inuyaki » plate lunch

Ted’s Bakery – Sunset Beach, HI

arnold — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 09:26:47 +0000

When people talk about Ted’s Bakery, they’re usually talking about one thing: chocolate haupia pie. I’ve had Ted’s famous pie before, and you can get their pies at almost any market on Oahu, but on this trip, I wanted to get one directly from the source. But Ted’s has a lot more to offer than just pie; their selection of bentos and sandwiches is pretty impressive too.

Let’s start with the pie since I ate a slice while I was waiting for the rest of our food to arrive. It’s a simple pie crust with chocolate filling on the bottom, a layer of haupia in the middle and topped with whipped cream. The consistency of the chocolate filling is somewhere between pudding and mousse; it’s light but sturdy enough to support the denser haupia on top. Aside from the flavors, the texture contrast between the chocolate and haupia might be the best thing about this pie. The pie crust is forgettable so it’s only real purpose is to provide structure, but it’s blandness also lets the rest of the pie shine.

Ted’s Famous Chocolate Haupia Pie

My wife ordered the Crab and Bacon Combo off the Hot Foods menu. It’s basically a crab salad and bacon sandwich served on a hamburger bun and served with fries. This sounds weird on paper, but it’s a brilliant combination.

Ted’s Crab & Bacon Combo Sandwich

I ordered the Ted’s Bento, an amazing array of Hawaiian plate lunch standards—teriyaki beef, fried SPAM, fried mahi mahi, and fried chicken—served inexplicably over four scoops of rice. I only ate half the rice and think the folks at Ted’s would really be onto something if they went with two scoops of rice and then topped this bento with a fried egg or two on top. Doesn’t that sound perfect? ;)

Ted’s Bento

If you’re on the North Shore and looking for a great alternative to all the shrimp trucks that roam the area, look for Ted’s. They’ve got a lot going on besides those famous chocolate haupia pies. My only regret was that we didn’t get there in time for breakfast.

INFORMATION
Ted’s Bakery
59-024 Kamehameha Highway
Sunset Beach, Hawaii 96712
808.638.8207
Web site

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Reinventing Loco Moco

arnold — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 09:21:54 +0000

Loco Moco is a classic Hawaiian plate lunch offering that’s made up of hamburger patties smothered with gravy, topped with two eggs and served with rice and mac salad. If you’ve never seen it before, it looks like this:

Loco Moco (picture from Dakine’s BBQ in San Francisco)

We had dinner at Alan Wong’s Restaurant last week, and one of the menu items that jumped out at us was the “Mini Loco Moco” appetizer. The menu describes it as “mochi-crusted unagi meatloaf, sunny-side quail egg, wasabi kabayaki sauce,” and we just had to try it.

Alan Wong’s “Mini Loco Moco”

Breaking it down, the mochi crust takes the place of the rice, the unagi meatloaf is the hamburger, quail egg replaces the hen egg and the wasabi kabayaki sauce replaces the gravy. It’s a perfect way to bring the loco moco concept into a fine dining setting, and it was excellent.

On the other end of the spectrum is Beard Papa and their Loco Moco Puff. It’s part of the Japanese cream puff chain’s localized Hawaii menu that also includes Breakfast Puffs, Creme Brulee Puffs, eclairs and pita sandwiches. Beard Papa describes their Loco Moco Puff as “two slices of oven-baked meat loaf, a fresh egg, sunny side up, onion-mushroom gravy with a dash of furikake on our signature puff shell,” which is more straightforward than Alan Wong’s. Basically, it’s an open-faced sandwich with the puff serving as the bread.

Beard Papa’s Loco Moco Puff

The finished product looked good and tasted like loco moco, but the puff really didn’t contribute anything to the dish and would have been fine without it. What was a bit disturbing was watching them assemble it. Without a proper kitchen, all of the cooked elements were microwaved right in front of us, and even then, I’m still not sure how they cooked the egg properly. I guess if you were on the run, this might be decent alternative, but I’d still rather have an Egg McMuffin.

