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Whenever my best friend comes over from Maui for one of our periodic girlfriend weekends, a must-stop has been Haili’s Hawaiian Foods at the Ward Farmers Market, where she would buy dried aku ($7.25 for 1/4 pound) for her husband and son to enjoy pau hana with beers.
How dismayed we both were to hear that Haili’s had lost its lease on its longtime location, and how glad to hear they had come up with an interim solution while they look for a new commercial kitchen: a lunchwagon parked across from the Ward movie theaters.
Haili’s, founded more than 50 years ago, is an Island institution — a source for Hawaii foods in bulk, as well as for plate lunches.
The new concept is of an “outdoor cafe” — a lunchwagon where you can get a bite before or after a movie. You can choose to pick up food to take away or sit down at one of the four or so tables, set up under the hala tree on a strip of lawn. Rachel Ching Haili, namesake daughter of the founder, and other family members continue to make the dishes they learned from dad Peter Davis Haili.
The venture (it opened July 11) is experiencing the same fits and starts that any new business does. The day I visited to pick up a bunch of plate lunches, service was a bit slow, and the chefs and order-taker seemed flustered, despite there being only a handful of customers waiting. But there was the usual friendly greeting and “mahalo.”
As I waited, several longtime Haili’s customers came by: a woman who looked around as she waited for her order, and cooed “Cute, yeah?,” and a surfer fresh from the beach who was disappointed to learn he couldn’t substitute lomi salmon for salad as he used to do at the old place. Nevertheless, he ate his beef stew plate with relish, sitting at an umbrella’d table.
While Haili’s has long been known for Hawaiian plates, excellent dried fish and poke, poi, pipikaula (my fave!), lomi salmon and such, they’ve branched out a bit at this location, offering not just plates ($7-$10 including an entree, poi or rice, lomi salmon and haupia pudding) but wraps (ahi, kälua or pulehu steak with mango salsa and chips, $7), rice bowls and salads. There’s even a signature dessert: Banana a la Haili’s (bananas grilled in the skin, topped with vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce and mac nuts, $4). They even do a “Hawaiian-style hot dog” ($5, a combo including a dog, pineapple slices, kim chee and chips).
I decided to get a combination of old and new, ordering pulehu steak and chicken long rice ($9), a kalua wrap ($7) and an ahi bowl ($5).
While I think Haili’s could back off from the paakai (salt) a bit and put more ginger in the chicken long rice, everything was old-timey comforting and ono. My favorite was the ahi bowl, with its combo of sweet, salty, smoky, slightly fishy flavors, the sauce percolating down through the rice.
The wraps are a great value — a very large tortilla stuffed with meat, carrots, cabbage and onions, as well as a big handful of chips and a sea of mango salsa.
The pulehu steak and chicken long rice plate ($9) is also a good value. The steak was cut into strips, slightly smoky and well-marked, and the chicken long rice came tucked into a cup — like a luau in Styrofoam.
Four tables shoehorned onto a strip of grass on a busy street hardly qualifies as a backyard luau, but the food gives you that feeling.
Haili's Hawaiian Foods/Haili’s Backyard Luau
Lunchwagon in parking lot, mauka of Ward Stadium 16 Theaters on Auahi Street
808-593-8019
mybackyardluau.com
Hours: 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays; 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays; 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Sundays
Prices: Plates $7-$10, wraps and salads $5-$8
Other details: Bulk orders available on 24 hours notice.
