Legendary Lunchwagons

I grew up visiting my dad's favorite lunchwagons and hole in the wall restaurants.   As a State worker, he was somehow always privy to all of the best little eateries and greasy spoons in town.  I was indoctrinated into the history and legacy of the lunchwagons, how they evolved from worker's lunches during the plantation days, to become some of Hawaii's best eats available only when they magically appeared.   My dad shared with me some of the best places in town, like my beloved Kanda Lunchwagon at the pier at Kewalo Basin, my favorite lunchwagon of all time, and they became some of the fondest memories of my youth.   So when I started working full time on my own, I really wanted to explore and find some of my own places.   Maybe even return the favor and take my dad to some really awesome little places that he'd never been to.

My very first day on my first (full time) job, I was just getting to know my co-workers and get oriented in my new company.  So when they decided that it was about time to grab some lunch, I followed along like a little lost sheep, trying to make friends.   Fatefully, they brought me to what I would consider one of the greatest lunchwagons of all time, second only to the Kanda Lunchwagon at the pier.   It was the Kanak Attack lunchwagon, parked in the back of a nondescript parking lot, adjacent to a strip club on Kona Street.  Now, I had seen Kanak Attack before, driving past the restaurant they used to have on Kapahulu Ave., but I had never visited them or known that they had a lunchwagon.  Naturally, I was quite excited to be trying a new lunchwagon that I had never heard of before.  Everyone ordered mini-plates, but as it was my first time and I was curious I ordered the full size, and I quickly figured out why everyone ordered mini's.  I ordered a hot turkey sandwich, and the plate was just plain huge.   Not only were there about 4 slices of bread, but a good 2 lbs of turkey, and it was stuffed with mashed potatoes and stuffing, and covered with perfect turkey gravy, with even some cranberry sauce on the side.   In Hawaii, we've got an expression, "Local boys don't eat til they're full, they eat til they fall asleep."   The ensuing nap that follows is referred to as a "kanak attack", and the lunch from this little lunchwagon was quickly living up to its namesake.   It wasn't just huge either, the turkey was just about the best turkey that I had ever gotten from a restaurant.  Of course it didn't compare to my mom's Thanksgiving turkey, but it was real slices of turkey breast, and not the pressed turkey that you normally get from a diner (like Kenny's or Like Like), and it was really tasty.

The Kanak Attack lunchwagon quickly became my favorite place to go for lunch.  Not only were their portions huge, but they were really cheap.  They remain, to this day, the only place I ever found you could get a full plate lunch for about $5 + no tax (and a mini plate for $3.50).   Often their plates were so huge, I would eat half one day, and save the other half for the next day, making them even more economical.  This of course made a huge difference for a newlywed, living on his own budget for the first time.  I quickly became a regular there.  The food there was awesome.   They were the only place I knew of that even put tuna in their potato salad, making it much more of a real side dish, than a cheap filler.   The lunchwagon had a different menu every single day, and you needed to pick up one of their printed menus for the month, to plan ahead what you're going to order.   You had to be quick, because often the best stuff would be sold out by noon.   Fridays were always Hawaiian food days.   But my favorite days were Tuesdays.   In addition to their other specials, Tuesdays would regularly feature my two favorite dishes from the lunchwagon, their roast pork, and their braised shortribs.   Their roast pork was thick, credit card sized pieces of  supremely tender pork, swimming in some of the best brown gravy I have ever had at a restaurant.  But it was their braised shortribs that were the ultimate order.   In my life, I can count on one hand the places where I have ever had short ribs that tender, among them the kal bi chim at Sorobol and teri short ribs at Suehiro's.  But while those were more Oriental tasting, Kanak's was more local tasting.  Covered in a different gravy from roast pork, but equally as delicious, I often wonder if I will ever have short ribs like that again.

Kanak's was more than just nourishment for me though, it was like a confidant.  Unfortunately, in my new job, I had a coworker that just totally had it in for me.  He would criticize, with great hostility, every single little thing that I did, to the point that I went home depressed every day.   I really wanted to quit, but as I was a newlywed who really needed to provide for his new family, I desparately tried to tough it out.  Lunch was my only reprieve from his relentless onlaught of degredation and scrutiny, and I would find myself wandering over to Kanak's, picking up a plate and hiding away on some stairs in the back alleys on Kona St.   It was my only moments of quet and solice, enough to give me back some of my composure.  Kanak's was a much needed respite and for that they would always hold a special place in my soul.  Much later, when my son turned 2 years old, I had a big picnic at the zoo for his birthday, and shared my beloved roast pork and braised short ribs with all of my friends and family, and with them some of the warm fuzzies that Kanak's gave me when I so needed it.  Unfortunately, the Kanak Attack lunchwagon has long since closed on Kona St.   They no longer have their Kapahulu location either, but for a while they were serving lunch out of the St. Louis Alumni clubhouse on Isenberg St..   That location has also disappeared, and I am not sure when or where they will magically reappear again, but when they do, I will certainly be one of the first in line.

