Chinese Fave ‘Cleanses, Purifies’

Law Hon Jai ($10.95)

For the past 16 years, Happy Days Seafood Restaurant has been bringing smiles to those craving tasty and affordable Hong Kong-style Chinese cuisine.

The casual, family-friendly restaurant offers an extensive lunch and dinner menu with 249 items, plus dim sum (available 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily). Choose from a variety of traditional soups, seafood and poultry dishes, casseroles, taro baskets, sizzling plates and more.

For vegetarians, there also is a selection of vegetable-filled menu items, including Tofu with Twin Mushrooms and Vegetables ($11.95). “It has oyster sauce, but you can order it without,” says owner Lisa Lum.

SAY HI TO JAI

Chinese New Year may have passed, but you can still enjoy jai now, and anytime of year, at Happy Days. The popular vegetarian stew, traditionally eaten on Chinese New Year Day to purify and cleanse the body, consists of a variety of vegetables and vegetarian ingredients that each have symbolic meaning. For example, long rice represents long life.

Happy Day’s version of Law Hon Jai ($10.95) has long-rice noodles, bean curd, Chinese peas, chestnut, bamboo shoot, carrots, fungus, black mushroom, cabbage, straw mushroom and enoki mushroom in a bean-curd sauce.

“Sometimes other restaurants just make a simple kind of jai. Ours is traditional. It’s hard to make, and takes time because you have to get all the ingredients prepared,” says owner Lisa Lum.

Happy Days Seafood Restaurant

3553 Waialae Ave., Kaimuki
738-8666
Daily, 8 a.m.-10 p.m.