Nothing could ever replace the traditional preparation of loco moco, especially since I love the side benefit of mixing the warm gravy with the cold mac salad. However, I always like to see if classic dishes can be modernized or deconstructed without diluting its essence. While Alan Wong’s radical take on loco moco might look foreign to traditionalists, the end result was delicious, refined, and reminded me of the original.

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Eating Oahu, Part 2: New Discoveries

arnold — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 23:58:55 +0000

The old favorites are always nice, but we did get to try some new stuff in Oahu. Here’s some places you might not have read about in the tourist guides.

Hapa Grill

Hapa Grill is known for their teri beef, a family recipe that was a mainstay of the Sassy Kassy Lunch Wagon back in the day, and there are those who say it’s the best teri beef in Oahu. I think I’m inclined to agree, especially because it’s not overly sweet.

My wife had the fried noodles and teri beef and it was great. A huge plate of fried noodles with spam, eggs, fish cake with a side of the famous teri beef. The noodles were really good and it was (amazingly enough) the first bit of spam I’d had on this trip. I stole a piece of teri beef from my wife’s plate and immediately ordered myself a side order to complement my beef stew. The stew is the Wed. special and it was really good on this cool evening, esp. when it was mixed up with the rice. For dessert, we had an awesome chocolate mac nut brownie

It’s long drive out to Kapolei from town, but if you’re in the neighborhood or want a nice place to eat after shopping in Waikele, Hapa Grill’s not too far (about seven miles down H1 from Waikele) and definitely worth the drive.

INFORMATION
Hapa Grill
91590 Farrington Hwy
Kapolei, HI 96707 map
808.674.8400
Web site

Grass Skirt Grill

I really needed a break from eating meat, so when we were in Haleiwa on the North Shore visiting my sister-in-law, we ended up at Grass Skirt Grill for lunch (even though Kua Aina Burger smelled amazing when we walked by).

I ordered the excellent Grilled Hebi Salad because it featured locally grown vegetables and fresh, perfectly grilled fish (Hebi is a short-billed spearfish native to Hawaii). My wife and sister-in-law split a teri chicken sandwich that they both liked. We also got an order of onion rings and fries, but they were unremarkable.

Stick with the grilled fish and fresh veggies, especially if you’ve OD’ed on meat eating around the island, and you’ll have a light, satisfying lunch.

INFORMATION
Grass Skirt Grill
66-214 Kamehameha Hwy
Haleiwa, HI 96712 map
808.637.4852

Diamond Head Market and Grill

The market itself is great. When we got married in 2005, they were the only place in town that stocked Lorina’s French Lemonade, and we needed a couple dozen for our wedding reception, so we cleaned them out.

On this trip, we decided to try out the grill, and it made me sad. The food was good, but it wasn’t anything special (at least at lunch), and the prices are exorbitant compared to other places on the island.

I had the grilled ahi steak ($9.75) with the standard rice and green salad. It was good, but when I first opened up the container, I thought to myself “that’s it?” My wife had the portobello mushroom hamburger ($5.25), which was reasonably priced and tasted good to me, but she wasn’t impressed. We did like the jus that was included with the burger, and I ended up dipping my rice in it. She ordered fries to go with it ($2.25), and they were the worst fries we’ve had in a long time. They were tough and they tasted stale, as if they were sitting around and then refried before serving. At least they were crispy.

Now I’m not one to normally complain about prices, but at a place like Diamond Head Market and Grill, where they’re obviously making local favorites with better and fresher ingredients, the presentation could at least make it seem like we’re getting our money’s worth. And the stale fries were just unforgivable.

We’ll probably give them another shot one day, maybe on our next trip, but we may just settle for the prepared food in the market (which looks fantastic).

INFORMATION
Diamond Head Market and Grill
3158 Monsarrat
Honolulu, HI 96815
808.732.0077 map
Web site

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Eating Oahu, Part 1: Local Favorites

arnold — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 10:54:18 +0000

Trips to Oahu are annual since we’ve got to visit the family, and this also means good and CHEAP eats. If you’re planning on going to visit Oahu, here’s some places where you can eat like a local.