As time went on in my office, I eventually found a working relationship with my co-worker (largely due to the patience and tolerance that I afforded him, which no one else in the office did).  I began going out to other clients and wandering around town.  This, naturally, gave me more opportunity to continue my quest for little local places.   One of the places I found, was the Tsukenjo's Lunch House on Cooke St.  A little ironically, I became familiar with their actual restaurant, and not the red lunchwagon they were famous for on Ward Ave.  But I quickly came to know what everyone liked about them so much.

Roast Pork from Tsuekenjo's

Their most famous dish is their also their roast pork.   However, unlike Kanak's which featured big tender pieces of pork, Tsukenjo's roast pork is sort of like kalua pig with gravy on it.   Of course, this gives it all of the tenderness and smokey flavor of good kalua pig, with the addition of terrific brown gravy.   It's not quite as good as Kanak's was, but at least they're always there (every day) for you to enjoy.

Shoyu Chicken from Tsukenjo's

Tsukenjo's also makes some terrific shoyu chicken.  Their chicken is smaller than the big pieces of chicken thigh that you normally expect from shoyu chicken.   But the chicken is literally fall off the bone tender.  In fact, it's somewhat difficult keeping it on the bone, as it falls apart at your touch.   But it is infused with a delicious gingery shoyu taste.   The stronger ginger taste makes their shoyu chicken stand out, and show you what's so great about Tsukenjo's.

As I began to do work for more State agencies, I found myself coming full circle, to find places that State workers like my dad, went to eat.   Perhaps the best downtown lunchwagon, is the famous, yellow, Nicky's Lunchwagon & Catering, with 2 locations, right between the State Library and Honolulu Hale, and right next to the King Kamehameha Statue across from Iolani Palace.   This little lunchwagon is where I would go whenever working downtown, and on the right days, I would pick up lunch and head over to the Iolani Palace bandstand to hear the Royal Hawaiian Band play.   Recently, I brought my wife and son downtown for just that experience.

Shoyu Chicken & Chicken Long Rice from Nicky's Lunchwagon

The shoyu chicken I had at Nicky's is more like your traditional shoyu chicken.   The mark of a perfect shoyu chicken is of course how buttery, melt in your mouth, the chicken skin is, and the one at Nicky's is up there with the best of them.   My only complaint was that they didn't put enough of the shoyu sauce over the chicken to keep it moist, and so the rice can soak up all that wonderful shoyu and oil.  But of course, I never asked for them to give it to me that way either.   Conversely, their chicken long rice has a very light, clean taste.  It is almost too bland, and doesn't have enough of the ginger or broth that makes for a good chicken long rice.  In retrospect, I would have gone for just a shoyu chicken plate, rather than the mix, but I'm just compulsive about having a little variety.

Beef Stew from Nicky's Lunchwagon

My wife ordered their beef stew, which was very generous in all of their ingredients.   Lots of tender, if a little fatty, beef.   Lots of big hunks of potato (which she loves).   Lots of tender pieces of stewed celery (which she doesn't, but which I do).   Lots of everything in fact, which is the mark of a good lunchwagon.   Not having a permanent venue, with the overhead of rent, gives the lunchwagons more room to do the food just right, with lots of quality ingredients.  This is exactly what she found in her beef stew.  For my taste though, their stew had a little too much of that tomato tartness.   It didn't compare with the salty, savory, stew from Fresh Catch, but it was tasty nonetheless. 

The lunchwagons are as dear to our culture as hot dog carts are to New Yorkers.   They serve more than just fantastic local cuisine and fantastic value.   They serve the workforce of Hawaii, with the warmth and strength to get through the work day.   They are the hidden jewels in our society that my dad shared with me, and which I was so happy to share back with him in his retirement.

