Hawaiian – The Saboscrivner

Moa Kai Hawaiian Diner

Moa Kai Hawaiian Diner (https://www.moakaidiner.com/) just opened the week before last in the old Mongolorian location at 2217 East Colonial Drive in Orlando, just west of Bumby Avenue. The restaurant is still in its soft opening phase, but it is fully open for business every day except Sunday. Sunday brunch hours will be added in due time. It is owned by the same owner of my beloved Poke Hana (honestly one of my favorite restaurants in Orlando since 2018) and Korean fried chicken joint Chi-Kin, which I still haven’t been to yet.

I love Hawaiian food, and Poke Hana is a big reason for that, since I’ve never actually been to Hawaii. Even before that, there was a short-lived Hawaiian restaurant in Oviedo called Hawaiian Grindz that introduced me to most Hawaiian dishes. Unfortunately, it didn’t last very long, perhaps because the owners seemed to be very laid-back, to the point of not always opening when their posted hours said they would.

Anyway, Moa Kai Hawaiian Diner is a very professional setup with a busy, happy-looking staff, all in festive aloha shirts. It is a classic diner layout with booths along the window, tables, stools overlooking an open kitchen (separated by a plexiglass screen) and more stools at the bar. For my first visit earlier this evening, I sat at the bar and placed my takeout order with the very friendly and welcoming Olivia, the bartender.

While I waited for my takeout, I ordered a POG juice. I remember how popular Pogs were in the early ’90s, especially at the comic book shops I used to frequent, and how quickly the Pog fad came and went. But don’t worry — POG juice is passion fruit/orange/guava juice, and it is so sweet and tangy and tasty. It is surprisingly thick and heavy, as fruit juices can sometimes be, but I already love all tropical fruits, especially passion fruit and guava, so I enjoyed it and highly recommend it.

(That is the ever-patient Olivia’s arm back there.)

After that, I also tried the lychee lemonade, since I am now a lemonade connoisseur. It was also wonderful, and a lot lighter and more refreshing than the POG juice. I would definitely order that again.

I placed a large order, figuring my wife and I would get four total meals out of everything, and it was ready quite quickly.

My wife requested the shoyu poke bowl, with cubes of raw ahi tuna marinated in house shoyu (soy) sauce with Hawaiian salt, shelled edamame soybeans, macadamia nuts, chili flakes, sweet onions, and dried seaweed called ogo. These are all flavors she likes (except the onions, which she figured out after one harsh bite), so she was really happy with it. She said she liked this poke even more than Poke Hana, where we have eaten dozens of times, so that’s high praise coming from her.

I couldn’t decide between a few things, so I ordered an assortment, hoping to share, and if not, knowing I’d have leftovers for tomorrow. These were the kalbi ribs, beef ribs marinated in shoyu and fruit juices, sliced across the bones, and grilled. They had a lot of flavor from the grilling process and were so tender. I always love peeling the flat bone slices out of kalbi and enjoying the almost chewy meat around the edges of the bone. Even my wife liked the piece she had.

All “plate lunches” at Moa Kai come with two scoops of white rice and one scoop of macaroni salad, but you can also choose different sides, and some require a nominal upcharge. I already know I love Hawaiian-style macaroni salad, including from Poke Hana, so I was looking forward to this, but instead of white rice, I got garlic pan-fried noodles, hoping my wife would want to try them. We both loved them! As great as the kalbi and macaroni salad were (and they were), these garlic noodles were the truth. Whenever we return, we will split a full-size order of them.

Kai Asian Street Fare on the edge of Casselberry and Winter Park makes the closest thing in town to these garlic noodles, and theirs are also awesome, just a little more buttery-greasy. But I had a lousy phone camera back then, so forgive the ugly, blurry shots in that early review.

