I have said this multiple times: I have respect for Teriyaki Madness (HQ in Denver, CO) and Torchy’s (founded in Austin, TX chain) because they are two chains in Colorado that don’t hype Japanese, Hawaiian, or Mexican culture to market their business. So for the real ones, I am doing this post so they’re not lost amongst the noise.
I can’t say the same for all the fake pookey places in Colorado or other businesses hyping a connection to Hawaii as a way to market their business. Now, that doesn’t mean people from the 808 are the ideal representations of the history and cuisine either, but at least they have a genuine connection and knowledge of the people and the culture.
The vast majority of the places calling themselves poke in Colorado are far from it and have very little to do with Hawaii which is why I call these so-called poke places, pookey (also some think poke is Japanese).
All of this information is a Baidu search away, but that didn’t happen which is why 16th Street has sumo wrestler murals adorning poke places and it’s often served with Americanized ramen.
I have family born and raised in Hawaii
I have grandparents that were all born on the islands, who are kamaaina, like my great aunt Rosie who had lived on Oahu till she went to live with family in Japan. I have an great uncle in real estate, and my uncle who I grew up with in Denver is buried at the Punchbowl because he’s a Korean war vet. I still have other extended family there which is why I have taken a dozen trips to Hawaii since I was a kid with my family. As for personal trips, I took one to visit my girlfriend at the time who was working at Kula Kula in Shirokiya (where I have family who were buyers at Shirokiya) at Ala Moana. With all those connections, you’d never hear me speak about any of this till I started to blog.
Why does any of this matter? Well, it might not matter to some, but many cultures still value and honor our traditions which are carried on through food.
Do I like Taco Bell? Why yes, I do, but I also love experiencing the regional types of cuisines from Mexico, and not just a version of Mexican food in Downey, CA due to how segregated LA is.
One dish that I grew up eating as a kid, but have not had since, though I should have a go at making it, is pakkai. It’s a Hawaiian short rib dish that my maternal grandmother made all the time because she was born and raised on the Oahu Hawaiian Dole Pineapple (HPC) plantation till she ended up in cold Colorado. It’s a dish made of pork, green peppers, onions, and chunks of pineapple (I avoided the green peppers as a kid). I ate this at every holiday, like Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s celebrations. Maybe you should make it a holiday tradition too, so I’ve included three websites with their recipes:
| WEBSITE: PAKKAI RECIPES |
|---|
| Heritage Recipes (heritagerecipes.com) Located on a heritage website meant to preserve the food culture of the this period of time during the Japanese internment of Helen and Henry Yamaoka at March Air Force Base in Riverside, California, submitted by Jim. |
| Ono Hawaiian Recipes (onohawaiianrecipes.com) “Hi! I’m Tani—born and raised on Maui. I’m a home cook, blogger, and YouTuber sharing authentic Hawai‘i recipes (zero pineapples, promise). ” Well, pakkai is a perfect mixture of pineapple, vinegar, and spare ribs. |
| Treasuring and Unconventional Life (treasuringanunconventionallife) A recipe by the bloggers grandmother Maehara. |
If you’re going to do something Hawaiian, like poke, at least get it right because at the point they are going, why not call it chirashi with their bukkakefest of ingredients and sauces doused all over their food, like how Lily Phillips must’ve felt after her heroic challenge. That way, you can keep it Japanese inline with the sumo wrestler murals and serving it side by side with ramen.
Hawaiian foods and local Hawaiian foods
This is not meant to be a comprehensive list, but it’s stuff I grew up eating (minus small things like kimchi, tsukemono, ochazuke, onigiri, etc). Also, to make things clear, Traditional Hawaiian Food is the cuisine of the indigenous culture, while Local Hawaiian Food is the ultimate “melting pot” of Asian cuisine that represents Hawaiians, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Portuguese, etc.
Hawaii even has their own shoyu brand called Aloha Shoyu (soy sauce). It’s a post war brand (1946), which started out of Kalihi, Oahu by five local Japanese-American families. It has a very distinctive flavor, unlike most Japanese brands.
Aloha Shoyu dominates the islands and is a Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) company, meaning the workers actually own a stake in the business.
