50 STATES: Hawaii

(Well, duh, you Yankee bastard — of course we can be happy anywhere, if we choose to be. One needn’t need to be a Transcendentalist stick-in-the-mud to know that much. What’s the fun of practicing it at home, though, when you can just as easily do it elsewhere?)

Admittedly, in times like these, Thoreau’s writing takes on a certain relevance. Asking yourself how much you can do without might be just the thing while you pull together your Plan B. I think you’ll find the answer to be a great deal.

I do intend to take my own advice and investigate the matter more fully at some point in the very near future. Just now, though, I cannot find anything in Walden, or, Life in the Woods (which is it, Hank?) that specifically discourages me from going to Hawaii.

There is no condemnation of those who would count the many different ways that macaroni salad is prepared in Honolulu, or of those who wish to know more about the lilikoi, that local varietal of what you and I might call passion fruit. I see nothing relating to the joys of discovering that there are about twenty different ways one can flavor macadamia nuts, and that you can try them all by visiting any gas station in the state.

Frankly, if Thoreau wasn’t going to take the time to specifically condemn all these things, then I wasn’t going to sit around reading between the lines. Not just to please some dead guy.

Trying not to die myself, making the merge out of the airport and onto Honolulu’s Nimitz Highway, I think to myself that even a man who spent months living on a pond in Massachusetts in a hut the size of my compact rental car might have enjoyed Hawaii. Too bad he kicked it about 100 years before statehood.

ABOUT THAT MAC SALAD

Honolulu is far away, about 1,500 miles further from New York than London. Still, because so many travelers just aren’t happy until they’ve taken things one step too far, the city is often just a transfer point for those trying to get to even more remote places, like more resort-y Maui, where they will ensconce themselves in dull condos or overpriced resorts and eat things like pizza and hamburgers.

This actually works out fine, as there is already enough traffic on the road into town from the airport. The first thing you notice about Honolulu, in fact, is that it is wildly overcrowded. That doesn’t take away from its magic. Part American, part Tokyo and yet, all Polynesia, Honolulu is sweaty, friendly, congested, sexy, poorly planned and architecturally hideous. Yes, this town is one troptastic mess, tumbling off of cool green hills and straight into the Pacific Ocean.

Today, most of the city appears to be tumbling towards Nico’s, down on Pier 38. This makes sense. It is, after all lunchtime, and Nicholas Chaize’s docklands dive is one of Honolulu’s premier plate lunch destinations.

Because Nico’s is literally next door to the local wholesale fish market, there are plenty of healthy-sounding fish specials, but I am not here to eat healthy. The point of my visit is to see just what kind of plate lunch a French expat pulls together. How does the Loco Moco — hamburger patty topped with brown gravy and fried egg rise above the herd, when the ingredients are of a better quality and the preparation overseen by an actual chef? Will Chicken Katsu, that Japanese lunch fried cutlet staple, reach new peaks of excellence I’ve yet to experience stateside?

Forced to choose between katsu and the Loco Moco, I chose both. Local organic greens were offered on the side, as if. Everybody knows it is not a real Hawaiian plate lunch until there are at least two starches: Mac salad and rice for me.

The whole thing cost me $7.95, and offered enough food for two meals. Insane, maybe, but I’ll mostly remember the macaroni, served without a hint of vinegar (an affliction most pasta salads in New York seem to suffer from).

Here, it was just mayo and a little seasoning. A tiny bit of chopped veg to pretty it up. Thoreau was right — there truly is great pleasure to be derived from the simplest of things. Let’s not dwell on the fact that I had just flown 5,000 miles to test his theory.

YOU MIGHT CALL THAT THE AMUSE BOUCHE

Traffic is a reality of life in Honolulu, whether you’re a resident or a visitor. More so if you’re a visitor, simply because you don’t know the shortcuts. There can’t be that many of them though. The geography of this city is impossible, wrapped as it is around a bunch of mountains, with very little flat space at the bottom of the hills on which to put put things like roads, at least, that go more than a few blocks before just stopping, leaving you stuck in a dog-leg arrangement along with the rest of the fools that wish they had just taken the freeway. Nobody seems to care. The folks in Honolulu appear to live in a heightened state of awareness regarding their location on a tiny island. They have probably driven Oahu’s roads one too many times not to know that there is only just so far you can go. Why rush?

The combination of the traffic and nearly every driver’s disinclination to act like a crazy person makes it easy to multitask while navigating the tangle of streets that will get me from Waikiki to the airport. I’m headed to meet a friend, coming in on one of the many daily flights that connect Hawaii and Japan.

Scott will likely not be pleased that I’ve started eating without him, but I cannot be held accountable for the fact that he is late in getting here.

Out of dozens of options, I’ve settled on the Diamond Head Market. Just a mile or so out of Waikiki, land where food goes to die, this walk-up window/convenience store is a life saver. Inspire me, I said to the young lady at the window. What’s your specialty?

She immediately recommended the coconut pancakes, served with a side of macadamia nut syrup. There was mutual agreement that the perfect complement to something this sweet would be a side of spicy Portuguese sausage, which is like chorizo, but spelled in a way that means its just easier to call it Portuguese sausage.

The Market is another Honolulu dive with a chef’s pedigree. Kelvin Ro once cooked in the Governor’s Mansion, which is enough to make you want to run for Governor of Hawaii, except that now you don’t have to, since his team turfs out some of the best takeout in Oahu. Or, at the very least, the best takeout you’ll ever chow down while sitting in traffic on a Honolulu freeway.