I got a second plate lunch, the mix plate, where you can select two house favorites. For one of my choices, I went with the spicy ahi poke with cubed, marinated ahi tuna, sweet onion, masago, and crushed macadamia nuts in house-made spicy sauce (think spicy mayo), topped with scallions. This was fire! Poke is one of my favorite foods, whether from Poke Hana, Rion’s Ocean Room, or even Costco, and I especially love spicy ahi or salmon poke like this. It was a small serving, but that’s what happens in a sampler platter like this. I could eat this by the bucketful.

The other thing I ended up with was the grilled shoyu chicken, which was a shoyu-marinated, grilled boneless chicken thigh, topped with teriyaki sauce and scallions. It was so tender and juicy and well-seasoned, and I always say chicken thighs are the best part of the chicken, aside from the oysters. Thick thighs save lives! (And if you were intrigued by the garlic noodles above, the full-size order comes topped with this shoyu chicken.)
The only reason I said I “ended up with” it was because I ordered the Korean chicken instead, which sounds like it would have been similar shoyu-marinated chicken, but cubed, battered, fried, and tossed in house-made Korean garlic sauce. I am not disappointed at all that I ended up with the grilled chicken instead. It was a slightly healthier option, and so damn delicious, I would happily order it again. I don’t own a grill, merely because it is so blasted hot and humid in Orlando nine months out of the year, I know I wouldn’t use it much. Knowing myself, that would lead to all kinds of cognitive dissonance and self-resentment, and I deal with that enough already without feeling guilty about buying a grill and not using it often enough. But I always miss the flavor of good grilled meats, and the grilled shoyu chicken thigh was a perfect piece of chicken. WE HAVE SUCH SIGHTS TO SHOYU!

I got macaroni salad with this plate lunch too, but instead of the white rice, I got Spam fried rice for an upcharge. Spam is so good, y’all! It is the very definition of a “sometimes food,” as heavily processed and salty as it is, but fried up with rice or noodles and wrapped in rice and seaweed as a Spam musubi, it is tastier than you would believe. The Spam lovers know what’s up, and the squeamish among you will just have to take my word for it. This Spam fried rice didn’t have anything else in it (no eggs or vegetables), but just Spam and fried rice were great by themselves.

But wait, there’s more! That old Hawaiian restaurant in Oviedo introduced me to saimin, a Hawaiian noodle soup similar to Japanese ramen, but with Spam. Saimin soup with Spam is on the menu here at Moa Kai, but we’re still in August, and I couldn’t conceive of ordering soup. But I still had to try some form of saimin, so I got the local style stir-fried saimin noodles with char siu (Chinese-style barbecue pork with a slight sweetness that you may know and love from Kai Kai or Tasty Wok), Spam, sliced kamaboko (cured surimi, similar to the fish cakes in ramen), scrambled eggs, carrots, and scallions, seasoned with shoyu and dashi, a Japanese cooking stock flavored with fish and kelp.
I’m going to enjoy this tomorrow, but I couldn’t resist a few bites while it was still fresh and hot, and it was on point. It reminded me of a Hawaiian version of lo mein (but better) or Filipino pancit bihon. The char siu pork was sweet and tender, and the Spam was sliced into tiny cubes and perfected by the stir-fry process. You could enjoy these local style stir-fried saimin any day of the week, not just on stir-Friday.

My wife had requested an açaí bowl for a bit of a dessert tonight and breakfast tomorrow. This was a huge helping of açaí sorbet blended and topped with fresh strawberries, blueberries, pineapple, and kiwi, shredded coconut, peanut butter, and granola. Knowing it was sorbet, I brought a cooler in the car with a couple of reusable fake-ice blocks to keep it cold on the drive home, but it still got a little melty. The tiny taste I had when she had enough for the night was soooo nice and refreshing, though.

I had never even heard of açaí until a few years ago, when everyone started touting its benefits as a healthy “superfood.” I can’t speak on that, but the dark purple sorbet made from the açaí berries is a nice blend of sweet and tart, especially when mixed with other, sweeter fruits.

