Chef Kamal is cooking up some amazing dishes for the holidays and other caterings . Stop by the cafe for some last minute stocking stuffers. What says I love you more than a gift certificate for the truck or the cafe? The Cafe is newly decorated and the menu has just been tweeked. Lots of new Moroccan goodies and Gourmet Pizzas to keep you satisfied!  For larger parties please call 808-626-5032

Need a Catered event, look no further. We do Weddings, Birthday parties, Home Parties, Club Events, Office parties, and even Sock Hops!  We are looking forward to helping you throw the best event ever. No party is too big or too small (ok, one guy playing and finishing the new Call of Duty, might be too small) ;)  email me at matt@shogunaitacos.com or holla at 808-256-4020.

Eat The Street Holiday addition is upon us! Please dress up Xmassy and swing by for a taco and some of our new delicious Nachos!

Thanx to everyone who has supported us and we look forward to another great year of serving you the best Intercontinental Tacos this Island has ever seen!

Also check us out in this months Hana Hou Hawaiian Airlines Inflight magazine and Hawaii Magazine!

We have also added Kapolei near the DOT (Department of Transportation) to our Weekly Route. Wednesday is the day we hit the West Side! We have been greeted with open arms and look forward to serving our new friends :)

Also this month we have a couple of Great Events! First up is  Non Stop Kaka’ako an Urban Food and Entertainment Experience like no other. Of Course Shogunai Tacos will be providing DJs to 3 of the 5 Entertainment tents. You know it is going to be off the hook! Boo Yahh!  On top of that we have been nominated for the best Tacos on Oahu, so please VOTE  for us everyday until the 16th of Oct!  We would like to Thank the Staff and Writers of Non Stop Honolulu for Nominating us, ;).  This event is full of all kinds of activities, a Men’s Lounge, where the Football game will be televised between some great local talent on the decks, a Ladies Lounge that will be Ultra Lush and Pampering with a great Downtempo Vibe,  an Art Tent with Slam Poetry blended with some funky beats, and a Main Stage with some of the best Local bands this Island has to offer.  A must see extravaganza!

Eat the Street is back in a Spooky way! Dia de Los Muertos (The Day of the Dead) ETS gets a makeover in the form of Ghosts and Ghouls. Latin Food is on the Menu. We will have something extra special on the Plancha for you.  As always we will sponsor the DJ booth and make sure to have some upbeat Latin Vibes to help digest your spicy treats. This is Halloween weekend, so start if off with a full stomach and check out ur favorite trucks ;)

Also from our Off-Premise Moroccan Dinner, a great story and some dandy photos to share the fun. Thank you very much to all who attended (Mari & Melissa especially) and to the great staff at Off-Premise for their attention to detail and the wonderful setting :)

A couple of fun upcoming Events, we have been asked to serve the Runners for the XTERRA Trail Run World Championship at the Kualoa Ranch on December 4th. There will also be a 5K and 10K run that at day along with an OC 16 Kids race.

I will also be starting a new event called “Velvet Tuesdays at The Dragon Upstairs” sponsored by Shogunai Tacos where I (Matt Duffy aka TripleBypass) will be DJing along side Matt Kee (KTUH), Kevin Cruze aka DJ Monkey and a host of others starting around the first or second week of November. Stay tuned for more details. Music style will be Downtempo, World Funk, and Scandinavian Jazz!

The holiday season is also about to begin and we are taking dates for parties and caterings please call or email Myself or Chef Kamal to arrange one of the finest dining experiences this side of the Ganges :)  808-256-4020 or 808-373-0155 you can also email us from the contact page!

PS:::::I turn 35 this month, Yipes Stripes ;(

It has been an exciting Summer and Fall is just looking up! We just had the first Eat the Street in Mililani and it was slammin! I mean you could not squeeze another person in that lot if you tried! It was wall to wall and I think every truck sold out! Thanks for all of those who came out in support!

We also catered on the set of the up and coming ABC TV series The River By the looks of this set, I think there is going to be a new favorite show that will rival the fans of Lost and keep you wanting more every week! The cast and crew were very gracious and we had a swell time out in the Kahana Valley in the Wee hours of the evening.

