Haleiwa | Matsumoto Shave Ice

I contemplated another “Then & Now” post with Matsumoto’s but I didn’t have a ton of photos from our previous trip and had too many photos from this time around to lump them in with a general “what we ate” post. So, here we are – a quick post with a few photos of me and Sly stuffing our faces with shave (shaved?) ice.

check out that line behind Sly

After our normal morning routine of swimming in the ocean, coffee from Ted’s, and fruit stand fruit for breakfast, we drove to Haleiwa to do a bit of shopping and maybe a bit of eating. We walked around the once quiet town noting the changes: huge parking lots, Carlos ‘n Charlie’s type restaurants, and shopping malls. The adorably vintage Haleiwa Supermarket was now a Long’s Drugs.

Eight years ago, Matsumoto’s still sold shave ice in plastic cones outside of their charming little general store off the main street. These days, holy tour bus it’s a big time operation complete with instructions on how to order and a sno-cone assembly line. Except there aren’t really cones any more. Instead, after waiting nearly an hour in a line that snaked ever-so-conveniently around rows of souvenirs and gift shop items, our shave ice came out in a paper bowl. I think we ordered the same thing  – the tropical with additional condensed milk – which melted in like two seconds in the Hawaii heat. All the benches were occupied and the line jutted up against the benches anyway, so we found a spot on some patchy grass and hurriedly slurped up our shaved ice bowl. It still tasted good, but it wasn’t the same. I probably wouldn’t wait in line for an hour to eat it again, but I suppose it was okay this time around, for the sake of tasting old memories.