Da Kitchen

Some fun facts...

• Da Kitchen is a Local & Hawaiian Food establishment that was first established in 1998 on the Island of Maui and expanded in 2010 to the outer Island of Oahu.
• They do not advertise and build their base of customers purely thru word of mouth.
• They were invited to cook at the inaugural luau in Washington D.C. and they were featured in The Bizarre Food Show on the Travel Channel.
• Website is: http://www.da-kitchen.com
• Address/Phone: 9325 Isenberg St. Honolulu, HI 96826; 808-957-0099

My person and a few friends happened to go there this past weekend. They have a VERY small parking lot and so we were lucky to find street parking. Yay!!

We started with their appetizer, the Fried Spam Musubi. We were so intrigued.... it was a must try. It's your typical spam musubi, but it's rolled in panko and fried, served with a drizzle of a teriyaki sauce. Mmmm... it was good, albeit messy (since we tried to cut into ours to share), but tasty - the sauce is what makes it soooo good.

Next we ordered our entree's which came with rice and your choice of tossed greens or mac salad (except the noodles, which came unaccompanied) -

Laura got their version of Loco Moco, which is a grilled burger, topped with two eggs, onions, mushrooms and gravy - it was HUGE!!! And even though she asked it for the gravy on the side... it still came with gravy on the actual dish and on the side (which she was charged $2 for!). She couldn't really say if it was good or bad... "it had gravy". ha ha Well it sure looked good!

Alex and my person ordered the chicken katsu, which is chicken cutlets that are breaded in panko and fried, served with a Japanese dipping sauce. It was sooo good. I think that it's because they used a really good selection of chicken pieces and their dipping sauce is to die for! It's not that crap sauce that you get from L&L (sorry for all you L&L lovers), it was tangy and sweet... not as thick as the ones you get at Japanese restaurants, but it was so tasty I didn't even care. :D

And lastly I had their fried noodles, which had a mixture of veggies and teriyaki beef. I gotta say that I barely ate this. Sadly, I didn't find it that good. Both my person and I ate a few bites and passed on the rest of the dish. It kind of had a sweetness to it... something I wasn't expecting when I had ordered this.

2 out of 3 dishes were awesome, which in my average still puts them out ahead! All of us had to ask for take out containers because the portions are so big. So be prepared to go home with a full belly and left overs to take home!