The Gourmet Plate Lunches

When we think about plate lunches, we think typically of something fairly cheap, and kind of greasy spoon.   It's typically starch and meat heavy, and usually not that healthy for you.    Somehow, what started out as all of the various cultures of Hawaii sitting around in plantation squat and sharing the food of their cultures atop a common bed of rice, has kind of degenerated into the most fatty and greasy representatives of each culture.   Instead of a few, super fresh pieces of sashimi, you typically get the crispy fried chicken katsu with your plate lunch.   Instead of a bi bim bap with the big variety of vegetables in it, you typically get kalbi or Korean fried chicken.   Instead of pinakbet vegetables, you typically get pork adobo.    These dishes are by of course very tasty, which made them popular plate lunch fare to begin with.   But typically, you don't generally think of plate lunches as a) very healthy, or b) very gourmet.   However, this isn't always the case.

As time has evolved the plate lunch from the sharing of common farmer foods in our cultures, to the common fast foods of our cultures, time is continuing to evolve our plate lunches to adopt to the changing world that recognizes the nutritional needs of our modern lifestyle.    In many places these days, instead of getting a mac salad with your plate, you can get a tossed salad  (most often a simple serving of lettuce, or the better yet the cabbage you usually get as the bed under your teri beef).   Often instead of getting 2 scoops of white rice, you can get 2 scoops of brown rice (except that I really hate the texture of brown rice, so that's just not doing it for me).    I really hate to sound like my sister, but there are options out there to make your plate lunch healthier.    There are also places that try to make it a little more gourmet as well, or at least give it a little more variety (which is what I'm much more interested in).

When I used to work down by Ala Moana, one of my co-workers was eating a plate that looked quite good, and wasn't your typical chicken katsu or beef stew.   When I asked him where he got it, he directed me towards a little hole in the wall, on the corner of Atkinson and Kapiolani, called You Hungry?.  For such a small little place, it was always super crowded.  You were really lucky if you could get a seat at one of their tables, with the plush, floral patterend, easy chairs.  But even if you had to take it back with you to the office, they had such a great variety of plates to choose from.   Besides their awesome teri-meatballs, they had a whole slew of chicken and fish dishes.   My favorite thing there was their baked chicken.   They gave you 3 beautifully baked chicken thighs (which had a light shake-n-bake type of coating on it), which was smothered in a creamy mushroom gravy.   It still wasn't the healthiest thing for you, but honestly, the soft chicken skin with the light shake-n-bake type of seasoning soaking up all of the creamy mushroomy goodness was just heavenly.   Instead of rice and salad though, I would always go with the more unusual option of mashed potatoes and corn.   It was like a country plate, but a plate lunch, and having one in the middle of the day just perked my spirit for going back to work.  

Crab Stuffed Salmon from You Hungry? Lunchwagon

Sadly, the You Hungry? restaurant closed.   I was there in fact, on the last day, when the original owners sold the restaurant to new people.  What did those people do with it?   Well, instead of having a restaurant, they went backwards and opened a lunchwagon.   You can still find You Hungry? plates being served downtown on the corner of Alakea and Beretania.  Their selection is much more limited than the original restaurant, but they still taste quite extraordinary for a plate lunch.   I really like their crab stuffed salmon.   The salmon is perfectly baked, so you still have the healthy oils from the fish keeping it moist and tasty.   It is certainly not your typical plate lunch fare.

You Hungry? may have gone from being a prominent fixture to a limited mobile operation, but when it comes to the gourmet plate lunches the foremost place would have to be Kakaako Kitchen, on the corner of Ward Center (where Bernard's New York Deli used to be).   The first time I walked into Kakaako Kitchen, I really didn't know what to make of the place.   For one thing, their plates are about $12, twice the price of what you would expect for a normal plate lunch.  Pricier than I would normally want to pay for a daily lunch.   For another thing, their menu didn't look like the standard plate lunch fare either.   They were obviously striving for a slightly more upscale palate.   Anytime you hear words like "pan-seared" or "whatever-crusted", you immediately know that this isn't going to be the familiar hamburger steak and teri-beef kind of place.  Even their containers are a hard plastic clamshell, rather than a simple styrofoam.  Their portions were also a bit smaller than some plate lunch places that really pile on the food, which makes their pricing even more daunting.  On the other hand, it was clearly a take out or plastic table/chair, kind of plate lunch place.   It wasn't the kind of place that you'd want to take a client or a date.  It didn't have the ambiance for even a family dinner really.   So I really just didn't understand the niche that Kakaako Kitchen was trying to target at all.  

