Hawaiian barbecue restaurant opens in East Meadow

You can always spot a true Hawaiian restaurant by the juices. It's a good sign when you see a display of colorful cans that each feature a tropical fruit illustration: passion fruit, orange, guava. The new Honolulu Hawaiian BBQ & Poke Bar in East Meadow is such a place, with a refrigerator of Hawaiian Sun drinks by the front counter and Spam on the menu. And it turns out, this strip mall spot is just as legit as it seems. 

Owner Alex Chen, who has relatives in Hawaii and has been in the service industry for more than 15 years, noticed a lack of authentic Hawaiian spots in New York. He modeled his shop after his cousin's business Halo Hawaiian BBQ in Chico, California. He also opened another Honolulu Hawaiian BBQ & Poke Bar in Bridgewater, New Jersey, earlier this summer.

Both businesses serve a style of Hawaiian cuisine called the plate lunch. A hearty comfort dish, the plate lunch is a fusion of Asian and American flavors that was historically developed by sugar plantation workers. Similar to a Japanese bento box, the Hawaiian plate lunch is a sampler platter of sorts, with a barbecued meat alongside a dome of white rice, and creamy macaroni salad. Some of these meats are Japanese in origin, like fried chicken katsu. Some are Korean, like bone-in kalbi short ribs. Another standard is native Hawaiian and has been around for centuries: the kalua pork, a pulled pork dish that was historically cooked underground during Hawaiian luau ceremonies. 

Honolulu Hawaiian BBQ has all of these items on the menu. But if you've never tried any of them before, a good first move is to order the BBQ Mix combo ($16.95) with a barbecue chicken, beef and short ribs. This sampler was popularized by the Honolulu chain L & L Hawaiian Barbecue, which has locations all over the West Coast and the South, where Hawaiian food is a major part of the fast-casual landscape. The lobs of chicken and beef are boneless and glazed in a faintly sweet soy based sauce, thinner than teriyaki. The boneless short ribs are succulent, and a steal compared to your average Korean restaurant. But the biggest pleasure of the Hawaiian lunch plate is the macaroni salad, which takes on a spicy new dimension when you hit it with some sriracha and soy sauce condiments. 

Honolulu Hawaiian BBQ has other familiar Hawaiian dishes on the menu like the iconic breakfast plate loco moco ($12.95), an over-the-top comfort food that consists of hamburger patties smothered in gravy and topped with fried eggs on a bed of white rice. There's also a straightforward take on Spam musubi ($2.50), the Hawaiian alternative to sushi that features a slab of the canned ham on a mound of rice in a seaweed wrapper. (Hawaiians have had a fondness for Spam since it was sent over as military rations during World War II.)

Because this is a Honolulu spot, there is also a hard-to-find noodle dish called saimin, popular in the noodle shops of the Hawaiian capital city. Saimin is similar to Japanese ramen, but has a clear dashi based broth and springier, eggier noodles that also bear similarities to Chinese wonton noodle soup. (The name actually derives from two Chinese words, sai meaning "thin" and "mein" meaning noodles.) Here the soup is garnished with seaweed and strips of pink and white fish cakes. It's recommended that you get it topped with Spam ($9.50). The grilled slabs of pork add a much-needed oomph to the light but fishy broth. 

Like other restaurants in the area, Honolulu Hawaiian BBQ also serves customizable poke bowls. But well-traveled fans of traditional Hawaiian food will know, that the poke bowl craze is more of a mainland trend ... 

Honolulu Hawaiian & Poke Bar, 525 E. Meadow Ave., East Meadow, 516-833-9388. honolulubbqny.com Open 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, closed Tuesday. 

By Andi Berlin

andi.berlin@newsday.comAndiBerlin

Andi Berlin is from Arizona and does not know where she is going. But when she gets there, she’ll find something beautiful and delicious that the world needs to taste.