Plate Lunch Reveiw Thread

After reading Dogbytes' reviews of Portland area Plate Lunches I decided we need a Plate Lunch Review thread. I figured I'd follow the layout of Locating Tiki but put them in Tiki Drinks & Food since most plate lunch places are Hawaiian themed but not Tiki. I'm starting with the place nearest my work:

Name: Island Boy Grille
Type: Restaurant
Street: 10066 Pacific Heights Blvd.
City: Sorrento Mesa (San Diego)
State: Ca
Zip: 92121
Country: USA
Phone: 858.452.7708 Fax: 858.452.7675
Status: Operational

Description: A small storefront with an open kitchen, about 10 crowded tables inside & a couple crowded tables outside. There are several Tikis inside , a Primo Beer shadow box, some Hula pictures & a Julian Cruz longboard on the walls. Not alot of atmosphere, but what wonderful food! Every day they have Kalua Pig & Lau-Lau, and their Chicken Katsu would pass my dear Nana's Schnitzel test: you could sit on it & not get your pants greasy; but don't sit on it, Cover it with the Katsu sauce & enjoy! Their Plate Lunch consists of 2 scoops of rice, an entree, a choice of side (you can choose Macaroni salad, Seafood Potato salad with shrimp & crab, Lomi Salmon, Lumpia, Chicken Long Rice, fried Wontons, Kim Chee, Fries...) & a green salad, all for around 6 bucks! Everything's cooked to order, but still faster than say Mickey D's.

Their website is http://www.islandboygrille.com/home_ibg.asp

On 2004-06-23 10:55, freddiefreelance wrote:
After reading Dogbytes' reviews of Portland area Plate Lunches I decided we need a Plate Lunch Review thread.
Name: Island Boy Grille Their website is http://www.islandboygrille.com/home_ibg.asp

cool!

and dont forget L&L Hawaiian BBQ on, i think, beach blvd. Huntington beach.
(or whatever that looong blvd is that goes straight shot from 405 to da beach.)

Yummy sounding menu-although the ground beef patties with brown gravy sounds suspiciously like salisbury steak-ick.I'd nominate the wonderful Hala Kahiki,but all they serve is pretzels.I suppose you could get a plate of them but that would be a bit of a stretch.

Name: L&L's Hawaiian BBQ
Type: Restaurant
Street: Lots of'em, http://www.hawaiianbarbecue.com/hawaiian_bbq_loc.html
City: Lots, see list above
State: Az, Ca, Nv, Ut, Wa
Zip: Lots, too
Country: USA
Phone: Check that list!
Status: Operational

Called L&L Drive-in in Hawaii, there're 31 L&L Hawaiian BBQs in Ca, 3 in NV, 1 in Az & 1 in UT, with more all the time (20 last year alone)! I've been to the O-Side location several times. I've just scratched the surface on the menu, but I love everything I've had so far: Chicken Katsu, Chicken Katsu Curry (has anyone noticed yet that I like Chicken Katsu?), Mahi Mahi, Fried Shrimp & Barbecue Shortribs. The Chicken Katsu is moist & not greasy & the curry is mild but complex & funky (I like that in a curry). I had the fish & shrimp on the opening day when people ordering lunch filled 1/2 the parking lot & they could be excused for not doing their best, and the fish was still done beautifully, the shrimp was still fresh tasing & not rubbery. And I love the Barbecue Shortribs: Sweet, chewy & flavorful like short ribs should be. They're opening a 2nd location in Oceanside this Friday the 26th, Maybe I'll try the Barbecue Chicken...

Rev. Dr. Frederick J. Freelance, Ph.D., D.F.S

[ Edited by: freddiefreelance on 2004-06-24 13:34 ]

On 2004-06-24 13:32, freddiefreelance wrote:
Name: L&L's Hawaiian BBQ
Type: Restaurant
Street: Lots of'em, http://www.hawaiianbarbecue.com/hawaiian_bbq_loc.html
City: Lots, see list above
State: Az, Ca, Nv, Ut, Wa

its a prop and mainstay round here. real kama'aina business. we all grew up on da plate lunches and have em almost every day;
teriyaki chicken and beef, mac salad, two scoops rice.
ono grinds, broke da mout!

we ate at the L&L here in washington last night ~ onolicious.

which reminded me that i should cut and paste the rest of my plate lunch reviews and put them in this thread!

so the next few replies will be stuff you've probably seen before, just not all in one place!