Then, I tasted some of their food, and I was immediately taken aback.   They certainly weren't your standard plate lunch fare, but they really did taste like more upscale local food.  My favorite thing there by far, was their bubu arare crusted wild salmon with shichimi aioli.    Sounds really interesting doesn't it?   Bubu arare are really tiny balls of kakimochi.  They're roughly the size of really tiny ball bearings, and they have the texture of the rice crispies in a Nestle Crunch bar.  Obviously, these tiny little beads of salty sweet crunchiness make for a perfect crust of the wild salmon fillet.   The biggest complaint people usually have about salmon is that it's overcooked, but theirs was just perfectly cooked to maintain the natural butteriness that salmon should have (even moreso than the one at You Hungry?).   It was absolutely fabulous.   But, for reasons that completely escape me, they've taken it off of their menu, and I couldn't even get them to special make it for me.  So, these days, I had to revert to my second favorite thing there, the furikake tempura catfish with ponzu sauce.   This too is a fantastic dish.   The catfish is far meatier in texture than the flakiness that you get from other types of fish.  The tempura batter is light and crispy.  The ponzu sauce has that slight citrusy tang that you don't get from straight tempura sauce.   At Kakaako Kitchen, I even prefer their green salad over mac salad.  That really says something.   We're not talking about simple iceberg lettuce or shredded "bedding" cabbage, but real Nalo Greens (gotta support those farmers out in Waimanalo).  Other places may have mesclun or spring mix, but they can't compare to the fresh, dark green, leafy varieties that we grow here in the islands.  I also really like the tangy lemon miso dressing that they use.  These are all totally local flavors, but in a presentation you just don't expect.

Furikake Tempura Catfish with Ponzu Sauce from Kakaako Kitchen

So what do you do with the fancier plates that you get at You Hungry? or Kakaako Kitchen?   They're a little too dressed up for a daily lunch, but a little too under dressed for a night out.   Just how do they fit in to our lifestyle?   Well, when my first son was born, naturally I stayed with my wife in the hospital.  But not being one of the patients (ie. mom or baby), husbands are kind of treated like second class citizens.  Yes they do have a single pull out easy chair for you to sleep on.  Yes they do feed you one dinner the first night your baby is born, but for all the other meals you're on your own.   But luckily, with a brand new baby around, the rest of the family couldn't help but come and stay with us during every available visiting hour as well.   What did they decide to bring me for dinner, but the stuff salmon from You Hungry?.   It was just perfect.  Holding my newborn baby, while enjoying a meal that was dressed up enough for the celebration, but available to come to me in the hospital.

The best meal I ever had from Kakaako Kitchen however, was one Valentine's Day.   Throughout the time we've been together, my wife and I hardly ever made reservations.   Somehow, we found them too restrictive to our lifestyle, and usually, with just the two of us, we liked being able to just walk into a crowded restaurant whenever we want and get a seat (even if it is at the bar or in the lounge or someplace like that).   However on Valentine's Day it's usually impossible to do that.  Even at Verbano, where we almost always get a seat, we once weren't able to have dinner til after 9PM when the rush died down.   So one year, I decided to do something special.   Rather than fight the crowds and the traffic on Valentine's Day, we decided to go to Kakaako Kitchen for dinner.  But rather than staying there, we took the meals to go and headed just around the corner to Ala Moana Beach Park.   We found a nice clean stone table, and set up a dozen or so candles around us.   We had a fantastic meal of salmon and catfish.   The full stary sky was twinkling overhead, and we could hear the gentle roar of the ocean next to us.   There was a cool night breeze all around us, and it was so peacefully quiet, compared to a noisy restaurant.  It was a mere fraction of the cost of what I would have paid at a fancy fine dining restaurant, yet infinitely more intimate.   It may be the single most romantic Valentine's Day dinner I have ever had. 

Even if you're a little high school student, and can't afford to go to a chic restaurant, that doesn't mean you can't enjoy really innovative haute cuisine in Hawaii.  With the continuing evolution of plate lunch, it's completely logical for it to adopt the unique flavors of the star chefs of Hawaii regional cuisine as well.   It is just another facet in the collidescope of cultures that defines the plate lunch.

Lunch at the Pier

So for my first actual blog entry, I wanted to pick something really iconic of Hawaii. Something that truly represented both the unique flavor and culture of the islands. Something that was filled with the best happy memories I could think of. Given the criteria, one thing immediately popped into my head. It's with a certain irony and sadness, I realized that what I settled on no longer exists... The place that I really wanted to blog about, was my favorite lunchwagon down by the pier, the Kanda Lunchwagon.

