Pololi

I've been struggling to find places to write about lately as I ran out of local places that I haven't talked about. The (unstated) goal of this blog was to introduce people to more cheap local food places, but today I will talk about something not cheap and not local because I think it's a pretty good deal for the quality and quantity of the food.

When I walked in a young lady was extremely friendly and asked if I've been there before or if I've tried Hawaiian food. Honestly the first things that come to mind when people say Hawaii is number 1, my favorite type of pizza, Hawaiian, and second, Lilo and Stitch. Anyway, I said no, and then she proceeded to give me a tasting of all their different flavors of tuna. I think there were like 10-12 of them so don't ask me what all the flavors are because I can barely even remember what I got today. The ones that I do remember are a spicy one, a spicy mayo, spicy avocado, ginger, "HK" flavor (pretty interesting actually and really did taste very Hong Kong because of the spices they used). They have a lot of non-spicy ones too but I only remembered the spicy ones since I like spice. If you are not a tuna fan, they also have a Korean style octopus thing (I did not like it). They may have some other vegetarian options as well but I was obviously not vegetarian so she didn't bother to introduce those to me. By the time I was done tasting all of them I was already slightly full.

She didn't really ask if I wanted the big one for $90 or the smaller option for $60, but I guess it was obvious to her that I could eat and gave me the bigger option. She takes out a pretty big box and asks me what I want as the "base". You can do all rice (white/brown), all salad (only one choice) or half half. I always want to try everything so I opted for the half half with brown rice. They only have one salad dressing but it worked in my favor as I like balsamic vinegar and love honey Dijon. On the tuna side you also get 2 choices, so I went with the first spicy one I tried and the spicy mayo.

To be very honest, $90 is quite steep for lunch, but the fact that the tuna really does taste good (fyi, I love spicy tuna), is fresh and you get a lot of it, I can justify the price tag (unlike TaKorea where it's $90 for one wrap). I can imagine on a hotter summer day or for a lot of girls here the smaller option for $60 would be enough as well. Tuna is protein and... protein is supposed to fill you up right? If you really think about it, this is only $5 more than what I usually get at Mana. It's nice to change healthy things up every now and then as well.

Location: 35-39 Graham Street
Website: http://www.pololikai.com/