Vinyl Club Hawaiian Restaurant and Nightclub
130 Will Dodge Way
Ashland, OR 97520
541-488-1690
Type: Bar
Drink Quality: ACK!!! They have a tiki drink menu, but these are not the classic versions. The Mai tai is a blended strawberry daiquiri. Thought briefly about asking the bartender if he knew how to make a classic Mai tai, but he was too busy talking to one patron at the bar. Instead, Todd ordered a layered drink (rum, midori, cranberry juice, pineapple juice) he said it was weak (and we didn’t see any layers!)

This bar is hard to find ~ the entrance is on the alley behind the main street.

Architecture: faux zebra fabric booths and aluminum tables, disco ball and lottery machines, dance floor and bar. Pretty darn swank.
Music: Hawaiian music during dining time ~ later, this turns into a very busy bar scene. Music varies.
Food:
Coconut shrimp (6 small shrimp, 6 bucks)
Teri Beef (7.00)
Chicken Katsu (6.50)
Nothing very remarkable about the food, except that the portions are certainly not Hawaiian-sized. Any bruddah would leave hungry. Mac Salad was very plain; no bits of anything, just a bland pinkish mayo dressing, might have been store bought. Two stingy partial scoops of rice dot the plate. Cabbage is used under the main dish for no other reason than to psych you into thinking you’re getting a mound of meat.
Staff: she was friendly to the locals, never interacted with us much. The cook came out to talk to friends, but made no effort to extend aloha to us ?
TIPSY: zero

No Ho’s Hawaiian Café http://www.nohos.com (Portland and Medford, OR)
703 E Main Street
Medford, OR 97504
541-245-6919
Type: restaurant
Drink: beer and wine
Architecture: Lots of wood slats on the walls, clean lines, feels a little like a surf shop. A very cute restaurant.
Music: Hawaiian music
Food: ONO ~ big portions. Order the regular, 2 scoops: the menehune is one scoop rice and smaller portion of the main dish, the Blalah is 3 scoops and more meat portion. We busted our guts on the regular. But ohhh it feels good. Wear stretch pants!!
Korean Mix Plate (15.35) Korean ribs, spicy Korean chicken.
Special Saimin (blahah size 9.60) two fried eggs, cabbage, char sui top a giant bowl of noodles.

Oh we saw a plate of the yakisoba go by. The waitress needed both hands to carry the plate.
No desserts (oh as if we had ROOM to eat a dessert)
Staff: terrific! Efficient, friendly, fast. Lots of families eating here.
TIPSY: zero

Other location:
2525 SE Clinton St
Portland, OR 97202
603-233-5301

Bamboo Grove Hawaiian Grille http://www.bghawaiiangrille.com
0515 SW Carolina Street
Portland OR 97239
503-977-2771

Type: restaurant
Drink: beer on tap, wine. Offers mixed drinks. No sit down bar.
Architecture: cute interior, surfboards, and one tiki.
Music: Hawaiian music
Food: spoiled.
Todd’s shoyu chicken (6.50 for the small plate) was plentiful, but tasted a little bit off, like it was left over. My spicy Korean chicken (6.50) was on special, and was definitely rancid. The mac salad was homemade, but the pasta was cooked way past mushy.
Out of saimin. Prices for the grilled meat items are high. Also, I’ve never been to a place that charges extra for chicken in the Oyaku Donburi (which means “chicken and egg on rice”)
A cold vibe here.
Staff: sympathetic, offered to replace my meal. We were too afraid to order anything else. They didn’t charge us for my dish.
TIPSY: one large carved tiki

Patrick’s Hawaiian Café
316 SE 123rd Avenue
Vancouver, WA 98683
360-885-0881


Type: restaurant
Drink Quality: offers Mai tais and other drinks, but no bar (per se), was hard to tell about the drinks, as there isn’t a bartender on duty. Since each time we were here, we were driving, we didn’t order cocktails.
Architecture: lots of SPAM merchandise adorns the walls. T-Shirts and posters from well-known places on the islands dot the walls. Fake palm trees and plastic fishies everywhere. A joyful place despite the lack of tikis.
Music: Thursday, Friday, Saturday & Sunday Live Music. Hawaiian music plays during mealtime. The ukulele player was eating dinner with the owner and his family and staff. I wish we could have stayed to listen to him play. We did get to listen to him tune his uke!

Food: ONOLICIOUS! Easily THE BEST plate lunch I’ve had on the mainland. Sumo-sized! We ate here twice. We mapped it, door to door, 170 miles is NOT too far to drive to Patrick’s. This food better than certain places on Kauai!!

