What in the World?

Eating globally at Panya Bistro

Panya Bistro defies categorization. It's a bakery, a restaurant and a bar. It's a late-night hangout for the beautiful people and a quiet haven for the ladies who lunch and other weary shoppers. It serves coffee, pastries and exciting appetizers, along with familiar soups, sandwiches, burgers, pasta and ramen and comforting entrées like Oxtail Stew ($13.95) and Loco Moco ($12.95). The food is American, Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Singaporean, Italian and Island-style. Panya Bistro is literally all over the map.

AAHH LAKSA: A steaming bowl of Panya Bistro's house noodles. photo: Jimmy Forrest

About the only thing that Panya Bistro isn't, is a bistro. The retro-hip space is dressed in stainless steel, dark tile and small mirrors strung together like beads. Think of Austin Powers Goes to Shanghai and you get the picture. There's nothing quiet or small about this place, which sits on the mauka side of perpetually busy Ala Moana Center.

It took me a little while to warm up to Panya Bistro's eclectic offerings. Its lunch menu seemed endless and directionless. Do I feel like a bowl of Miso Soup ($4.50) or Russian Style Borsch ($5.95)? How about Pork Chop Kyushu Udon ($8.50) or Spaghetti with Mushroom Tomato Meat Sauce ($10.50)?

"I think I'm totally confused," said one of my dining companions as she flipped back and forth through the menu.

Panya Bistro Ala Moana Center • 1450 Ala Moana Blvd. • 946-6388 • Dinner • 7:30 a.m. — 11 p.m., Monday — Saturday • 8 a.m. — 10 p.m., Sundays Friday only, 5:30 to 9:30 p.m.

After much consternation, I finally decided on a cup of French Onion Soup ($4.25) and a Smoked Salmon Sandwich ($8.95). My dining companions ordered Laksa ($11.95), a bright and spicy Southeast Asian noodle dish and a Vegetarian Supreme with Portobello Mushroom sandwich ($8.95). We also ordered an Oriental Chicken Salad ($9.50), which was never delivered to our table. (I guess the menu isn't confusing to just diners.) We supplemented our meal with a trio of appetizers: Panya Gyoza ($7.95), Fried Chicken ($6.95) and Garlic Tomato Shrimp ($7.95).

Once our food started arriving, our wildly diverse lunch went from themeless to seamless. The gyoza was plump and moist, filled with large, flavorful chunks of shrimp and ground pork. The garlic shrimp, which were enormous, were even better. The crustaceans, which were lightly fried and covered with a sweet, tomato-y Asian chili sauce, had a pleasingly crusty and savory outside, which contrasted with its tender and juicy inside. The chicken, fried Japanese style with a light dusting of flour and seasoning, was probably the weakest of the bunch. It was a little dry and boring.

My cup of French onion soup came in a dainty, Western tea cup. A flat crouton was topped with a square of cheese that sat in a little sea of beef broth. The soup was clean and light, without the thickly sliced onions and oozing cheese normally associated with the dish. Not exactly a tempest, but certainly pleasant.

My sandwich was similarly straightforward: thin slices of smoked salmon, tomato, lettuce, onion and capers in a small loaf of French bread. The saltiness from the fish and the capers worked nicely with the natural sweetness from the tomatoes. The sandwich's architecture worked out well, too. Nothing spilled out of the loaf as I bit into it. Eating the sandwich was a simple and clean affair.

With so much food for lunch, none of us had any room for dessert. With an extensive and fabulous selection of pastries out front, I shudder to think what Panya's dessert menu looks like.

Kidding aside, the more I think about Panya's polyglot offerings, the more I like them. Sure, the menu is crazy and confusing and almost aimless. But in a mall (and a world) that is rapidly replacing all its uniqueness and localness with thematic dining, shopping and living, it's nice to know that a truly original and inscrutable restaurant-bakery-sandwich shop-noodle house-bar still exists.

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