We also wanted to say a SPECIAL Thank You to everyone involved in this Season’s Hawaii Polo ” Where Polo Meets the Pacific”! We had a Fantastic experience and made a lot of new friends! Thanks to all the fans who came out every week and to the athletes & Horses who put on and Extravaganza of expertise, charm, and good old fashioned fun! We are looking forward to next Season which starts in April!

If all that wasn’t enough we will be doing another Eat The Street on the last Friday of this month at 555 South Street with some Special Shogunai DJs…. Soundsex, Matt Kee, Billy Zane, and DJ Mr. Nick will be gracing the decks with quite an eclectic array of beats. So come down early and get your groove down with your grind on! The Zeus’s Glory will be making it’s first appearance at Eat the Street, so watch out, because lightening may strike twice!

I almost forgot, now that School is back in Session we will be returning to Manoa on Campus for lunch on some Wednesdays and Fridays, stay tuned to our Twitter feed to find out where we are daily!

Shogunai Desu Ne!!!! Just in case the video starts in a funny place, start it around 19:30 :)

Chef Kamal has been whipping up some fresh new items and making quite an impression with the residents. It is also great to have our very own kitchen to prep and cater on a much grander of scale.  Things are moving forward and up!  The catering events have been coming in right and left.  Please feel free to contact us at catering@shogunaitacos.com

We also served food to the cast and crew of Hawaii 5 O the other night. Hopefully we can get the truck in an episode soon :)  Really a great group of people everyone was super friendly and patient! I hope this season is just as great as last!

Polo has been doing well but coming to a close on Sept 4th for the Winter. So you folks better get out there ASAP for a Taco and the ultimate Gentleman’s sport mixed with a bit of drinking and debauchery.

We had a great spot on the Japanese  TV show Moyamoya Summers 2! They stumbled upon the truck up around Diamond Head and sampled the Osaka Jo and Shinkansen Quesadilla and placed a few stickers on the truck. They were quite funny and have been a great boost to our Facebook fans and Twitter followers. Already some people have come and visited the truck that had seen the show. It was a lot of fun speaking Japanese and joking around a bit.  Thanks to the cast and crew!

Groupon also featured us as Great Deal and we have had many people stop by to redeem their punchcards.  Thanks to Titus of Groupon for supporting us and getting our name out there. We recently did a Tweetup with Groupon, Nonstop Honolulu, and Podium Raceway in Kapolei. Thanks to all the folks who came out! Looking forward to seeing more of you Grouponers soon!

This Month is a Very Special Spicy Eat the Street! We will be featuring two Spicy Tacos along side the Osaka Jo. The Flaming Madras Indian Taco which will blow your socks off and tempt your taste buds, it will be accompied by The En Fuego Fiery Mexican beef Taco. Bring your thermos of Ice water because you are going to need it! Besides all that, the Shogunai Dj crew will be in the House. DJ Micron (Algorythmn). DJ Matt Kee (KTUH Alumni), TKO (Subphonix/Organized Grime). and THD (Subphonix/Pacific Jungle). All four DJs will be rocking it all night long. So get out there early and get your Grind on!

There is a lot more in store so stay tuned!

In the beginning of June we fed the 6,000 troops of the USS Carl Vinson as they stopped in Hawaii via their way home after 8 months at sea. I will have to say I was quite amazed at some of the stories and learned quite a bit from our soldiers. Truly it is some hard work being at sea for that long, and the living quarters are tight to say the least. One guy told me the length of the bunks are about 5 ft 4 inches, in other words I would be sleeping in the fetal position, yikes! Also the inside of the Aircraft Carrier is the size of 3 football fields! It was great to talk story with them and serve them some delicious Tacos while seeing another side of life! Hope all of you guys and gals enjoy your time off and being back with your families at home.

Polo has been Delightful every week! If you have not had a chance to come out, pack up the dog, kids, and a cooler of your favorite bevvys and get your ass out here! Indeed it is an amazing time, think Narnia meets the Beach with Men on Horseback playing a Gentleman’s game.  There is always a band afterward and plenty of people tailgating and just having a relaxing Sunday on one of the most beautiful spots on the Island.   It starts at 2pm and usually finishes around 7.  Along with us is the Dawn Patrol Coffee Wagon, the Polo Club Bar, and some great guys selling Shave Ice & Popcorn.  Really folks, this is something you don’t want to miss. Also Thanx to all of the folks that come back every week and support us :)  It is located in Mokule’ia just past Wailua near Dillingham Airfield.  Check it!