Maui Onion Rings (5.95). Beer battered, perfectly crispy, not a bit greasy. Served with the most delicious dipping sauce (we think its ranch, but it was BETTER than any dressing poured from a bottle)
Deluxe Saimin Noodle Soup (7.95) huge steaming bowl of noodles, 3 pork-shrimp wontons, big shrimp and lots of veggies in a chicken-dashi broth.
Hibachi Miso Chicken with Peanut Butter (7.95 lunch). Three marinated boneless pieces of chicken were charcoal cooked and coated with a Thai-like peanut sauce.
Deluxe Surf & Turf (9.95 lunch)(kalbi ribs, huli huli chicken and coconut shrimp) two strips of ribs, 3 pieces of chicken and3 large shrimp oh so good.
Surf & turf (8.95 lunch) (teri beef, huli huli chicken deep fried mahi) mounds of food, we substituted Korean chicken garlicky and spicy sauce on grilled chicken.
The potato-mac salad has tuna mixed in.

You will be too full to even think about dessert. Don’t let that stop you. You MUST have the homemade ice cream. We shared a scoop of coconut ~ oh so toasty, so coconutty, rich and creamy.

Check out the gift area for your Kauai Kookie needs lots of fun trinkets for sale. And flavors of SPAM I didn’t know existed!

Staff: you feel like family. Welcomed, made comfortable, we felt like guests invited for dinner.
TIPSY: zero

No 1 Chinese Bbq Restaurant
Address: 3-3160 Kuhio Hwy
Lihue, HI 96766
Phone: (808) 246-6888

a converted fast-food restaurant serving plate lunch and Chinese food. There’s a steam table, but we skipped that and ordered from the menu. I had the seafood combo plate lunch; breaded mahi and shrimp with short ribs (there’s a choice of meat, that was mine) with rice and mac salad. The mahi was good but the shrimp breading was overly doughy and the short ribs were too sweet and too fatty. My husband had Chinese, beef with green beans, also served plate-lunch style with rice and mac salad, and his was much better than mine.

Lawai Restaurant
Address: 2-3687 Kaumualii Hwy
Lawai, HI 96765
Phone: (808) 332-9550

(on Hwy 50 almost 3 miles west of the junction with Hwy 520, it’s next to a 7-11). Real dive of a plate-lunch place, menu is on a chalkboard and hard to figure out. The ginger-fried chicken was excellent, a big portion of all dark meat with a crisp, slightly sweet crust; my husband’s teriyaki pork was good but streaked with a bit too much gristle. Both were served as plate lunch, the mac salad was better than at A-1 and the steamed rice just right.

Hanalei Mixed Plate
Hanalei Mixed Plate
Address: 5-5190 Kuhio Hwy # E4
Hanalei, HI 96714
Phone: (808) 826-7888

okay, first off, serving something alongside a scoop of rice should not allow you to call it a “plate lunch”. Plate lunch has to come with something in addition to rice; macaroni salad or potato salad or at least coleslaw. Second, they’re nice people, gave us a taste of the kahlua pork (which was enough to decide to avoid it), and they serve big piles of food, but . . . the ginger shoyu chicken was bland and the vegetable chow mein even blander. It wasn’t horrible, but it wasted an opportunity to have truly good food.

Mark's Place
Address: 1610 Haleukana St # A
Lihue, HI 96766
Phone: (808) 245-2522

(from Hwy 50 at the Kauai Community College take Puhi Rd. away from the college toward the Puhi Industrial Park; turn right on Hanalima, then right on Haleukana (basically after the first building you see on Hanalima); 1610 Haleukana St.). This is a new restaurant/catering business started by the former executive chef at the Sheraton, who teaches cooking at the college. No inside seating, basically serves just plate lunch and bento; I had the daily special combo, two large tempura shrimp, teriyaki steak, and teriyaki fried chicken, while my husband had “Mark’s famous mixed plate”, beef stew, teriyaki beef, and chicken katsu. Both came with rice, mac salad, and fried noodles, neither cost more than $7.

Shiro's Saimin Haven
Address: 98-020 Kamehameha Hwy
Aiea, HI 96701
Phone: (808) 488-4834

Shiro’s four locations, all of them are in the Pearl City area; the one we went to is in a strip mall on Hwy 99, on the right as you head west from Pearl toward Ewa (Waimalu Shopping Center my husband had the Beeg Shiro, a double-decker sandwich with char siu and teriyaki, while I had saimin again, I forget the name of the dish but it had ten different toppings including a nice butterflied shrimp which came on the side so you could choose to dip it or plunge the whole thing into the broth. The broth at Shiro’s is chicken rather than the bonito flake broth they used at New Uptown Fountain; I liked it better, but my husband is a fan of the milder-tasting fish broth and didn’t. Again, an excellent, filling, and pretty cheap lunch.