Ono Hawaiian Foods

If Kapahulu Avenue was a baseball team comprised of restaurants and their lineup included Leonard’s Bakery, Waiola Shave Ice, and Rainbow Drive-In batting in the 1,2, and 3 spots, Ono Hawaiian Foods would be the clean up hitter waiting to drive them all in. There’s a reason Ono is an all the tourist books, and you know the place is good because the locals will put up with all the tourists to eat there.

Ono is THE place to get authentic Hawaiian food in Oahu. They’re known for their kalua pig and their enormous, almost plate-sized lau laus. And it’s not all taro leaves either…it’s a generous amount of pork, enough for two or three people to split. The pipikaula (Hawaiian beef jerky) is also excellent and something I’ll be ordering from now on. The ahi poke is fresh and wonderful and the butterfish luau was also really good.

INFORMATION
Ono Hawaiian Foods
726 Kapahulu Ave
Honolulu, HI 96816 map
808.737.2275

Gina’s Bar-B-Q

Gina’s serves local-style Korean food, and it is one of my favorite places to eat in Hawaii because I love meat jun, which is almost impossible to find in this form on the mainland. Meat Jun is basically a really thin steak that’s dipped in egg batter and then fried. It’s kind of like a thin egg pancake with a sliver of steak in the middle. They serve it with a sweet dipping sauce that takes this humble dish to a whole other level.

On this trip, I paired my meat jun with some spicy fried chicken wings that were excellent. The crunchy, slightly spicy skin really hit the spot.

In addition to rice, you get your choice of four sides, which include basic Korean banchan offerings such as taegu, kim chee and pickled daikon, as well as local favorites like mac salad.

It’s small inside, so most of their business is take out, which is what we did. Best of all, Gina’s is cheap and the portions are extremely generous, so you get a lot of food for the money.

INFORMATION
Gina’s Bar-B-Q
2919 Kapiolani Blvd
Honolulu, HI 96826 map
808.735.7964

Rainbow Drive-In

With the proliferation of Hawaiian barbecue places in the SF Bay Area over the past few years, my once rabid obsession with plate lunch slowly evolved into indifference and apathy. On our most recent visit, I wanted to go to Rainbow Drive-In because it had been a few years and I wanted try their mix plate (and ostensibly get my plate lunch mojo back). Rainbow is a Honolulu institution and luckily, my in-laws live right up the street.

Mix plates in Hawaii are a lot more varied than on the mainland, where you tend to get only teri beef, teri chicken and kalbi short rib. At Rainbow, you get some good teri beef, a really nice fried chicken cutlet that was less like katsu and more like a boneless fried chicken breast (a good thing) and a small but good piece of fried mahi mahi. My wife’s beef cutlet was really good…basically it’s a thin breaded steak smothered in gravy. As with traditional plate lunch, rice and mac salad was standard.

If it’s your first time eating Hawaiian plate lunch, then you must order the loco moco (hamburger patty, gravy and fried egg over rice).

The slush floats are another reason to go Rainbow. Basically it’s a strawberry slush with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. These are premade, so best to let this sit for a bit to let the ice cream melt into the slush so you get this cool, fruity and creamy concoction.

Rainbow is not too far from Waikiki, so you tourists can eat like locals if you want to walk.

INFORMATION
Rainbow Drive-In
3308 Kanaina Ave
Honolulu, HI 96815 map
808.737.0177

Mitsu-Ken

Mitsu-Ken is strictly a take-out operation (and very small, so you might drive right by). There’s always a line and parking sucks, but the service is fast and efficient so you’ll get in and out in no time. Their famous for their garlic chicken and it’s as good as everyone says it is. Small fried chicken pieces are tossed in an amazing garlic sauce that’s subtle and sweet (local food tends to skew sweet).

A mini bento is only $3.50, and you get four pieces of chicken, half a hot dog, and scrambled egg with bits of pickled ginger are served over rice sprinkled with furikake. It was a lot of food, and I can’t really imagine trying to eat a regular-sized order.

If you can find Mitsu-Ken on the always busy School Street, it’s definitely worth a trip. It was our last stop before the airport and flight home, and it was the perfect last meal.

INFORMATION
Mitsu-Ken
1223 N School St
Honolulu, HI 96817 map
808.848.5573

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