Just about everybody who visits Hawaii wants to go again, if not in body at least in spirit. That’s the premise on which a recent surge of Hawaiian restaurants has swept into town, from chic Hukilau to frill-free L&L Hawaiian barbecue. Your aloha spirit needs occasional refreshing, and there just aren’t that many ways readily available when you don’t live at the beach.
L&L is making itself very available. Among at least 85 franchise restaurants in Hawaii, California, Nevada and Washington are a handful on the Peninsula, including lemon-yellow Barron Park Plaza in Palo Alto. As bright as the yellow paint outside, the decor inside features orange walls, ketchup-and-mustard tiles, and nail-polish-red tables seating up to 36 people. Another L&L should soon be open in Mountain View.
In the spirit of fast-food franchises everywhere, L&L follows a script and the food feels mass-produced. But prices are low and you will never leave hungry.
The best dish we tried was a combination of kalua pig and lau lau pork ($7.95), which comes with two scoops of sushi-type sweet rice and one scoop of inoffensive macaroni salad.
Kalua involves strings of smoky pork roast atop tender cabbage. Lau lau is pork chuck roast, and some fat, steamed in a bag made of taro leaves. Taro by itself is bitter, but it cuts the richness of fatty pork. In plate-lunch tradition, you get the carbs originally intended for construction workers in Hawaii. In South Beach and Atkins tradition, L&L has added two low-carb plates to the lineup.
For an authentic appetizer, try grilled Spam musubi ($1.69). Don’t even think about what goes on in Spam production. It tastes like sausage when grilled. The iconic musubi looks like sushi at triple the size, a little scary but quite tasty. The Spam rests on a brick of sweet sticky rice and the whole thing is wrapped in a ribbon of nori seaweed, which should have a little tooth resistance. Dip in soy sauce if you like.
The plate-lunch tradition borrows Filipino, Japanese, Korean and Portuguese flavors. To which L&L adds hamburgers and fries and the occasional Chinese special. Among side orders are the fiery Korean condiment kim chee (89 cents) and the meal-sized spicy Portuguese sausage topping two fried eggs and rice ($5.95).
We had less luck in the seafood section. Playing-card-sized fillets of mahi-mahi are plastered in batter, so that even if the fish had been caught an hour ago it wouldn’t have a chance. Shrimp are flattened and fitted in a crunchy coat. A reasonable tartar sauce accompanies. On the seafood combo ($7.95) you get three shrimp and two pieces of mahi-mahi, plus your choice of one other meat. We picked chicken katsu, flattened strips of similarly coated chicken filets, fried to a crisp. It was OK, but as with all fried foods, you have to eat it fast or it goes limp. Katsu sauce helped a little.
L&L offers two sizes. The misnamed mini-plate is your choice of meat and fish with one scoop of macaroni salad and one scoop of rice, topping out at $4.95. Regular plates come with two scoops of rice, which makes sense if you’re sharing. The portions are generous. Combo packs feed groups from four to 12 people, and you can get catering pans of most dishes.
Maybe the barbecue chicken, beef and short ribs have their good days. Like the shrimp, they also appear to have gone through a flattening machine that makes them look bigger, but they taste tougher. The beef, especially, comes out just this side of beef jerky.
L&L serves no dessert or alcohol. If you want to wash down these mighty portions with beer or wine, you’ll have to do it at home. A friend met the challenge brilliantly with a dry Riesling for the fried seafood and chicken, and a light pinot noir for the pork and barbecued meats. If you want something sweet, it’s going to be soda ($1.39) or a can of Hawaiian Sun carbonated passion-orange or guava drink. Or go next-door to Happy Donuts, open 24 hours.
L&L Hawaiian Barbecue
3890 El Camino Real, Palo Alto
(650) 858-2878
www.hawaiianbarbecue.com
Hours: Daily 10:30 a.m.-9 p.m.
