After watching Anthony Bourdain eat at Puka Dog Waikiki during his food travelogue No Reservations on the Travel Network, I had to have a Puka Dog.

But “What is a Puka Dog?” you might ask.

A Puka Dog is like a hot dog, except with an unusual bun. A mini loaf of bread is toasted on a cylinder (pictured below), creating a puka (“hole” in Hawaiian), just the right size for the Polish sausage and condiments.

The menu is printed on a surfboard.


You chose a Polish sausage or veggie hot dog (veggie?). Then you select one of the four garlic lemon secret sauces. Finally, you choose from seven tropical relishes, and, if you want, you can add the traditional condiments such as ketchup and mustard.

My Puka Dog was delicious, with original garlic lemon secret sauce topped with papaya relish and lilikoi mustard—fruit-flavors I’d never tasted before on a hot dog. Surprisingly, it wasnʻt as fruity as I was afraid it was going to be. The grilled polish sausage was juicy and almost as long as the bun. It made me wish I could make lunches like this at home.


The best thing to drink after eating a Puka Dog is their fresh lemonade. Unlike lemonade from a carton, this one is squeezed and made right in front of you.

Besides the restaurant in the Waikiki Town Center on Oahu, there is a Puka Dog restaurant in the Poipu Shopping Village on Kauai.

Caution: Hold the Puka Dog straight up. Do not turn it sideways like you would a normal hot dog. The mustard slides off easily if you tilt it the wrong way.

I learned this the hard way after taking a photo of my lunch.
  

We ran into Michael Emerson, who plays Benjamin Linus on ABC’s hit TV series “Lost,” listening to jazz in Honolulu’s Chinatown district the other night.

Nice guy—which makes you realize what an incredible actor he is. When he plays Linus—the series’ complicated is-he-or-isn’t-he-a-villain—he somehow manages to be both seriously sinister and as equable as a Jack Johnson CD. Often at the same time. Always brilliantly.

In the cover feature of our current issue, we give you the low down on the “15 Things We Love About Hawaii” right now. One of these, just happens to be Emerson—the only actor to make the list.

Among the other objects of our affection? The only ukulele we’d pay four figures to strum. The Hawaii-published book that’s on our nightstand right now. The Big Island clothing designer with the fashion sense we’re digging most. The classic surfboard we’d hit the waves with right now if we weren’t at work (and knew how to surf). And more.

Emerson’s work on “Lost”—which is filmed entirely on Oahu—is one of our favorite things about every episode. It’s our good fortune that he feels similarly about our Islands, and talked to us about it.

Here’s an excerpt:

There is no “Lost” without Oahu, says Emerson. … He admits that Oahu’s beauty captivates him. No matter where he is after a long day of work shooting in the jungle, he stops every evening to watch the sun drop beneath the horizon.

Well, we did say it was just an excerpt.

You’ll find the full text of our Emerson write-up and the 14 other things we love about Hawaii in the May/June 2008 issue of HAWAII Magazine, on newsstands now.

  

Apparently, hell hath no fury like golfers unleashed on Maui with $10,000 in cash, a BMW Z4 and  an LPGA tournament slot at stake.

At least that’s what we thought while watching a preview of Golf Channel’s reality series “Big Break,” which premieres its 10th season Tuesday at 10 p.m., eastern time (6 p.m. Hawaii time).

We also thought, “Wait, the Golf Channel has a reality show?” But that’s another story.

For those not in the know (that included us a few hours ago), each season of “Big Break” pits 12 golfers against each other for an exemption slot in a championship golf tournament. Producers fly the dozen (this season, they’re all-female) to a cool golf destination (Kaanapali, this time) with the lure of sweet prizes (grand prize this time around is a slot at the 2008 Navistar LPGA Classic).

Each episode tests their skills on the greens. A player is eliminated each week.

Think “Survivor,” with nine irons and a cushy golf resort instead of an immunity idol and some godforsaken desert island. Like “Survivor,” the drama comes from the diverse personalities and egos of those involved.

Based on the clashes of ids and egos that we saw in the “Big Break” preview, the only thing sure to come out smelling sweet by season’s end is Maui’s sunny and scenic Kaanapali Resort.

“Big Break” has filmed in Hawaii once before—in late 2005 at Oahu’s Turtle Bay Resort.

More on the Kaanapali season here.
  

You ask. We answer.

Reader Joy Jones asks about Jack Thompson, one of the last remaining residents in the Big Island’s lava-inundated Royal Gardens subdivision. Her main concern: Was Thompson OK, and was his home still standing?

She’d been watching Anthony Bourdain’s food travelogue No Reservations that aired Monday on Travel Network.  Bourdain visited Thompson at his B&B, “Lava House.” Over the last quarter century, lava flows have almost completely surrounded Lava House but have always spared it.

At the end of the segment, Bourdain mentioned, portentiously, that Thompson had been forced to evacuate Lava House when Kilauea flows entered Royal Gardens again in January.

Perhaps in search of a final line matching his usual flare for the dramatic, Bourdain concluded, “Pele finally settled the matter for good.”

Not so, said Jack Thompson himself, on a message left on my voice mail last night after I’d called to check on him and Lava House. He sounded as unfazed by the lava flow—a mile or so from his home, and currently not threatening it—as he did on Bourdain’s show.

“Everything’s fine up here in lava land,” said Thompson. “I consider this a very safe place. We don’t have a lot of the problems up here the rest of the world has. There’s never been a forest fire up here. There’s never been a mudslide or a flood.”

“With lava, you can just step out of the way,” he said, calmly.

Thompson then thanked us for our concern and hung up. Does this guy totally rock or what?
 
Check out news reports on Thompson's life near the lava flow from CNN here, and from Honolulu-based TV station KGMB here.

 

Many people dig reruns of Hawaii Five-O. Myself included.

The over-the-top line readings. The ham-fisted dialogue. Square-jawed Jack Lord’s studied, emotion-free imagining of Det. Steve McGarrett. His solid team of creatively-named partners in Hawaii crime-fighting Kono Kalakaua, Chin Ho Kelly, Duke Lukela, Ben Kokua and, of course, Danny “Danno” Williams.

What’s not to love?

The best part about watching Hawaii Five-O as a lifelong Hawaii resident and longtime Honoluluan, though? Seeing places I regularly pass by or frequent as they looked in the 1970s—more than three decades ago. 

Jeremy Hart, a writer for Canadian newspaper the National Post, recently tried to retrace some of the Five-O team’s Honolulu steps for a story. Hart tries unsuccessfully to borrow McGarrett’s black tank of a Ford Mercury, rents a room one floor below the penthouse balcony the detective famously stood on in the show’s opening credits, and is oddly distracted from his quest by North Shore surf. But his road trip should be a fun read for Five-O fans.

Check it out here.

And if you’re hungry for more Wo Fat afterwards, check the best Hawaii Five-O Web site we found—fastidiously researched and compiled by mega-fan Mike Quigley—here.

Also, because we simply couldn't resist, here's a link to Five-O's way-awesome opening credits and still groovy theme by The Ventures.