This week is a Pork Lover’s Dream at Eat the Street. All of the trucks and vendors will be digging deep for their best pork creations and recipes.  We will be featuring the Triple Crown of Pork. One Taco with Ham, Spicy Bacon, and our Famous Osaka Jo Pork! It’s going to be Pigglicious :)  We will also have a Moroccan Chicken Tagine plate, South of the Border Taco, and our Moroccan Pomme Frites. The event starts at 4 and goes until 9 with Djs SamOndarox and TKO spinning some eclectic grooves to digest that Swine.

We will also be at the McKinley High School book Fair on Saturday from 9 am to 9 pm! Also the Groupon Campaign was a huge success, we are looking forward to meeting and serving everyone who signed up for a Punchcard.  Holla!!!

The way it works is a deal is made available through their web site and is only redeemable after enough people have bought into the deal. Once the promo reaches it’s tipping point, “The deal is on!” and everyone who purchases the discount saves big – otherwise, there’s no deal.

Check out Shogunai Tacos on Groupon and don’t waste any time to cash in on this great deal! Also, here’s a sneak peek of our snazzy punchcards:

Here’s to happy eats and seeing all our Groupon savvy folks on the streets!

Here’s the list of participating trucks:

• Achilles Grill (Thai Food)
• Aloha Ice Cream Tricycle (Ice Cream Pie and Ice Pops)
• Baja Style (Fresh Mexican Cuisine)
• Da Ala Cart (Food on a Stick!)
• Da Jammin Wagon (Cuban)
• Da Hook
• Elena’s Home of Finest Filipino Foods
• Fairy Cakes Hawaii (Cupcakes n Whoopie Pies)
• Flip’t Out (Filipino Fusion)
• Grandma G’s Kitchen (Fresh Fish Plates)
• Hawaiian Waffledog Company
• Hula Shrimp Co
• Infernos Wood Fire Pizza
• Jawaiian Irie Jerk (Jamaican)
• Jus’ Right Kettle Corn Popcorn
• Kaka‘ako Kool (Shave Ice)
• Le Crepe Cafe
• Lickety Split (Soft Serve Ice Cream)
• Local Boy Sushi
• Local STOP (Burgers and Sliders) Madre Chocolates
• Ocean Dim Sum
• Ronnies Express
• Shogunai Tacos (Fusion Tacos)
• Simply Ono
• Snow Factory (Frozen Treats)
• Soul patrol (Southern Cuisine)
• Stacy’s Lau Lau (Pastele and LauLau)
• Tacos Vicente
• Tiki Truck (Tacos, Sliders and Fresh Stanky Corn)
• Why’z
• Xtreme Tacos

This time around the event will be more accommodating for families with a keiki fun zone, plus live art installments and DJs playing music for your listening pleasure. If you are a food fanatic and you haven’t been to this event yet, get up and get out there!

A week after the wildly successful first ever Eat the Street event in Honolulu, I find myself in the heart of Marrakech in the middle of all of this… street vendors, late night eateries, food stands at every turn, open markets peddling spices and olives, slowly simmered escargot by the bowl, cobras dancing out of baskets and monkeys wearing dresses named Aziza.  From the Pacific Islands to North Africa, the streets may look different but the feeling is the same, eating in the street has a charm all it’s own.

First to mention is the escargot.  Available for 5 dirham a bowl (roughly 75 U.S. cents), the main square in Marrakech, Djemaa el Fana, hosts an entire row of escargot vendors.  A potential escargot eater takes an available stool, one of many lined up against the vendor’s cart, and is quickly given a bowl of steaming warm escargot broth.  The flavor of the broth is similar to a spiced tea with multiple herbs including dried ginger, cardamum, cloves and star anise.  You grab a toothpick and the bowl is filled with escargot and more broth before you begin to pick the fleshy escargot from their shells. While we were eating we enjoyed gnaoua people playing with there krarech and drums.(free show to enjoy with your escargot). This is only the appetizer but what’s coming after will open your appetite even more.

