The Gossipping Gourmet:

If you get the answering machine at Café Zoolu, mellow Mike, owner, executive chef, chef de cuisine and sous chef, will tell you that you have reached the home of the best swordfish on the planet. It may sound boastful but we heartily concur, as do Zagat and just about everybody else who’s tasted it.

This modest little neighborhood hangout, for those in the know, has been serving up this remarkable fish along with other tasty dishes for the past 16 years. Mike Leech is always at the grill cooking and his wife, Toni, is always in the front multi-tasking with a lovable brashness, keeping order amid chaos in this cramped, bustling, lively establishment.

The most significant element of the décor, aside from the Hawaiiana, is a gigantic stuffed sailfish flying above the archway, caught and donated by an intrepid fisherman-customer.

The Taste of Maui award-winning scallop salad can be served as a starter or an entrée. A bed of mixed greens tossed with tomato, bacon, egg, roasted red pepper, sunflower seeds and avocado is cloaked in a warm, pleasant honey mustard dressing, actually a bit too much of it for our taste. Perched on top are very large charbroiled scallops; a teeny bit undercooked (just the way we like them) rendering them very moist and flavorful.

This appetizer portion is so large, four people could share it to begin a meal, but that’s no surprise because Mike must have a horror of anyone going away hungry.

The presentation of the ahi tartar was inventive with its cubes of raw sushi-grade tuna wrapped in smoked salmon topped with fried wontons and garnished with red caviar and daikon sprouts.

The over-abundant portion of tuna, which the two of us were unable to finish, was mixed with an underabundance of ginger, lemon zest, shallots, soy sauce and a Thai sesame vinaigrette. We longed for a little more seasoning and a bit of spiciness.

The famous chunk-o-swordfish is certainly no exception to Mike’s supersizing propensities. People call it a “baseball cut” and that certainly is not a misnomer. Mike butchers the whole fish himself, cutting it into fat, 3-inch thick hunks, which he then mesquite broils and serves with your choice of lemon caper butter or sweet macadamia nut butter. If your taste buds lean toward the hot and spicy, you can get it blackened with Cajun spices, topped with tomatillo sauce and corn salsa. Hate to choose? You can have a three-way with smaller portions of all of the above.