By Peter von Buol
Special to Inside
The State of Hawaii may be about 4,000 miles from Chicago but one of Lincoln Park's newest restaurants, the Aloha Grill at 2534 N. Clark St., allows local residents to visit, at least with their taste-buds, the 50th state—without an eight-hour airplane trip.
The Hawaiian-owned Aloha Grill, which opened last August, serves the unique Polynesian/ Asian/ American/ European cuisine that is popular throughout the 50th State. The staff and owners describe their menu as "Hawaiian barbecue" but in the islands the cuisine is known as "plate lunch."
"Hawaiian barbecue is actually closer to a teriyaki sauce than to the Midwest's barbecue sauces. Our sauce is sweet and garlic flavored," said restaurant spokesperson Ivan Lee. "It's served with beef, chicken or short ribs."
The menu also includes hamburgers, garden burgers, breaded pork chops and chicken salads. Among the fish and seafood items are fried Mahi Mahi, fried shrimp and scallops. Popular on many Chicago menus, Mahi Mahi is a fish native to Hawaii.
The origin of the plate lunch dates back to the late 1800s and early 1900s when Hawaii's economy was based upon the labor-intensive plantation agricultural system. Workers from around the world, including Japan, China, Korea, the Philippines and Portugal, emigrated to work in the sugarcane and pineapple fields of the islands. Each ethnic group brought its own cuisine and eventually these became mixed together into the plate lunch options of today.
An Aloha Grill plate lunch includes a generous portion of an entrée, such as chicken, pork, beef, Spam, fish or tofu, as well as two generous scoops of sticky Chinese-style rice and one scoop of macaroni salad.
One dish on the menu, Kalua Pork, is a kitchen-made version of a Hawaiian luau's main course. The shredded pork plate lunch is served with cabbage, a Hawaiian favorite. On special occasions, Hawaiians still bake a whole pig in an underground earth oven known as an imu.
One of the Aloha Grill's Hawaiian comfort food items that won't win any points with those following a diet is the Loco Moco. The Hawaiian dish consists of two pieces of home-made hamburger steaks over rice, covered with home-style gravy and topped with two eggs cooked to order. Despite diets, the Loco Moco remains one of the most popular dishes throughout Hawaii and on the West Coast.
The walls of the smartly-decorated restaurant (a real surfboard hangs on the outside of its façade) pay homage to the plantation era by featuring a couple of old photographs of plantation workers at work. It also features vintage travel posters and color photographs of modern-day Hawaii, including a graduation photograph of a young woman bedecked in flower leis at her high-school graduation.
While Hormel's canned meat product Spam may have been a funny import from America to the members of the classic British comedy troupe Monty Python, residents of Hawaii still enjoy the spiced ham and pork shoulder product. In fact, according to Hormel, Hawaii consumes the most Spam per person in the nation! Hawaii was quick to embrace Spam during the Second World War and never stopped eating it. Hawaiians consume 6,700,000 cans a year.
"It can be transported over long distances and won't spoil and became especially popular among Asian and Polynesian cultures that enjoy pork," said Lee. "It's really just a square hot dog. We don't see it as anything unusual. Spam is eaten regularly all over the Pacific Rim."
Lee, a graduate of Southern Illinois University, is proud of his restaurant's Spam dishes but he also wants Chicagoans to know Hawaiian food is a lot more than either Spam or the fare served to many at Hawaiian tourist luaus. "We don't even serve anything with pineapple and ham," adds Lee, whose sister is featured in the graduation photograph at the restaurant's entrance.
"We're really proud of our sauces. They are all our own home-made recipes. Nothing comes straight out of a bottle," said Lee. "And our curry is also pretty darn good!"
The restaurant also serves Pacific-style noodle soups known as Saimin as well as Musubi, a Japanese-style appetizer that consists of rice wrapped with dried-seaweed and either tofu, chicken or Spam.
On a visit to the Aloha Grill, the cuisine pleases those who are familiar with Hawaiian-style cuisine and those who try it for the first time.
According to diner Henry Adaniya, the owner of Evanston's posh Trio Atelier, the grill's Spam Musubi was worth a special trip. "The Spam Musubi tastes exactly like my grandmother's," said Adaniya, whose father in the 1950s owned a restaurant on Waikiki Beach. "The food is good. It's right up there with the best in Hawaii. To me, to be authentic Hawaiian, it also has to feel right. The thought and spirit have to be there and the Aloha Grill has [that authenticity]."
Adaniya's son, Mike, agreed with his father's assessment. "The Spam Musubi is the best I've ever had," he said.
Not only was the food memorable to those who have first-hand knowledge of Hawaiian cuisine, but it also appealed to those looking for a fast-food alternative.
The Hawaiian-sized portions and the affordable prices appealed to parents Kristine Ruda and Rick Juster from Kankakee, whose 13-month-old son, Chase Juster, is receiving care at nearby Children's Memorial Hospital.
"We always try to do something different and avoid the chain restaurants. The food was excellent and we like their huge servings," said the elder Juster, who visited Hawaii briefly while he served in the U.S. Air Force nearly two decades ago.
Another diner, Tom Cornell, has never been to Hawaii but the Aloha Grill has converted him to Hawaiian-grown Kona Coffee. "Their Kona Coffee is out of this world," said Cornell. "The Aloha Grill is an escape from winter in Chicago and the coffee is like a little piece of Hawaii!"
The Aloha Grill is owned by three partners from Oahu, Bill Lee (who is also the father of Ivan Lee), Steven Lau and Tony Luo. The three partners, who combined have spent many decades in the restaurant business, have seen the growth of Hawaiian-style restaurants in Western states and believed the Chicago market had untapped potential.
Ivan Lee said his father and his co-owners have been pleased with how they have been received by the neighborhood, and new additions to the menu are planned. "We have only been open for six months," said Lee. "Chicago has a lot of strict vegetarians and, in the future, we may be offering more dishes for strict vegetarians."
Visit AlohaGrillBBQ.com or call (773) 935-6828 for more information. |
