Goat Dairy
This is not an official Maui restaurant, but it should be your first Foodie stop, only 20 minutes from the Kahului airport.  You get free samples of exotically flavored goat cheese, sip a mango smoothie as you wander the farm and watch the milking, then buy crackers and some Mandalay spread (that's the chevre with apples and curry!) for a beach picnic over on Kaanapali.  

There's also the Ole (with jalapenos and artichokes)...
the Ping Pong balls (rolled chevre marinating in olive oil)...
and even some Goat Cheese truffles!


MAUI RESTAURANT STOP 2:
Head west to Lahaina for a Maui restaurant that you might miss if not for this blog. 
I missed it!  In fact, I had driven by it for 4 days, thinking it was just a ramshackle old-time island home.

But once on the back porch, it's got one of the top Maui restaurant views on the island!

It's the Ma La Ocean Tavern, where we tickled our palates with Ahi Tartare and a frosty glass of pinot grigio, followed by a whole wok-fried fresh ocean fish.






MAUI RESTAURANT STOP 3:

One of the top Maui restaurants is not next to the beach -- it's ON the beach, at the Lahaina luau! 

 Admittedly, it gets a bit crowded, but you get all the local favorites -- lomi lomi salmon, ahi poke,  and of course, poi poi (that pinkish mush of the island staple, taro)

And again... just check out the simply unbeatable scene -- from MY dinner seat!

 MAUI RESTAURANT STOP 4:

Noodles for breakfast?   YES! 

Before a day of waterfall trekking, make a quick stop at a granddaddy of Maui restaurants: Sam Satos. 

It's all about noodles.  Order them dry, and drizzle broth over the top!  

The noodle bowls are ample, but don't leave without a skewer of teryaki beef, and a coco pan (I tried to eat just one, but it was impossible!) 

Best part of this bustling Maui restaurant?  I was one of the only non-Asians, and THE only non-local! 

MAUI RESTAURANT STOP 5:

As you head down towards Hana, duck into a casual but de-lish Maui restaurant, the  Paia Fish Market, for some Mahi Mahi fish-n-chips "to go".  Paia is a cool surfer town that hosts one of my favorite guesthouses on the island, Blue Tile!

Then find a sliver of shoulder on the Hana road, somewhere between the gorge jump

and the famous Red Sand beach, 

and pull off for a fruit stand stop with freshly baked banana bread!  

And further south, you can visit the Organic pick-you-own farm, and continue on to the bamboo groves of Seven Sacred Pools.   Down on this southern tip, you can even find a  smoothie station where you gotta jump on a bike to power the blender! 

YOU  want an Hawaiian adventure like this?  

I can help!   Let's talk now!  (609) 923-0304

The Chilkoot Trail: 1500 Golden Stairs in the Yukon

NOTE:  this Chilkoot Trail adventure requires a backpack

We were a 5-days walk from civilization,
Surrounded only by about 30 other permitted hikers and the vast 200,000 acre Yukon,

 
On the Chilkoot Trail, Alaska's famous Goldrush trail from 1898.


We had rationed our provisions as we hiked the Chilkoot Trail so that, after our final dinner of "kitchen sink mashed potatoes"  (cheese, sausage, dried vegetables, and whatever can be scrounged from the provision bag), we broke out the real treat! 
....pads of REAL  butter, sizzling in our collapsible fry pan, over our dragonfly cookstove- just waiting to crisp up a small tortilla, which we topped with a drizzle of honey and a dash of cinnamon. A bonafide backcountry Sopapilla on the Chilkoot Trail!

Anyone who's spent time in the wilderness knows the power of food, where aromas of butter and cinnamon border on the intoxicating when you're 5 days "out".

So it shouldn't have been a surprise when, about the time the dragonfly turned out its 3rd tortilla, we heard a rustle in the bushes around our Chilkoot Trail site.  Like scavenging rodents whose eyes shine into your campfire circle betraying their hiding places, our fellow campers crept, one by one, towards our site,  peeking timidly through the pine trees, wondering what in the WORLD could smell so good this deep into the Chilkoot Trail!

Shy at first, they soon realized we'd share our treat, so they whistled in their comrades and soon, we had almost the entire camping area around our fire ring! Foreign accents and diverse generations and drippy tortillas all mingled together at our impromptu backcointry soiree! 

This was indeed the highlight of our Chilkoot Trail adventure, but there had been many other special moments...

In Bear country on the Chilkoot Trail, you must hang food!

The bear orientation at the Chilkoot Trail ranger station back in Skagway, where we looked around our group, worrying if any one of us were wilderness worthy enough to venture outside of cell distance from the bold and wise rangers...


The actual Chilkoot Trail into the woods, which became increasingly littered with the outcasts of goldrushers-- first a limp pair of boots, then some horsetack and metal cans,  even tools and, unbelievably, an iron woodstove--  all items the 1890s gold seekers had thought they might need but ultimately could not shoulder.  
(NOTE:  the Chilkoot Trail is a living history museum, with all these artifacts left untouched, just as they were discarded over 100 years ago)




 And the famous "Golden staircase"-- 1500 stairs, rising 1000' up into the air through rock and ice, where the miners queued up on the Chilkoot Trail to summit, single file, the Pass.


For us, it was 400 yards or so of  pure scrambing over boulders. In the cool alpine air, I was sweating and anaerobic, and I shook my head af the thought of the Rushers doing this same climb undernourished, overladen, at -20*! 









There were also idyllic sections of shaded Chilkoot trail that ran alongside babbling brooks for miles!

And at the end, on the shores of Lake Bennett,  the narrow-gauge WPRR waited to chug us back through the stunning jagged peaks, to the Chilkoot Trail head, in Skagway. 

In the end, we did see predators on the Chilkoot trail, though they weren't bears-- only hungry trekkers!

Are you enticed to tackle the Chilkoot Trail?   

I've done it and can show you "the ropes"!   

CALL OR EMAIL TO TALK ABOUT WHAT 
YOUR TRIP 
on the CHILKOOT TRAIL COULD LOOK LIKE! 

melanie@toughlovetravel.com         (609) 923-0304