Breakfast of Champions
I have a confession to make, I live to eat, not eat to live. My Protestant Father tried his best to teach me food should strictly be taken for nourishment, yet after my first bite of caviar with a nip of real French champagne, you couldn’t get me back to the farm. Mind you I was on my first trip to Europe when that experience happened and only being sixteen and from a backwater Texas town, what did I know? I can tell you I have spent the last forty-six years making up for the first sixteen!
Not that I eat that way all of the time, no sir, I enjoy a healthy meal on many occasions, so I don’t feel guilty when I really go over the top! This brings me to the best breakfast in Kona! The Hapuna Prince Beach Hotel is our go-to place when we need to get away from the solitude, eternal green peace and reclusive wonder of our six-acre farm. We probably venture over the Saddle three times a year and usually to show friends and family how the other half lives! Our contentment with our island paradise is complete, yet, the breakfast is worth the drive!
The Hapuna Prince is the sister property of the revered Mauna Kea Hotel. The Mauna Kea Beach Hotel celebrated its 50th year in 2015 and is Laurence S. Rockefeller’s famed Hawai‘i Island resort, complete with a guided tour of the vast art collection housed in the hotel. The Hapuna Prince, directly next door, has its own powerful cache with the islanders. The generous Kama’aina rates, for you Mainlanders’, the local’s discount, beautiful ocean view rooms, and aloha spirit, make the Hapuna a must for the locals.
The white sand beach extends to the public beach adjoining the hotel beach and gives the morning runner or shell scavenger, plenty of room to commune with the ocean. The morning I went down for an ocean swim I wisely ended up doing laps in their huge pool as I knew the waves were bigger than I was. It is the only lagoon I feel relatively safe swimming in the ocean. Relative is the operative as there have been shark sightings yet I continue to be brave, except when the waves are taller than me.
The exercise is the precursor to the breakfast. I may live to eat yet I refuse to have it show on my hips and stomach!
This particular morning my co-writer, Marjorie Meret-Carmen from Bend, Oregon, was thawing out from the icy Northwest for three weeks in Volcano, whilst we sorted out our year in the writer’s world. Our brief sojourn to Kona and the Hapuna Prince had to include the Japanese breakfast. I was excited to share the delight with my dear friend. I don’t mean share in the literal sense, we each had our own! You see, my husband is an eggs bene man, or a French toast guy or a homemade corn beef hash manly man and I, the Japanese breakfast girl.
Ah, the breakfast. The lovely tray arrives with a correctly poached petite filet of salmon, steamed Rice, Oshinko (Japanese pickles), Grated Daikon, Nori, Miso Soup, spicy local watercress, half a local papaya and green tea. Heaven!
Yes, I do drive to Kona for this breakfast.
The view is nice, though.
What a way to start the day!
..good heavens, when did you do this one? In between Jessica’s birth and Michael’s visit in Germany?