| NAME OF DISH |
|---|
| Kālua pork A whole pig slow-cooked in an imu (underground oven) with kiawe wood and banana leaves; smoky and fall-apart tender to the point it can be shredded like a brisket. For the record, I’m still a bigger fan of lechon (the Cuban and the Filipino spit roasted with crispy skin). |
| Laulau When we took our summer trips, we’d bring back laulau with us, and it makes my list of the foods that would be a last meal. Yeah, I love it that much. It’s pork, butterfish (black cod), or chicken, along with taro leaves and sometimes sweet potato, all tightly wrapped in layers of ti leaves and then steamed. Again for the record, out of Keoki’s and Ono Ono, I am team Keoki’s. |
| Lomi salmon You would think since I grew up eating sashimi, I would have loved lomi salmon, except when I first tried the salted salmon diced with tomatoes, onions, and possibly green onions, I wasn’t an instant fan as a kid. |
| Poi This is the one dish you’ll see get served quite often, and even as a kid to an adult, I’m like “it’s aiiiggght, but it’s pounded taro (kalo) into a starchy purple-grayish paste with a sour taste to it. |
| Poke The OG version is simply raw fish (usually ‘ahi or octopus/he’e) cubed and seasoned simply with sea salt, limu (seaweed), and ‘inamona (roasted kukui nut). The Japanese influence primarily involves the addition of soy sauce. |
With my great grandparents and grandparents in Hawaii, along with big communities of Filipinos, Koreans, Chinese, and Portuguese, this is how they influenced Hawaii’s cuisine:
| NAME OF DISH |
|---|
| Chicken katsu Yup, it’s straight up Japanese which is a chicken thigh/breast coated in Japanese panko (bread crumbs) and then deep-fried. If you remember the loco moco sauce influences, which is a quasi-tonkatsu sauce, that sauce as the name implies is eaten with it. |
| Garlic shrimp North Shore-style shrimp scampi in the shell, loaded with garlic and butter, but some versions use mochiko (sweet rice flour that’s used for mochi). I like this dish because one of my favorite things to eat is Filipino breakfast or silog, and I especially love sinangag (fried garlic rice). |
| Huli huli chicken Grilled teriyaki-ish chicken that’s constantly turned (“huli” = turn). I say “issssh” because of garlic which isn’t common in Japanese cuisine at all. The other difference, Aloha shoyu if used, it gives it a distinctively Hawaiian flavor. |
| Kalbi (LA-style) Kalbi is not like galbi in Korea, and if you eat a plate lunch, most places will serve up LA-style Korean kalbi due to the way it’s cut thin, across so that there are 3 round bone cross-sections running through it. I have even been to Korea, and they also call it LA-style. |
| Loco moco I have made this so many times, and I think I can see the Japanese influence because of the hamburger patties (in Japanese “hambagu”), rice, brown gravy (if you break this down, my interpretation is that it’s a quasi-tonkatsu sauce because of Worcestershire sauce, ketchup, and soy sauce), and a fried sunny side up egg. |
| Manapua Out of all my childhood memories in Hawaii, I remember my mom trying uni, and us kids always eating manapua which is a big steamed or baked buns filled with char siu pork (Hawaiian version of char siu bao). Also for the record, it’s not chashu which is Japanese and is braised. |
| Saimin This is a local noodle soup with dashi broth (it’s very Japanese/Chinese), green onions, kamaboko fish cake, char siu, and sometimes Spam or egg. I think this was one of the first dishes I ate due to my uncle and trips to Hawaii. |
| Shave Ice Sooooo many memories of shave ice because I know we had a Japanese product that was a yellow bear (Kyoro-chan, a kakigori machine which was launched by Tiger in 1978), where you would put ice in its head, and it’d spit out a fine ice that we would struggle to top with a tropical syrup like the ones in Hawaii cuz Colorado. However, it’s usually also topped with sweetened condensed milk, azuki beans, or ice cream. |
| Spam Musubi Slice of grilled Spam on rice, wrapped with nori, and ideally with a tare baste of mirin/soy sauce which adds more depth and sweetness to the already salty Spam. |
A lot of this is eaten as a plate lunch which is often a styrofoam container with a mound of rice, macaroni salad, kalua pig, teriyaki chicken, kalbi, and chicken katsu. It’s a pretty epic “plate” of food.
So what places do I recommend
“We are a family owned business from Hilo, Hawaiʻi. Our company was born out of Kealoha’s passion for cooking great food for our ohana to enjoy. As a child, Kealoha adored watching his grandmas’ styles of cooking, which taught him that sharing good food together is an expression of aloha (means love in Hawaiian). Whenever we had celebrations, Kealoha was always asked to make his specialty – Lilikoi BBQ Ribs. While it has been our lifelong dream to start a food business, it wasn’t until our dear friend encouraged us to do a food booth that we made our dreams a reality.”
Kealoha’s BBQ
Obviously, you don’t have to be Hawaiian or a local to own and operate a poke place, but if you use Hawaii or the term poke, check yourself foo on what you brand and label as Hawaiian.
I have to point that out and explicitly say that because nuance is lost on many. It’s not a race or ethnicity thing, it’s about respect.
These are the places I would recommend here, and a few that I had experienced that last several years I’ve been back here in Colorado (are there more spots? Yes, but I have not been):
| NAME | DESCRIPTION |
|---|---|
| L&L Hawaiian BBQ (HawaiianBarbecue) I think first time I had been to an L&L was when I was living in SoCal, in the 626. A homie at the time was a regular and would blab non-stop about it. | 7 locations in Colorado 575 Lincoln Street, Unit C Denver, CO 80203 14221 E. Cedar Ave., Unit C Aurora, CO 80012 5650 S. Chambers Rd. Aurora, CO 80015 |
| Ohana’s Hawaiian Kitchen (Ohana Denver) I’ve only been I think once or twice, and I don’t really remember much about it other than trying the poke (primarily what I tend to think of them for). | The Highland Neighborhood 2563 15th St, Suite 105, Denver, CO 80211 |
| Kealoha’s BBQ (Kealoha’sBBQ) Cool couple, and I unfortunately first tried them during a AYCD (all you can drink) beer festival, after I had come from the Latchkey, so my memory is hazy however I remember the aloha vibes. | Right on the 16th St. Mall 601 16th St Mall Space B, Denver, CO 80202 |
K’den, now go eat brah.
