Kimo K.
Yelp
Well, after a 13 year hiatus, I decided to go have lunch here again. In those many years a long time ago, I used to frequent this place a lot, basically because my late wife and daughter liked its style of food -- Hawaiian style of "plate lunch" specials (we were all expat kamaaina's). But I stopped going here since my wife passed away and I did not like the sloppy service that the young kids that Ray employed there provided; they were always more interested in farting around than paying attention to detail and the customers.
My main reason for going back again was because I wanted to eat lau-lau, a Hawaiian specialty that I had not had in more than five years. So since Aloha Kitchen is the only place in the valley where you can find lau-lau, I decided to go there and have lunch. My current wife ordered the Chinese chicken salad and she loved it. It was very large and flavorful. I tasted it and it was pretty darn good.
I ordered the Hawaiian combo plate -- two scoops of rice, lau-lau, kalua pig, chicken long rice, and lomi salmon. I enjoyed my meal! The lau-lau was big and flavorful, especially since they added small chunk of pork fat into the filling. The chicken long rice was good but would have been better if they added some chopped green onions as a garnish (good thing my wife's Chinese chicken salad came with copious amounts of chopped green onions and she took some off her salad and put them on my chicken long rice). The lomi salmon was good, albeit in a small cup and with very little salt salmon in the dish (due to salted salmon's high expense, the size of this dish is understandable). My only complaint was that the kalua pig, although a nice sized serving, was under salted and did not have enough "smoke" in taste. It certainly could have used a lot more liquid smoke in its preparation. But all-in-all, a pretty good combo Hawaiian meal that I would order again. I accomplished my mission of eating lau-lau and that was very good. We would both go back again for another meal, ordering the same stuff as we just ate!! The only thing that would have made this meal better for me is if they had poi and poke too!
Oh yeah, and the service I got from the young kids working there was good. Although my interface with them was brief, at least this time they were paying attention and were courteous and polite!