I worked a half-day today and Ron came to pick me up from work to have lunch. We ended up at Hukilau which is a few blocks from where I work and also a few blocks from where we used to live. Even though we used to live close by, we’ve never eaten here although I have tried their catered food at a few parties.
Since it was sort of a holiday, they were kind of closed by 2:30pm but they opened the door for us to let us have lunch. Very nice of them.
I ordered the chicken katsu with a green salad (with papaya seed dressing) and macaroni salad. ($9.50) The chicken katsu was so crispy and delicious and their katsu sauce nice and tangy. I just love macaroni salad and I think this was better than when we were in Hawaii, a lot of the plate lunches you get in Hawaii always seem to be a bit oily.
Ron ordered the teriyaki short ribs with rice and macaroni salad. ($12.00) The ribs had a nice char and were sweet and sticky. The short ribs had quite a bit of fat on them, it tasted good but probably not good for your cholesterol.
These were big plate lunches so we couldn’t finish the whole thing. We had one rib left over with some rice and I had most of a piece of the chicken katsu remaining for leftovers. When you first enter the restaurant, there is a bit of an antiseptic smell (but at least that means it’s clean) but after you sit down and start listening to the music, you feel almost transported to mini vacation in Hawaii.
Next time we go (I’m sure we’ll be back), they have great weekday drink specials and we’re going to try their SPAM musubi. We saw the daughter of one of the workers carrying a delicious looking SPAM musbui in her hand so asked the father if they serve it, his reply was “what kind of Hawaiian restaurant would we be if we didn’t serve SPAM?” What an appropo answer!
Hukilau
5 Masonic Ave