Spam in the Sushi?
Nobody ever complains that Hawaiians are too formal. When you eat at Shakas Hawaiian Food, everything comes in a foam takeout carton, even if you didn’t order it to go.
Shakas actually has a nice little dining room, though. One wall is attractively covered with woven matting and another features a couple of ancient Hawaiian-style tchotchkes, such as a spear and a king’s helmet. A third wall is dominated by a panel of empty Spam cans, in tribute to the 50th state’s enduring affection for that convenient canned pork product.
Shakas provides food for thought about the whole Pacific Rim concept. At your table, you’ll find two kinds of soy sauce, hot sauces from Mexico, the U.S. and Vietnam, and a shaker of Japanese hot spices. In your foam carton is Hawaiian Local Food, a street-level fusion cuisine mixing American, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and native Hawaiian elements.
The traditional Hawaiian part is represented by lau lau and kalua. A lau lau is a hunk of pork wrapped in edible greens, then in an inedible leaf, then steamed. The result is a hearty but rather plain dish that a lot of Shakas’ customers order with a tiny side dish of raw salmon (lomi) for 60 cents extra. Kalua is much more to a mainlander’s taste. It’s pork cooked for six hours and shredded, coming out meaty and a bit smoky. In fact, it’s rather like Southern pulled pork, except that comes on rice, without barbecue sauce. If you feel the lack of sauce, order a side of Chinese chicken salad ($1 extra) and mix its dressing--which is not the usual Chinese chicken salad dressing but the reddish American-style “French” dressing--with one of the table hot sauces, and you’ll have something like barbecue sauce to put on your pork.
The chicken salad is interesting on its own. It consists of bits of fried chicken tossed with romaine and sprinkled with toasted sesame, with wonton chips for croutons, and you can get it as a main dish if you want. If you don’t order the chicken salad as a side, nearly every dish here comes with a sort of Japanese cabbage salad (tsukemono) with a hint of fish sauce and a bland, rather oily macaroni salad, which you might love if you grew up on it.
The rest of the menu is largely Japanese, and not the usual sushi stuff (there’s one hand roll here, but it’s made with Spam). Sesame chicken is fried chunks sprinkled with toasted sesame seeds. Chicken katsu is fried in a crunchy breadcrumb crust, and you can also get it with a thick curry sauce--the mild, sweetish Japanese sort of curry, dominated by the maple-like scent of fenugreek. And then there’s chicken curry, which is stewed in the same sauce with onions and potatoes.
Rather sweet teriyaki chicken and teriyaki beef are available too, as is a classic Hawaiian teri burger with lettuce, tomato and mayo. Shakas also makes a good, juicy version of kalbi, the Korean grilled short ribs in a teriyaki-like sauce.
One of the best things, loco moco, sounds a little over the top--it’s a big ground beef patty topped with brown gravy and a fried egg. In fact, it is a little over the top but irresistible. If you want a kaleidoscopic Hawaiian-type fusion experience, you can order the Shaka plate: sesame chicken wings, teriyaki beef, Chinese chicken salad, macaroni and Spam musubi (the aforementioned Spam hand roll).
There are also a couple of rice bowls, including one topped with fried pork wontons (gyoza), which have their own little cup of spicy dipping sauce on the side. Noodles (corkscrew saimin, spaghetti-like udon) come in big porcelain bowls--the only nonplastic food containers here--in a salty, flavorful bonito broth with various toppings. Spam, it turns out, becomes rather juicy in soup.
Dessert is shaved ice, piled so high it looks like Don King’s hair. With some of the jollier-colored syrups (say, blue raspberry and orange-passion fruit--they’ll split flavors if you ask), it bears a haunting resemblance to the rainbow Afro wigs that people wear at sports events. Shakas’ very name has a sporty note of jovial enthusiasm--it’s Hawaiian slang that could be translated, “Way excellent, dude.”
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Shakas Hawaiian Food, 2300 S. Garfield Ave., Suite D, Monterey Park, (323) 888-2695. Open 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. No alcohol. Parking lot. All major cards. Lunch for two, $10-$20.
What to Get: kalua pork, loco moco, chicken katsu, Spam saimin, Shaka plate, teri burger, Chinese chicken salad, shaved ice.
