To prepare for our trip to North Shore, we stopped by the best rice balls and spam musubi place in Honolulu, called Iyasume, it’s located behind the Hyatt and might be easily missed since it’s tucked away with a side entrance.
This is the sign on the street
This is the sign in front of the store
They do phone orders too
Their little outfit, the menu on the wall
The cans of Spam lined up on top
Go for the spicy chicken mayo rice ball, chicken is really tender and the spicy mayo is really good (a bit like siracha). Sorry no picture but here’s the spam musubi
It’s coated with some sweet soy or teriyaki sauce and fried and this one is the one with shiso (the purple dark green stuff in between)
After gathering our snacks, we went for some lunch. First we stopped by Puka Dog.
You choose a Polish sausage of Veggie dog, the type of garlic lemon sauce (mild to hot-hot), and then the type of relish.
The buns are hollowed out and toasted with this special contraption.
Here are all the types of relish
The first bite is the best with the relish and garlic lemon mayo right on top
Dessert of shaved ice with fresh fruit
The watermelon sorbet was really refreshing
On the way to North Shore, we stopped over at the Dole Plantation since our friends hadn’t been there before. Ron really loves the pineapple dole whip so ended up ordering this pineapple juice float with dole whip in a plastic pineapple bank.
We walked around the display pineapple plants. Did you know San Francisco is 2,391 miles from the Dole Plantation?
Pineapples grow this way…
There’s a huge koi pond where you can buy some food to feed them. They are hungry little monsters, you can hear them sucking the rock to try to find food.
Dan, the pineapple.
At North Shore.
The sand is so much softer than Waikiki and the water less salty.
Next stop, shrimp truck!
Unfortunately limited selection and supply… they ran out of the hot & spicy, wah!
These chickens were safely crossing the road… so cute!
Fresh pineapple slices were unbelievably sweet, dusted with li hing mui (salted plum), equivalent to putting salt on fruit to make it taste sweeter but imparts a bit of a different flavor.
The shrimp so fresh and delicious. We wished we ordered more.
For a proper dinner, we drove near where we were staying and ended up trying En Fuego Grill & Poke. An employee at the Marriott recommended it for good poke but… we were a bit scared when we walked into the restaurant since it was kind of stuffy and empty. Maybe it really only is a lunch place and/or catering…
I ordered the kalua pork plate lunch with brown rice, mac salad…
Small side of poke, lomi lomi salmon, and haupia
Overall, pork was nice and tender and mac salad good but poke tough and little seasoning to speak of and lomi lomi salmon too salty.
Ron ordered the spicy garlic chicken, nice and crispy.
This is the crispy chicken bento box.
I’d only ever eat the chicken here again, the rest was only okay.