Dine Like an Expert: Hawaiian Plate Lunches, Musubi and More
Columbus Foodletter friend Cindy Lum shares her Hawaiian cuisine expertise.
PAID SUBSCRIBER PERKS: Congrats to Columbus Foodletter subscriber Shiloh Todorov, who won two tickets to a soft opening event at chef Andrew Smith’s Isla, coming soon to Merion Village.
Dine Like an Expert: Hawaiian Plate Lunches with Cindy Lum
By Andy Dehus
Hawaiian restaurants are popping up around Columbus at a surprising clip, a trend that hasn’t escaped the attention of Cindy Lum. A Hawaii native, Columbus resident and longtime friend of Columbus Food Adventures, Lum graciously agreed to share her knowledge of the Hawaiian dining experience with us as well as her thoughts on what might just make the cuisine more interesting than what first meets the eye.
Her first observation was that the new crop of Hawaiian restaurants—including Ohana Island Grill, Sakura Hawaii BBQ & Ramen, Lucky Hawaiian and others—overwhelmingly emphasize a traditional style of cuisine known as the “plate lunch” or “mixed plate.” Sometimes also referred to as a “combination plate”, it’s composed of two scoops of rice, a scoop of macaroni salad and a protein option (or in the case of a mixed plate, two or more proteins).
These proteins are where it gets interesting. The range on offer includes katsu chicken, kalua pork, BBQ short ribs, Spam, mahi-mahi, loco moco (a hamburger patty with gravy and an egg), mochiko chicken and much more. Lum points out that these proteins reflect the Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Chinese and Portuguese (primarily Azorean) origins of the laborers brought in to farm Hawaii’s many sugarcane and pineapple plantations over a period that spans from roughly 1850 to 1930. During the plantation era, lunch wagons brought these plate lunch meals to the fields to feed the workforce.
The popularity of this delicious, varied and calorie-dense style of eating outlasted that era, and Lum notes that the first brick-and-mortar plate lunch vendor, the L & L Drive-In, started in 1976 in the neighborhood where she grew up in Oahu. L & L then expanded within Hawaii (along with a competitor known as Zippy’s), and then to both California and Las Vegas. The latter is sometimes referred to as “the ninth island” for its large population of Hawaiians.
With that, Hawaiian fare had gone national. One of the first Hawaiian restaurants to open in Columbus, Lucky Hawaiian BBQ in Clintonville, features a chef co-owner who worked at an L&L Hawaiian Barbecue in Las Vegas, and though we haven’t confirmed it with any other local Hawaiian joints, we wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t the only one with a similar background.
We met Lum for lunch at Lucky Hawaiian, where she recommended the restaurant’s mixed plates, especially the BBQ Bento (featuring BBQ beef, BBQ chicken, fried mahi-mahi and grilled Spam) for its variety.
As primarily a takeout business with few tables, Lucky serves all of its meals in styrofoam to-go containers. “It’s not fancy food”, Lum says, “but it’s filling, tasty and a good value.”
Upon opening our to-go boxes, “good value” struck us as both true and an understatement. Portions were … substantial! In the BBQ Bento, the barbecue items were appropriately cooked, tender and dressed with a suitably restrained application of a teriyaki-style sauce. The mahi-mahi was a show stopper: tempura-like in the lightness and delicacy of its fried batter, with perfectly textured dorado within. And the Spam—people seem to love it or hate it, but if you’re a doubter who is open to persuasion then Lucky Hawaiian’s soy-glazed rendition is probably what’ll make the case.
Lum also noted that Lucky Hawaiian’s inclusion of tuna in its creamy macaroni salad was a nice and very Hawaiian touch.
Beyond the lunch plates, Lum also recommends Lucky Hawaiian’s Spam-pineapple fried rice and appreciatively notes their offering of four types of Spam musubi (essentially Spam onigiri).
At Ohana Island Grill on Columbus’ Northwest Side, Lum gives her nod to the kalua pork and cabbage plate, the saimin (a noodle soup some compare to ramen) and the garlic shrimp.
At Sakura Hawaii BBQ & Ramen on the Far East Side, Lum notes that she particularly enjoys the short rib (similar to Korean kalbi) and chicken combo plate from the menu’s relatively limited Hawaiian section.
Want to read more stories like this one? Check out our Dine Like an Expert archive.
Notes
Around the Columbus Food & Drink Scene
It’s “game over” for 16-Bit Bar + Arcade’s original location at 254 S. Fourth St. in Downtown Columbus. The cocktail bar filled with retro arcade games, the first-ever concept from Rise Brands, is set to close Sunday, March 30, after 12 years. The Dispatch has more here.
The Mediterranean restaurant Rodos Greek Taverna (2151 W. Granville Road) was destroyed by a fire early last Friday in the Linworth area. A GoFundMe campaign was launched to support the restaurant.
Columbus Food Adventures Supper Club returns for the season on Sunday, April 6. Tickets are still available for the multi-course dinner curated by chef Yudi Makassau of Haru Omakase, which we wrote about last year. The intimate dinner will be seafood-focused. You can reserve seats to the dinner here.
I just ran out and bought a 3 pack of chicken katsu musubi, it’s incredible and such a deal! Nice post (thanks Cindy!).