THE SPOT: Lukoki Hawaiian Barbecue THE SPOT: Lukoki Hawaiian Barbecue (October 07, 2005)

THE LOCATION: 506 Showers Drive (650) 948-8388 Open seven days a week, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.
THE DISH: Hawaiian diners are sprouting up like coconut palms around the Bay. These restaurants mostly offer "plate lunches" -- your choice of meat, chicken or fish with two scoops of rice and one of macaroni salad -- along with appetizers or snacks such as Spam musubi (oversized Spam sushi) and saimin (ramen noodle soup). The portions are always massive, heavy on protein and starch and light on veggies. Lukoki, in the San Antonio Shopping Center, upholds the Hawaiian diner tradition, but it's a fast-food version with counter service and take-out.
THE DIGS: The restaurant provides a fairly sterile environment: The dining room is sparkling clean, open and airy, but reminiscent of a cafeteria. The back-lit menus that hang on the wall above the counter shout "fast food." Hawaiian music, along with easy listening, plays softly in the background. Servers greet diners with "Aloha" and offer a "Mahalo" ("thank you") as they leave.
THE DINERS: Working stiffs sporting pass cards on their belts, and shoppers carrying bulging shopping bags.
THE SERVICE: You order at the counter and pay, then receive a card with a number -- this you insert into a metal stand that you place on a table. Take your soda with you from the counter; pearl tea arrives with the food. Both times I visited, my meal arrived within 10 minutes. The only mishap in the service was that my jasmine milk tea ($1.99) failed to arrive, but once I asked for it, the server brought it right to my table.
THE MAIN MEAL: For the plate lunches ($6.25 to $7.95) you get a choice of fried seafood, barbecued beef or chicken, or a combination. These meals are accompanied, of course, by the rice and macaroni salad. This salad can be satisfying in a summer picnic kind of way, but Lukoki's was bland and gooey with too much mayonnaise. Save for the scattered pieces of cabbage underneath the meat, the meal contains no vegetables. If you crave veggies, go for the rice bowls ($4.75; $5.50 for combo) or the saimin ($3.95 to $5.95), which feature lightly steamed carrots, broccoli, cauliflower and zucchini.
THE BEST WAS: The butterflied shrimp in the seafood and pork combo plate ($7.95) was quite good. Breaded with panko (coarse Japanese breadcrumbs), it was piping hot and crisp, the shrimp fresh and sweet. Tartar and cocktail sauce accompany the shrimp, but it's good all on its own. The barbecue beef saimin ($5.25) also made a filling lunch, with its crisp steamed vegetables, nori (the seaweed used in wrapping sushi), ramen noodles and plenty of beef in the flavorful broth. The beef was tender and well seasoned, though a bit gristly.
THE WORST WAS: I expected the kalua pork to be the slow-roasted, succulent pig from a luau -- salty and dripping with flavorful pork fat. But Lukoki's version was soupy and dull, with pieces of droopy cabbage that only accentuated the dish's gray personality. As for the rice bowls, these come with your choice of curry or teriyaki sauce, but I recommend turning both down, or asking for the sauce on the side. The curry was mildly hot, but otherwise offered little flavor other than cumin, and the teriyaki was oily and tasted like burnt sugar. The chicken had its own slightly sweet barbecue sauce that was fine by itself.
ON THE SIDE: The combo musubi ($1.95), with chicken katsu and Spam on top of a rectangle of rice, proved to be too much for the nori that was trying to hold it together. It fell apart as soon as we picked it up, though the chicken katsu was nicely crisp and the Spam was -- well, Spam. It came with a sweet ginger sauce that was too saccharine. The pot stickers ($2.75) were crisp on the bottom, and not doughy as they sometimes are, but were otherwise flavorless.
THIRST QUENCHERS: Lukoki offers an impressive array of Hawaiian Sun canned fruit drinks ($1) -- guava, passion fruit, strawberry, orange and various combinations. The restaurant also serves pearl tea ($1.99) in flavors such as taro, jasmine and green tea.
BANG FOR THE BUCK: Lukoki offers great lunch and dinner deals. The combo plates offer a huge amount of food for $7.95, though it's hardly a healthful meal. But the rice bowls and saimin include veggies and plenty of meat for just $5.
-- Mandy Erickson

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