Once we finished the escargot, the first thing that caught my eye was another food stand; it looked like heaven to me. I mean just close your eyes and wish for something , exotic meats, eggplant salads, merguez, different kinds of fish and shrimp, lamb kebobs, spinach salad, olives, bread & chicken tajine, and more. So I had to stop for a second and take it all in. Even though I  grew up here, I never paid that much attention to how beautiful  and  just how well organized and presented the fresh daily prepared food was.  The sweet thing is that what i was staring at was only the first stand, there were two more rows of each stand just like this one and at least 10 stands from both sides.  I was standing in the middle of hundreds of street vendors, selling some of the most fresh, delicious and exciting foods I have ever tasted- hey talk about heaven my friends!

Rajani, my Mom and I ended up trying something very different, since this is Rajani’s first time in Marrakech. I took my time to sit down, I was worried that although Rajani said that she was willing to try anything, I wanted to see Rajani’s reaction to lamb head; fresh brains, lamb cheeks sitting on the table, right in front of her own eyes.  She seemed genuinely like she was curious to try, so we did.  We saw a brain get cleaned and then steamed in front of us, steamed lamb cheeks with salt and cumin, and tanjia which is lamb cooked with preserved lemon, Saffron and
cumin cooked in earthenware cooking vessels and served straight from the pot.
This  was our very first night in Marrakech…

Breakfast is a special treat in Morocco.  Some families may have two breakfasts.  Usually the  families that have older traditions, or those who live in the villages, will have a first breakfast very early, at dawn, perhaps 6 in the morning.  It’s a bowl of soup almost like the Chinese Congee, but with dates and fresh figs and instead of rice, it’s a white grain that is similar to oatmeal.  The second breakfast may be closer to 8:30 or 9am, with mint tea, fresh baked bread dipped in olive oil, marmalaid or olives.  It’s something I miss dearly after moving to the States.

Others may prefer a soup made of fava beans for breakfast, served hot from street vendors and wheat bread.  It’s topped with olive oil and paprika, and patrons may add cumin and salt to taste.  It’s also accompanied with a glass of warm mint tea as well.  A hearty way to start your day, but bissara (the fava bean soup) is delicious!  Another way to have a typical Moroccan breakfast is to order breakfast at a cafe.  You’ll be delighted with a fresh croissant, freshly squeezed orange juice, and espresso.

It’s Friday, also known as couscous day.  In Morocco, it’s well known that across the country, Friday is typically when families prepare to gather and eat homemade couscous.  While you walk in the street, you can smell the couscous being prepared home after home, family after family, preparing for a meal that will surely make you full and dizzy.  Most people stay home in the afternoon after a good meal of homemade couscous, business shut down, markets are quiet.  It’s siesta time!

When my Mom makes couscous, she always makes sure there are six people or more.  It’s a dish that should be enjoyed by big groups!  She always invites my aunts and uncles to eat; the joy of couscous is eating with your family and friends.  Couscous is a lot of work to prepare and so the labor that goes in should go into feeding only those you love.  Mom’s couscous is made with rack of lamb, garbanzo beans, potatoes, carrots, zuchinnis, pumpkin, cabbage and clarified butter.  Her couscous is the best!  I’ve been trying to recreate it for the last seven years, since I’ve moved to the states, but it never comes out the same!

While we sat around the table, my Mom brought Gasrya of couscous (the serving dish for couscous).  Without forks, knifes or spoons on the table, it’s just a whole dish of piping hot couscous.  Couscous is for eating with the hands, even families that use silverware all the time for everything else will use hands for couscous.  You put a bit of steaming hot vegetables on the side, along with the meat, some of the spicy green pepper if you like and a bit of the grain and you mash it with your fingers together.  You roll it in the palm of your hand until it becomes golf ball sized and then you eat.  The golf ball is called ‘lokmatell kadi’, which means in the literal translation ‘little piece of food or bread of the judge.‘