But let's start at the beginning. For those of you who don't know, Hawaii's most popular food choice, the plate lunch, has it's origins as part of our multi-cultural history. When Hawaii's main industry was sugar (and later pineapple), immigrant workers came from China, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Portugal, and other places to work on the plantations. Despite being from very different, sometimes antagonistic, cultures, these workers (our grandparents) shared in the hardship of their labor. They eventually found commonality, and one of the factors bonded them together was of course... food. While each culture would cook up something different, they almost all were served upon a bed of rice. So the plantation workers would break for lunch, squat in a big circle (now known as the plantation squat), and share each other's entre upon their own bowl of rice. This was the basis of what we now call our "mixed plate".

As the world evolved, so did this practice. By the '40's and '50's, besides bringing their own lunches to work, many people bought lunch. So to deliver lunch to many people at different worksites, Hawaii became home to the lunchwagon. We're not talking about the kind of junk food that you might get off the back of a truck on the mainland. Plate lunches were always a mixture of the different cultures that spawned it, Chinese, Japanese, Hawaiian, etc., always served with the ubiquitous 2 scoops of rice and 1 scoop of macaroni salad. New York has hot dog carts, L.A. has taco trucks, and Honolulu has lunchwagons.

Sadly, many of of the lunchwagons are disappearing. You can still find them, at U.H and around downtown during lunch. But many of the older ones are gone. This includes the one that was my favorite of all, the Kanda Lunchwagon, down at Kaka'ako Pier. It used to park, just Ewa of Ala Moana Beach Park, right in the parking lot that borders the park and the pier. The line for that one was always at least 8 or 9 people long. And it was well worth it.

I still remember my favorite plate from "the pier" as we used to call it. Their "Large Mixed Plate" consisted of

• 2 scoops rice, 1 scoop mac salad (of course)
• roast pork
• a small piece of meatloaf
• a shoyu shortrib
• sometimes some teri-beef
• a thin triangular slice of luncheon meat
• a shoyu hot dog
• all on a bed of pork long rice
• and if you wanted it, gravy from the roast pork over the rice

It seems like a lot, but it wasn't really that big compared to the gut busting plates you can get these days. Heck, the piece of meatloaf was only about the size of a fig newton. But they gave you a little bit of everything on the menu. And everything was delicious. Even the mac salad, which is done all over town, I remember as being my favorite one. On the surface, it just looked like mayo, macaroni, and some shredded cabbage. I'm not sure what they did to it, but it was always colder and more flavorful than anyone else's. The best thing on the plate though was the long rice. To this day, I have never tasted long rice like that. Not so thin, translucent noodles, in this savory, shoyu pork broth, with bits of cabbage and pork, that just made me want to slurp up every last noodle at the end of my plate.

Even the presentation was unique. They didn't hand em out on those styrofoam lunch containers that every one uses these days. They handed out paper plates, lined with 2 sheets of wax paper, and covered with 2 more sheets of wax paper. They were the only people I knew of, besides my Po Po, who actually used wax paper. It was really old school.

But perhaps the best part of this lunchwagon was the location. My dad would take me down to the pier, buy us a couple of plates, a couple of Diamond Head red creme sodas, and we would walk across the parking lot, sit on the dock and next to fishing boats, and eat lunch, just him and I. I would sit there and watch the tide lap against the rubber tires buffering the boats. Sometimes I'd even see some small fishes (probably Manini) swimming by the boats. It was such a simple little pleasure. But it's the kind of thing you always remember from your Hana Batta days. It's an experience I wish I could've shared with my boys. The Kanda Lunchwagon is gone now, and there is a different wagon that replaced it, but their food just doesn't taste the same.

I was really heartbroken when I found out that the Kanda Lunchwagon had closed. For about a year or two, their appearances at the pier started becoming less frequent, and regular. I kept wanting to take my wife (then girlfriend), down there to share the experience with her, but every time we drove past they wouldn't be there. Until ultimately I found out about their closing. As the lunchwagons disappear, the worry sets in that we're losing a bit of our culture, a bit of our history, a bit of ourselves. I worry more that the people of Hawaii will lose the bond that they formed working on the plantations together, that newcomers won't understand the cultural tolerance we learned by working the sugar cane fields together, growing up together, and sharing our lunches together. More than anything, that is what I want to share with my sons, even if we have to find a new lunch place to build that memory on.