When celebrated chef Michael Mina broached the idea last year of creating the position of fish sommelier for the Fish House, his restaurant at the Four Seasons Resort Oahu at Ko Olina, it raised some eyebrows. “I thought it was a joke at first,” admits Jared Chang, who was busing tables before being tapped for the job. But the 20-year-old Ewa Beach native and competitive fisherman took to his new role like, well, a fish to water.
“I give descriptions of what the various fish taste like and I work with the wine sommelier on pairings,” he explains. “The idea is to touch every single table, displaying the fish of the evening, since the genuine heart of the menu is our whole fish program.”
Chang’s favorite fish to introduce to guests? Moi, a “delicious, buttery fish that pairs well with citrusy wines and was historically reserved for royalty. It’s a shoreline fish that I grew up catching.”
Travel and features writer Jeanne Cooper fell in love with Marin and the Bay Area as a graduate student at Stanford University. After 20 years as an editor and writer for the Washington Post, Boston Globe and San Francisco Chronicle, she began a freelance career that has taken her from the Austral Islands to Zimbabwe, with many visits to Hawaii in between. Her stories have appeared in numerous national and regional magazines, including Hemispheres, Sunset, San Francisco and Nob Hill Gazette, as well as Marin and Local Getaways. The author of several Frommer’s guidebooks, she now lives on the Big Island, where she’s active in animal rescue. She still enjoys exploring Northern California with her husband and friends.
