A Little Hawaii

Mark and I have been testing the restaurants in Japantown. After all, it is a short walk - 2.5 blocks - to the main strip. So, last night we tasted a little bit of Hawaii at Hukilau. I didn't realize that there was a unique cuisine associated with the islands. When walking through Japantown in the evening, we had noticed that the restaurant was usually packed and customers waiting on the sidewalk. Mark, in his usual fashion, checked it out online and learned a bit more about the place. It was started by three guys from Hawaii who missed the small town meals they had enjoyed at home. So they started a restaurant. Now, there are three restaurants - one in Japantown, one in San Francisco, and one in Honolulu. On their web page, they state:
"At the Hukilau, you will be transported back to your favorite "plate-lunch" restaurant in small town Hawai'i, you will hear the strummings of live Hawaiian music like "uncle" used to play at family gatherings, and you will also be able to order tropical cocktails just like at the bars on Waikiki."  Sounded great! So we went......
Thursdays feature dinner drink specials and 50% off selected food items. Appetizers and beer were half off. Good start..... We decided to try poke (pronounced POE-kay) and chose the avocado and tofu poke. It came in a little wooden dish shaped like a fish. The tofu was breaded and deep-fried - very tasty. All was mixed with green onions, soy sauce, sesame oil, bits of seaweed and a special Aloha sauce. It was very yummy. We also decided to try musubi..... Now, I have to explain a bit about this one. According to Mark's research, first you soak cooked rice in pineapple juice. Then you layer it on top of the seaweed that they use for sushi. You then fry a slice of SPAM - yes, you read it, S-P-A-M, and place that on the rice. Roll it all up to look like sushi and VOILA! Spam musubi. We noticed MANY happy young adults drinking tropical beverages in martini glasses and gobbling up VAST quantities of spam. Maybe the martini glass contents helped. The last time I ate spam, I was sitting around a campfire unwashed, smokey, tired and starving. Mark joined in with the rest of the happy munchers and gobbled his down smiling the whole time. I nibbled a corner..... hmmmm... I didn't realize that Spam could taste fishy..... oh, that's the seaweed. Remove the seaweed..... another nibble.... better - but still fried Spam. Good thing it was half price and only $1. So now on to the entrees..... I decided to try the Kalua Cabbage - kalua-style BBQ pork stir-fried with cabbage. And the sides that come with EVERY meal - TWO scoops of white rice AND mac salad..... That's right. A traditional home-style meal in a small town in Hawaii includes Spam and macaroni salad. Hmmmm....... The kalua-style BBQ was a North Carolina style - vinegar based and not tomato/catsup. It was very tasty - even mixed with lots of cabbage. You can get breakfast any time here too. One of the specials is a loco moco. It is basically a "mountain of rice" (their words) with a meat on top (burgers, sausage....), two fried eggs on top of that and THEN cover it all with gravy.... Hmmmm...... Now, in all fairness, they did have fish entrees and salads and other things that I would have thought were typical cuisine. But I certainly learned something new about food in the islands!
To read more, visit Hukilau's website - click here