First taste: Poke Stop

(Credit: Rebecca Breyer - The Advertiser)

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If any of the details in this review of the new Poke Stop location in Mililani are wrong, blame it on the eggplant fries and the garlic butter corn. After digging into the lacy, crisp and not-at-all greasy spears of tempura eggplant with spicy remoulade sauce ($4.95), and gnawing at the dripping-with-goodness ear of corn ($2.95), I was, in effect, drunk on food.

I listened with half an ear to my girlfriend talking story, wandered over to the poke case with glazed eyes, bought a takeout order of bread pudding in a fit of giddy greediness. I wasn’t so impaired that I couldn’t drive back to town, thank goodness; I had that bread pudding and takeout orders of furikake salmon and creamy tako pokes ($3.61 for a quarter pound each), plus half a pound of Big Island smoke meat ($8.45) to look forward to. (They do a smoke meat plate with onions and spinach, $9.95, or you can just take out the meat and stir fry it at home.)

As we got into the car, my girlfriend remarked, “I think the sides are almost better than the mains in this place.”

I almost agreed.

But I had to speak up for the nightly special I tried: bacon-wrapped “Hawaiian butterfish” (waloo, $9.95), the smoky bacon complementing the tender white flesh, kicked up a notch by a drizzle of chili sauce.

We weren’t so thrilled with her veal burger ($8.95 with eggplant fries). And the eight to 10 nightly special plates, created or selected by the local chef-manager, must be at least 80 percent seafood, but there’s usually at least one dish for the meat-eater. We chose the dish because it was made with locally raised Big Island veal, which has created something of a stir in the chef world (it will be featured in an upcoming “Locavore” dinner at Alan Wong’s restaurant May 20). But the ground veal was dry and rather tasteless, in sharp contrast to everything else we ate at Poke Stop.

When I called chef-owner Elmer Guzman later to ask him about it, he agreed with our assessment. He said he got his first shipment of the veal just a few weeks ago and is quietly putting different items on the menu to see how it works. A veal loco moco they made was much, much better, he said.

Guzman, former executive chef at Sam Choy’s Restaurant and owner of the 4-year-old original Poke Stop in Waipahu, is a pioneer in the chef-run plate lunch movement, offering white tablecloth food at white Styrofoam prices. He plans to roll out a new Poke Stop every couple of years — perhaps in Kapolei next, then Honolulu.

When I asked him about the fried eggplant and the corn, he said both were the result of accidents and economies. The eggplant fries came about because kids kept asking for french fries. Guzman, who likes to think outside the takeout container, just happened to have a lot of eggplant on hand that he wanted to use up and, of course, they always have tempura batter. So the chefs married the two and the fries have become the No. 1 non-poke item on the menu, he said. They’re served with a spicy remoulade (a classic French mayonnaise sauce given a local-style touch of chili peppah).

It’s among a new line of bottled Poke Stop sauces: Seafood Finishing Sauce, Hawaiian Chili Pepper Remoulade and Creamy Seafood Sauce, among them. They’re a byproduct of Guzman’s determination that the standing menu at both locations be absolutely identical. They make the sauce in bulk in Mililani and deliver them to Waipahu.

As to the corn, it came about when Guzman was at a party at his mother-in-law’s house out in Waianae. Her guests from Costa Rica were “cooking up a storm,” Guzman recalled, and she was bragging about her chef son-in-law. He had to do something fast. All he had was some fresh Kahuku corn and her spice cupboard. “We basically cleaned out the cupboard, put in a lot  of garlic and spices and that’s what makes it,” he said.

The glass case that takes up almost the length of the restaurant was packed with poke: 19 varieties. But that’s just on Monday through Wednesday, Guzman said. By Thursday, they up the number to 28 to 31 types. “If you’re going to call yourself Poke Stop, you better have poke,” he joked.

The two we tried, silky furikake salmon and creamy tako, were delicious — nothing like Hawaiian poke, of course, but the kind that you could serve to someone who doesn’t even like poke. The creamy tako was especially surprising because the octopus didn’t require the usual chewing marathon. Guzman said it’s because he uses only the tender tentacle tips. And the mayonnaise-based sauce doesn’t hurt, either.

Guzman said that, besides poke and the eggplant fries, the hot-selling dishes are the crab cake sandwich ($9.95) and the fried whole moi ($8.95 for one, $11.95 for two, with rice and salad). For this, he buys the small fish that most other restaurants won’t bother with, which fit perfectly into takeout containers.

Another popular item is the seared ahi poke bowl, a sort of donburi made with fried tuna atop different fried rice mixtures (kim chee, furikake, pipïkaula or smoke meat; $8.95). “The construction workers like ’em because they’re easy to eat and you can just grab ’em and go,” he said.

But Guzman largely stays away from mocos and other familiar plate lunch dishes.

“I just want to be the seafood guy,” he says.

Poke Stop Mililani Mauka
Mililani Gateway,
95-1840 Meheula Parkway
626-3400;
fax, 626-3900
Hours: 8 a.m.-8:30 p.m. Mondays-Saturdays; 8 a.m.-7 p.m. Sundays
Prices: $3.95 (small bowl daily chowder or gumbo) to $13.95 for ribeye steak plate; most plates $10-$12
Other details: Off H-2, take Mililani Mauka exit; it’s behind McDonald’s and Tesoro; easy parking. Mostly takeout, but three tables, eight-seat counter. Soda and iced tea only for drinks. About 15 seats. Counter service and Styrofoam-plastic tableware. Catering available.

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