Waihole Poi Factory, 48-140 Kamehameha Hwy. (This one needs some directions; first, it’s on the Hwy 83 Kamehameha, not the Hwy 99 Kamehameha; also note that as you head north it splits into Hwy 83 (which is then named Kahiliki Hwy) and Hwy 836 (which takes the Kamehameha name), but then these two come back together after awhile and it’s Hwy 83/Kamehameha. The Factory is not too far past the junction of the two highways). The place looks really run-down from the outside, but DO NOT BE PUT OFF. This is real Hawaiian food, the kind which the stuff at commercial luaus is only a pale imitation of. I had the tripe, stewed in a tomato sauce just like my Aunt Betty used to make, with absolutely incredible chicken long rice on the side. My husband had the Aloha (?) plate with lau lau, lomi lomi, and chicken long rice; he also chose to have poi (you can have rice instead) which I admit was better than the poi you get at luaus, but was still poi (he liked it; some Hawaiians there mistook us for locals, me because I looked local, him because he was eating the poi). The meals also came with little hunks of steamed taro and breadfruit and with two squares of haupia, one traditional coconut, one chocolate. The coconut was the best haupia I’d ever had until I tasted the chocolate, which was even better! They sell boxes of haupia for $5, you should strongly consider bringing along a cooler and buying some to go.

By the way, seating at the Poi Factory is on picnic tables outside, and the place is only open from 10 to 2. But you just can’t get more local than this. Again, don’t pass this up when you go to the windward or north shores.

Ooh, I've been falling down on the job on my own thread!

Name: Tiki Hut Island Grille and Sushi
Type: Restaurant
Street: 9450 Scranton Rd. #114D
City: San Diego (Sorrento Valley)
state: Ca.
Zip: 92121
Phone: 858.646.0914 Fax 858.646.0915
Status: Operational

Description: Mall Food Court level Plate Lunch, it's OK if every place else in the area is closed. All you see is the little counter counter out front with a little bit of SoCal surfer decor. The food's only passable, everything's a little greasier, a little less fresh, a little less attention to presentation than the other local places. As example: the Spam Musubi comes in a Big Mac-type syrofoam sandwich holder like many of the others, but it's an unformed scoop of rice with a piece of plain fried Spam pushed down in it and a strip of Yaki Nori draped over the top.

On 2004-06-24 14:12, lanikai wrote:

On 2004-06-24 13:32, freddiefreelance wrote:
Name: L&L's Hawaiian BBQ
Type: Restaurant
Street: Lots of'em, http://www.hawaiianbarbecue.com/hawaiian_bbq_loc.html
City: Lots, see list above
State: Az, Ca, Nv, Ut, Wa

its a prop and mainstay round here. real kama'aina business. we all grew up on da plate lunches and have em almost every day;
teriyaki chicken and beef, mac salad, two scoops rice.
ono grinds, broke da mout!

My favorite is the garlic shrimp, just like the North Shore.

Kilohana Grill
1061 Market Pl
San Ramon, CA
(925) 830-1144

San "Remote" is 30 mins east of Oakland, nestled between the 580/680 interchange and Walnut Creek.

Kilohana Grill has no liquor license, and is largely take-out - they took over a Subway I think so the seating area is small. They sell some Hawaiian tchotkies (sp?)
They only serve the Kalua Pig and lomi lomi on Fri and Sat nights; everything else all nights. It's most excellent but unfortunately not so good for the waistline...

Hawaiian walk in restaurant
402 404 15th st
oakland, ca 94612
510-839-9391
hours m-f 10:30 til 9 pm
sat 11 am - 9 pm
sunday 11 am- 7pm

no frills restaurant
no liquior license
few tables
mostly takeout

good , filling,cheap plate lunch
prices as of 9-13-04

sea food combo is $6.25
mahi mahi,fried shrimp choice of , teri chicken,teri beef,teri short ribs
2 scoops rice 1 scoop mac salad

teriyaki mixed plate $5.55
teri short ribs, teri chickem, teri steak
2 scoops rice 1 scoop mac salad

bento $5.25
mahimahi, teri steak, teri chicken and ham
2 scoops rice 1 scoop mac salad

pork lau lau $4.99
1 scoop rice 1 scoop mac salad

loco moco
hambuger steak and eggs with gravy $4.75
2 scoops rice 1 scoop mac

mahalo chicken combo $6.99
teri chicken,lemon chicken,chicken katsu
1 scoop rice , 1 scoop mac salad

aloha dinner combo $9.99
bbq chicken, mahi mahi, teri steak
saimin soup, kim chee, 2 scoops rice 1 scoop mac salad

I get the mahalo chicken combo I eat for 2 or 3 days.

