Spirit of Aloha | Articles | Adventures in Dining | September/October 2005

Adventures in Dining
By: Len Takushi

Moveable Feasts

I know how difficult operating a lunch wagon business can be. As a student at Leeward Community College in Pearl City, I worked at one. It was a family-run wagon called Omiya’s. I thought I had it tough serving teriyaki burgers and beef curry stew between classes, but in reality all the hard work was done in the wee hours of the morning, long before I arrived at work. I could tell how hard the work was, because the owner always talked about selling the business. Eventually, he did. He said he could no longer tolerate the long hours, the high rent and how his workers’ appetites reduced the profit margins. (Hey, I believed in the product, too!)

Omiya’s is long gone, but there are still more than 6,000 lunch wagons operating in Hawai‘i, including more than 550 on O‘ahu. For kama‘āina, a lunch wagon offers savory comfort food at manageable prices. For visitors, it’s an opportunity to partake in a true “local” experience.

Don’t know which lunch wagons to try?

I’ve got some suggestions.

Doris Nabarro of Tsukenjo Lunch House & Lunch Wagon says she enjoys seeing different generations of customers lining up at both her restaurant and lunch wagon. “We get our old customers who keep coming back, even though they’re retired now,” she says, “and now we’re getting their children. People tell us, ‘Oh, my father used to bring me here when I was small.’”

Nabarro can appreciate the family ties. Her parents, Tetsu and Mitsuko Tsukenjo, started the family business in 1959. Today, the lunch wagon operates at the corner of Queen Street and Ward Avenue in Honolulu, just a couple of blocks away from her Cooke Street diner.

The daily menu includes kālua pig, laulau, hamburger steak, meat loaf and barbecued chicken. Nabarro also serves eight daily specials, ranging from roast turkey, curry stew, pork cutlet and shoyu spareribs to chicken curry, spaghetti, deep-fried mahimahi and fried noodles.

This kind of plate lunch perfection comes from years of experience and hard work. “If you want to work in this type of business, you have to be dedicated,” says Nabarro, who begins each workday at 3:30 a.m. “A lot of people try it, and they get discouraged because of the long hours. But if you enjoy this type of work and you enjoy meeting people, it’s a lot of fun.”

You won’t have to study the menu very long at Grilled Steaks $6. That’s because owner Richard Crafts only sells one thing: steak. He doesn’t ask customers what they want; he simply asks, “How many?”

You know what? It works.

Craft, who previously owned a pair of tanning salons, believes in simplicity. His lunch plates feature top sirloin that has been marinated in a slightly sweet soy sauce, along with a bed of rice, tossed greens and a canned drink.

The lunch wagon is located at the Ward Gateway Center across from the Ward Warehouse in Honolulu.

“This lunch wagon makes way more money,” says Craft. “The salons were just costing me money. I pay an arm and a leg over here, but the volume of customers makes up for it.” Grilled Steaks is worth a trip for two reasons: The steak is very good, and there’s a lot of it to enjoy. Served in thin, bite-size pieces, the meat is juicy, tender and oozing with flavor.

Although Grilled Steaks is a relative newcomer to Hawai‘i’s lunch-wagon scene—Craft opened the business a year and a half ago—it has already gained a loyal following among customers, who range from construction workers to tourists.

About 10 years ago, when the upscale Kāhala Hilton (now the Kāhala Mandarin Oriental) shut down for renovations, coworkers Harris Sukita and Cora Stevens used the opportunity to pursue a dream.

“I always wanted to open up a lunch wagon,” explains Sukita. “We said, ‘Let’s go start something on our own. Let’s do Kāhala Hilton food on a paper plate.’”

The result was Simply ‘Ono, a lunch wagon that goes far beyond the typical plate lunch experience (‘ono is Hawaiian for delicious).

Simply ‘Ono offers an extensive menu—Sukita recently did an inventory of menu offerings, and the total exceeded 2,000 items—including occasional gourmet specialties, such as lobster tail, prime rib, rack of lamb and beef Wellington.

“We still do what I call the ‘greasy spoon’ stuff,” says Sukita, “like stew and chili. But even then, we’ll do a variety. We do chili, for example, but we’ll do vegetarian chili or maybe a turkey chili.”

The average price for a plate lunch is between $4.50 and $5.

There are currently two Simply ‘Ono lunch wagons operating in Honolulu, one at Alapa‘i Street, near The Honolulu Advertiser Building, the other at the Diamond Head end of Kewalo Basin. Sukita says he is considering adding a third lunch wagon in the Waikīkī area.

“The thing I like the most is that I don’t have to sit in an office for eight hours,” says co-owner Harris Sukita. “I get to go out on the road, I get a little bit of sun and I get to meet tons of interesting
people.”                                                                                                                                                                  

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