We decided to wake early and visit some of the museums in the old city called Medina.  Once you enter Medina, which is surrounded by centuries old walls created to protect the people of Medina from outside forces, it is almost like taking a trip through time.  After a long morning at the museums, we went to a local market for some lunch.  We saw tagines cooking over charcoals.  The vendor lifted the lids of the tagines, asking us, “would you prefer reduced sauce?” which meant the tagine, filled with chicken, carrots, potatoes and preserved lemon, was slightly burned from the bottom “or, a light broth?” Of course we picked the burned tagine as there is always more flavor that way, and we sat at a small table in the middle of the market.  We ordered a bottle of water “con gas” and asked for a salad of cucumbers and tomatoes, along with white beans in a tomato broth.  It was delicious!  Rajani especially loved the harissa, the spicy tomato side that was the best flavored harissa she would taste in all of Morocco.  In all, the meal was less than ten US dollars.  After the delicious meal, we decided to walk along the small narrow streets and we ended up at my Grandmother’s house, just a few minutes away from the markets.

One thing you will soon discover at restaurants and bars, or practically wherever you go, olives are offered to everybody.  We decided to go to the olive market to check it out.  Right after we get to the olive district of the market, most of the vendors are asking you to try their particular marinade for their olives.  There are many different varieties of olives, there are salted sun dried black olives, green olives without pits, violet olives that are good for cooking with, marinated mixed olives, black olives for baking and for pizza topping, and not to mention all the pickled items- carrots, radishes, cucumbers and jars of preserved lemons.  The prices were very affordable and well worth the visit!

After the olive markets, I wanted to take Rajani to the khlii market where Bizarre Food’s host and chef Andrew Zimmerman tried khlii.  Khlii is a lamb confit, preserved and known for it’s gamey and strong smell and taste.  It had Andrew Zimmerman slapping his own head in protest!  We bought some to add to our eggs the next morning for breakfast.  It was the best, although Rajani wasn’t as enthusiastic!

By walking in the markets and streets, every turn would take us to a specialized new center for cuisine, whether it was the spice area where we found pure saffron at 50 dirham per gram or nuts cooked in hot sand, all of our senses were fully occupied.

One afternoon we decided to pick up some kilos of fresh sardines.  We felt like grilling over charcoals and sardines with sea salt and lemons from my aunts backyard was a simple, yet delicious feast waiting to happen.  Two kilos (or roughly 4 lbs) of sardines were just one dollar and 25 cents.  With the help of a cousin or two, we grilled the sardines and had a wonderful dinner accompanied by a local wine, Domaine Sahari (thanks to cousin Naoufal local wines were introduced to us and we were genuinely impressed!). However, the true seafood adventure was awaiting us in a town called Essouira, a coastal city that was once occupied by the Portugese, but is most famously known by its yearly gnaoua music festival attended by music legends like Jimmi Hendrix, Led Zepplin, Carlos Santana, Ziggy Marley and the like.  It’s a surfer/hippie town, Moroccan style.

After we got a great hotel room with a balcony looking over the ocean and walked around the city a bit, we decided to have some fresh fish.  The best place for that was of course the port.  Situated right next to the ocean were street vendors once again, lined up with their freshest catches of the day.  We stopped at one that offered great prices for great selections.  We ordered crawfish, a whole crab, a whole sole, a whole snapper, nearly a kilo of shrimp, and watched them grill our food to order while snacking on a salad of tomato, cucumbers and onions.  We quickly devoured our meal and the bones that were left showed just how happy we were!  They were wiped clean!

While we were leaving the fresh seafood booths, we decided to walk around the entire market by the sea and saw sea urchins for sale, available just like how we picked the other fresh seafood that we had just filled our bellies with- a point and a nod.  We decided we would come back the next morning and have uni for breakfast.  The next morning, we approached a seafood vendor who was offering the fresh sea urchin 6 dollars for 12 full urchins.  The vendor cut the top of the urchin and offered it to us with wedges of lemon.  That was a unique breakfast that neither Rajani or I will ever forget… delicious fresh urchin that melted in our mouths!

Although we have many more stories to tell about all of the fun and good people we met and got to reconnect with, let’s end this story for now with some of the sweets that my Mom made from her hand as a dessert.  With all the family that came to visit, my Mom made sure to prepare pastries so that they were on hand at all times, to make sure that anyone that came to drop by and say hello was fed with something sweet on their lips.  We would like to end with some photos of the pastries made by her hands so that you too can see just how much love and care we felt while in Morocco.

Thank you to all my loved one specially my mom and of course my aunt and all my cousins and everybody who made our trip so special.