Went up to L&L Hawaiian BBQ last nite for plate lunch pick-up. We had the seafood combo & BBQ mix. Almos broke da mouth it was soooo good. My L&L is about three miles from me at Campus Plaza near SDSU here in San Diego. I plan on making this a weekly thing. If you don't have an L&L close to your hut, check out the web site and open your own franchise.

Portland, OR:
Ohana Hawaiian Cafe
6320 NE Sandy Blvd.
http://www.ohanahawaiiancafe.com/

Wife and I checked it out last night after this newspaper review:
http://portlandtribune.com/archview.cgi?id=33149

We both had kalua pig with lomi-lomi salmon. Mmmmmm,mmmm! Bellies were full after that, so didn't have room for some genuine shave ice. No alcoholic drinks, but plenty of island-style fruit sodas.

Friendly staff, quick service. Bright interior with some stunning photography on the walls (for sale, if you've got several hundred bucks to drop).

The Portland area's blessed with several great Hawaiian restaurants like Noho's and Bamboo Grove, and it's a pleasure to add this one to the list. Highly recommended!

Name: Big Kahuna's
Type: Restaurant
Street: 3780 Ingrahm St
City: San Diego (PB)
state: Ca.
Zip: 92109
Phone: (858) 270-9200
Website: http://www.bigkahunaspacificbeach.com/Default.aspx
Status: Operational

Description: More Florida Tiki than Poly-Pop, kind of a Surfer Pizza Joint/Sports Bar vibe, with reed matting on the walls & palapa thatch above the bar, half a dozen TVs around the place (mostly big screen), and Party City Tikis all over. But at least it doesn't have a white ceiling.

The Plate Lunches aren't all that great, with a bland Mac salad, under-flavored Kaluha Pig, fishy Mahi & tough Beef Teriyaki. But the Mixed Plate is not why you come here, you come for Pizzas like the Kanaka, with its Kaluha Pig kicked up with a sweet BBQ sauce & Green Onions, or the Sumo Special which is covered in Pepperoni, Ham, Italian Sausage, Kaluha Pig, Linguisa, Bacon, Onions, Mushrooms, Tomatoes, & Ripe Black Olives. Or you come for the Kahuna's Balls, a dozen Garlic & Cheese topped Pizza Dough Balls. Or the Big Kahuna's Burger, a 1/2 pound burger in a hollowed out fresh baked loaf of Hawaiian Bread and topped with Jack & Cheddar Cheese, Tomatoes, Red Onions & shredded Cabbage.

They also have Breakfast and week-nightly Beer & All-You-Can-Eat specials, check the website for more info.

Name: Maui Maui Hawaiian BBQ
Type: Restaurant
Street: 7420 Clairemont Mesa Blvd
City: San Diego (Clairmont Mesa)
state: Ca.
Zip: 92111
Phone: (858) 279-6284
Status: Operational

Description: An L&L knock-off, with nearly the exact menu as all the Mainland L&L's but slightly smaller. The dining room in painted in nice bright colors with some nice prints & Indonesian Masks & Tikis on the walls. The food wasn't quite up to L&L standards, with some grease & gristle in the beef I had, but at least the Mac salad had some good flavor & enough mayo to not be dry.

My local favorite

Name: Ohana Hawaiian BBQ
Type: Restaurant
Street: Various
Website: http://www.ohanabbqcorp.com/main.html

A good selection of Hawaiian favs. I always get the BBQ beef plate lunch, with the requisite scoop of mac salad and two scoops of rice. Don't forget Spam, fried egg, as well as a version of fish tacos(!).

The one I go to is in a strip mall, and the interior is painted a strong orange with yellow trim. There are some paintings on the wall depicting tikis and Hawaiian scenes. I go there so often, the guy who runs the place rings up my order before I even walk up to the counter. Now that is service! :D

Heres the history of Hawaii told through plate lunches.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/07/book-trailer-hawaii_n_832491.html?ir=Food