Microreview: Hukilau

Last night, for the final night of "Dine Downtown", we tried to go to Nouveau Trattoria. When that didn't work (they were closed because "regretfully I burned myself", which makes the place sound really small and personal, which really makes me want to go there), we tried Osteria. When that didn't work (1.5 hour wait for a table), we checked out and rejected Cafe Fino and Stoa (both a bit spendy), and then finally ended up at Hukilau.

Nanoreview: not a bad place for a casual, fun dinner

Microreview: The starter, spam "sushi", was fun and tasty. The poke salads were good, but I question their decision to not make the poke sauce/marinade available as a dressing. My maui onion salad dressing was good, but it overpowered the poke itself, which is dumb.
The main courses (the prix fixe deal allowed us each to try 3 things) were mixed:

1. Grilled/fried mahi mahi: both were good
2. Pork katsu: nicely prepared pork, but the sauce was one step removed from vile (it was like reduced A1 sauce), luckily this went well with the other sauces
   
3. Chicken adobo: nice!
4. Chicken hukilau (teriyaki chicken with sesame seeds): Good, but a bit too sweet for me (typical for teriyaki)
5. [mumble] pork (stir-fried pork and cabbage): this was unusual, but quite good.

The bread pudding wasn't bad, but it was nothing special (and I had already eaten too much by that point anyway). I didn't try the brownie.

Other stuff:

1. The service was standard California hurried, though our doofus waiter really upped the ante by bringing the main dishes before we were halfway done with the starters.
2. Cocktails (hawaiian themed, of course) were good
3. It's LOUD
4. They were out of beer (except for bud, coors and corona). OUT... OF... BEER