There's something about packing a bunch of great flavor into a little package that appeals to us. We like little packages — good things come in … you know the rest.

Two fairly new specialty shops (another thing we're starting to realize that we like) are turning out small packages of big flavor that are so popular that by noon on most days, both places are usually stripped of their wares, their shelves bare as a result of a two-hour buying frenzy.

MANA BU'S

Rating: Four forks out of five (Very good)

1618 S. King St., just beyond the Punahou and King intersection, next to Baskin Robbins

358-0287

Hours: 10:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. (or until everything is sold out), Tuesdays-Sundays

Payment: Cash only

Recommended: Spicy takuan musubi, kombu musubi, baked musubi, curry potato and edamame salad

Prices: $1-$2 per item

There are two things you need to know about Mana Bu's:

1. You must love musubi to love Mana Bu's.

2. You must get there early. A line forms outside the door every morning before the store opens at 10:30, and it's not unusual for everything to sell out by noon.

This tiny box of a Japanese delicatessen is all the rage right now in palm-sized food.

Think of it as a DIY okazuya, where all the pieces for a good, balanced Japanese-style lunch box meal are there for you to build your own combo.

Mana Bu's specializes in musubi — at least a dozen varieties of triangular patties of perfectly cooked rice line the wooden shelves — and everything is cooked and prepared fresh daily. And like any neighborhood okazuya, when the food's gone, it's gone. There's no back stock of incubating musubi for the afternoon crowd. Either get it fresh in the morning, or come back tomorrow.

Owners Manabu and Fumiyo Asaoka start hand making the day's offerings at 3:30 a.m. — seven hours before the first customers walk through their door.

In many cases, the musubi are still warm, which makes it hard not to tear away the cellophane and make breakfast of the 'ono little pucks right there in the store. Resist the urge to engage in such barbaric displays of self-gratification, if you can, because here, one gets the sense that you get points for good behavior.

The Asaokas are wildly gracious and well-mannered, and run their store with tact and benevolence.

And they make incredible musubi. From the straightforward varieties like the ume (with plenty of the sour plum packed in the center), teriyaki Spam and tuna and mayo to the more specialized ones like the baked musubi that's glazed with a miso sauce and baked until the outside is golden and crunchy, the veggie curry pilaf musubi and the brown rice and spicy takuan musubi.

There's really no bad choice at Mana Bu's, and at $1.20 per musubi, pick a few favorites and then round out your selection with single-serving-size containers of salads ($2 each) that include a perfectly spiced curry potato-mac and edamame salad, a broccoli tofu salad or a creamy and crunchy Okinawan potato and macadamia nut salad.

Finish with a cup of fresh custard ($2) whose taste and texture land somewhere between flan and tapioca-less tapioca pudding. There's also coffee jelly ($2) and milk puddings ($2) that are soft like flan but taste like a milder, less sweet riff on South American-style boiled, sweetened, condensed-milk dessert.

And while everything at Mana Bu's tastes great, it's also healthy. The Asaokas are concerned with providing healthy fare for their customers while being completely forthcoming about the products they use in their recipes. Every item on their shelves is accompanied by a detailed info card that discloses exactly what kind of ingredients are used and where they get them. If it's Costco vanilla in the custard, they tell you (it is).

And guess what? It's cheap to eat at Mana Bu's too. Nine musubi, three salads, two desserts and one ear of roasted teriyaki corn that'll ensure you never eat the frozen stuff again came out to $25.55. Good, cheap and healthy. What else is there?

CAKE COUTURE

Rating: Four forks out of five (Very good)

'Aina Haina Shopping Center

820 W. Hind Drive

373-9750

Hours: 10:30 a.m.-6:30 p.m. Mondays-Fridays, 10:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturdays

Payment: MasterCard, Visa

Recommended: strawberry cupcakes, chocolate cupcakes, mocha cupcakes, orange creamsicle cupcakes

Moving on to less healthy — but no less delicious — pastures. Let's talk about the good, small packages we call cupcakes. More important: Let's talk about this city's best cupcakes. They're at Cake Couture in 'Aina Haina, and they are, without a doubt, the very best little cakes you'll find on this island.

Owner and baker Carmen Emerson-Bass bakes her cakes fresh daily — and sells out just about every day. And it's no wonder why. Her cupcakes — larger than the kind you make at home and smaller than jumbo muffins — are moist, rich and topped with perfectly executed frostings. Frosting can make or break a cupcake, and Emerson-Bass makes the cake with her frosting that is never too sweet, too soft, too stiff, too buttery or too much.

Flavors rotate on a daily changing menu — one day you'll get red velvet, chocolate mint and cookies and cream, and the next you'll get peanut butter, chai spice, key lime coconut and strawberry. The classic favorites — chocolate and vanilla — are available every day.

I haven't yet tasted a Cake Couture cake I don't like, but my favorites are chocolate, strawberry, red velvet and chocolate haupia.

Emerson-Bass's chocolate cake, which she uses as the base for all of her chocolate varieties, is divine — rich, earthy, dark, smooth. And her chocolate frosting? Think the richest buttercream, the silkiest chocolate and the best deep chocolate pudding. And I'm not even a chocolate person.

The strawberry cupcakes are vanilla cake that's just dense enough to tip us off that it's made from scratch, topped with a vanilla buttercream frosting that's bright with fresh strawberries.

I could go on and on about every flavor of every cake and frosting (the coconut-infused whipped cream frosting … incredible), but it's the consistency of all the varieties that makes Cake Couture stand out. It's good all the time. Plus, the cakes look good — they are decorated with both precision and whimsy — which makes them the perfect take-along for any kind of gathering.

Though they're a bit on the pricey side ($2.50-$3.50 each), you're paying for the quality, and it's worth it.

Reach Kawehi Haug at 525-8005 or khaug@honoluluadvertiser.com. Read her blog, "Play. Eat. Repeat." at www.honolulu.metromix.com.