Poke Stop

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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), we were, in effect, drunk on food. Chef-owner Elmer 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. 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, pipikaula 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.

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Mililani restaurants, Seafood restaurants