ON TO HAPPY HOUR

The next two days were a blur of palm trees, white sand, alarming poverty, hideous congestion and a lot of smiles. And more eating. Lots more eating. By our last afternoon, we couldn’t eat another bite. Not that it hadn’t all been fantastic;buttery shrimp scampi from the famous trucks of the North Shore, a memorable ahi salad from Food for Thought in Haleiwa, some of the best barbecued pork in the universe and more beef with teriyaki sauce than I care to remember. But we were finished.

“Let’s,” I said, “just go get some drinks and be done.” Scott didn’t argue. Since, at less than half my size, he can still out-eat me, I knew this was the right thing to do.

So, we went for drinks. At the mall. The flashy Ala Moana Mall, a sea of Prada, Gucci and the Japanese tourists who love the whole shebang, is not just any mall. It’s a must-see.

We were here because someone, I forget who, had told me not to ask questions, but just make sure to get to happy hour at the Mai Tai Bar. It’s by the Nordstrom, they said.

An open-air affair, the bar turned out to be currently experiencing Happy Hour, a magical time when drinks are often two for one. I was surprised to find this to be the case in such fancy surroundings.

Celebrating our good fortune, I ordered my first frozen Mai Tai. (The only thing better for a warm Hawaii afternoon than a Mai Tai, it turns out, is a frozen Mai Tai.) Because he is odd, Scott went for something else, what turned out to be an expertly prepared, chilly, lychee martini. We ordered, because we had not yet done so, some coconut shrimp, which came out crunchy and hot and as sweet as you’d expect, with chili sauce for dipping. The entire bill was $27. A cheapskate could get used to this.

“How’s your pupu,” asked a friendly lady sitting next to us as we tore into the shrimp with the gusto of someone who had not eaten in days. I barely had time to answer before she asked us if we knew about this whole other happy hour going on downstairs that, apparently, we totally had to go to. By then, though, we were tipsy enough to have made further plans for eating. So much for our pledge to never eat again.

The plan was to walk the few blocks from the mall over to Side Street Inn.

Side Street is the sort of place that might be called a gastropub, if the decor didn’t look like every divey tavern you’ve seen out in the provinces. Fake wood paneling, cheap chairs, neon in the clock behind the bar, the works. A symphony in the key of Formica.

If this were Alaska, or Wisconsin, and it very well could be except for the crowd, you’d pony up a buck or two for a Miller Light. But this is the middle of Honolulu, not Fairbanks or La Crosse, and there’s more on the menu than jalapeno cheese poppers fresh from a bag that fell off the back of a Sysco truck. Side Street is where people come for the down home atmosphere of a frontier town corner tap, plus the winning asset of some very good food. The adventurous menu, at first glance, appears to be stolen from somewhere else.

So popular is Side Street at the dinner hour, that the young ladies dutifully manning the hostess station were not at all pleased to hear that I had not made reservations.

Our punishment, it turned out, was a table in Siberia. That or a slot at the bar, which looked busy and convivial, the bartenders smiling a lot more than the harried floor staff. We opted for smiles and less elbow room. It turned out to be the best move we’d made all day, or at least since we decided to make sure we didn’t miss happy hour over at the mall.

The pint of local brew — a nice Kona lager — set the tone for a platter of pork chops, which arrived just as I had begun to plug quarters into the quiz machine sitting next to me on the bar. Crunchy and no doubt pan fried, we’d barely begun to eat before accepting delivery of a platter of barbecued ribs, sitting in a sort of tower, slathered in lilikoi barbecue sauce. There was a farmer’s market salad (local veg) on the side, just to make us feel better about the fact that we were being total gluttons.

Everything was more than fine. Still, the bartender was not content to hear this just once. Again and again, Art came over to check up on us. A middle-aged gentleman, Art was sporting a sort of half-mullet, talked a lot like Sarah Palin and appeared to be at least part Japanese. This is the long-winded way of saying that Art was Hawaiian.

“Ono? Delicious?” he’d say.

It wasn’t so much a question, the way he was asking. Art knew the answer, and not just because he has confidence in the kitchen. We weren’t exactly hiding the fact that we were really pleased. It was the sort of happiness that people exude when they have a religious experience. That, or when they eat great barbecue.

I started offering food to strangers sitting next to us at the bar. This seemed like the neighborly thing to do, and besides, we certainly weren’t going to finish. Thoreau, that famous penny pincher, wouldn’t have had to even reach for his wallet.

10 BEST: ‘ONO EATS ON OAHU

Hungry and/or thirsty? Here are 10 of our favorites for eating (and drinking — don’t forget drinking) on our favorite Hawaiian island. Consider this nothing more than a good jumping off point: Oahu is paradise for affordable dining.

1) Side Street Inn

Steps from the Ala Moana Center, this utilitarian corner tap punches above its weight, menu-wise . (And sometimes, attitude-wise.) Somehow, it all works. Reservations recommended.

What to order: Lilikoi ribs, farmer’s market salad.

Go: 1225 Hopaka St, Honolulu. (808) 591-0253

2) Nico’s Pier 38

Quality ingredients and a chef’s eye make it hard to forego Hawaiian plate lunch staples such as the Loco Moco (hamburger steak topped with fried egg and gravy). Breakfast is a minefield of awesome.

What to order: Catch of the day special, sweet bread French toast, Loco Moco.

Go: 1133 N Nimitz Hwy, Honolulu. (808) 540-1377; http://www.nicospier38.com

3) Mai Tai Bar

Fun happy hour atop the Ala Moana Center that at times is equal part flip-flop wearing tourists and well-dressed professionals out for a gossip. The whole scene is as sophisticated as a tropical bar can get. The drink specials will not be ignored.

What to order: Frozen mai tai

Go: in the Ala Moana Center, 1450 Ala Moana Blvd, Honolulu. (808) 947-2900