And finally, we were both curious about the ube haupia pie, so I guess that makes us pie-curious. I couldn’t resist ordering a piece for us to share. Haupia is coconut pudding, a popular Hawaiian dessert made from coconut milk, sugar, cornstarch, and water, and it is surprisingly jiggly and bouncy like Jell-O. Poke Hana serves haupia in crispy fried spring rolls, which are terrific, but this was different. Moa Kai serves their haupia in pie form with a macadamia nut-graham cracker crust (superb) with a layer of creamy ube pudding in between. Ube is a purple yam with a vanilla-like flavor, common in Filipino and Vietnamese desserts and sweet drinks, and it is as tasty as it is beautiful. Someone call Yam Grier and send me to Yamsterdam, because these were some sweet-ass yams under that haupia, with more bounce to the ounce.

Folks, I am thrilled to report that Orlando has another winner. We first heard earlier this year that Moa Kai Hawaiian Diner was coming, and months passed with no updates. The menu surfaced online back in April, and it all sounded so good, I hoped plans wouldn’t change, since some announced restaurants never see the light of day. It was so worth the wait, and all the time and effort and money they put into it are paying off. You can see we tried many things so I could write a worthy review and share as much information as possible. Yeah, that’s the ticket. The diner setting is going to be a fun, welcoming atmosphere for dining in, and the location, right in our Mills 50 district with so many other fantastic restaurants nearby, will hopefully help keep them busy and garner them the success they deserve. I don’t know if I’ll ever make it to beautiful Hawaii, but at least we can all have a taste of it right here in Orlando. Whether you dine in or order takeout like I did tonight, look for Olivia, who might be behind the bar. She is awesome, and even in the brief time I waited for my takeout order at the bar, she made me feel like a valued customer, patiently answered any questions I had, asked if I needed anything, and represented the restaurant so well.

Rion’s Ocean Room

I was lucky enough to attend a recent soft opening of Rion’s Ocean Room (https://www.rionsoceanroom.com/), the new Hawaiian poke-by-the-pound establishment owned and operated by Orlando restauranteur Sonny Nguyen, who brought us the high-class ramen joint Domu and swanky izakaya Tori Tori, a standout in the Mills 50 District. Rion’s Ocean Room joins the original Domu in the East End Market, Orlando’s first food hall, a mainstay of the Audubon Park neighborhood and home of other beloved local favorites like La Femme Du Fromage, Hinckley’s Fancy Meats, Dochi, and Gideon’s Bakehouse.

I already love poke (I remain a huge fan of Poke Hana in Mills 50), but I was so excited to get a new poke joint that serves it the way they do in Hawaiian shops and supermarkets — kind of like an ice cream parlor, with all the varieties of fresh raw seafood diced into small cubes and pre-mixed with sauces and other ingredients, on display inside a glass case, ready to be scooped out by the pound. It’s just a counter inside the East End Market food hall — not a restaurant with its own seating, although there are plenty of outdoor tables. Rion’s Instagram page even describes it as “no frills,” but that’s fine with me. I order a lot of takeout, especially now that I work from home and don’t make it to Orlando’s best dining neighborhoods as often.

But when one of my best foodie friends invited me to this friends-and-family soft opening event, I jumped at the opportunity. I even got to meet Sonny Nguyen for the first time, complimented him on his past successes, and wished him the best of all things with Rion’s Ocean Room. It opens to the general public this coming Tuesday, October 29, 2024, and trust me — it’s going to be Orlando’s next big hit.

Here were all the different poke options on display, under glass, like gleaming gems in a jewelry store. The menu (which includes prices) explains that the ahi tuna is from the North Atlantic Ocean, the salmon is from Scotland, the ono (wahoo) is from the Caribbean Sea, and the shrimp is from northeast Florida.

The friends-and-family soft opening allowed us to choose the equivalent of one pound of poke, but we had a few options for that. I chose a rice bowl with two scoops of two different poke styles, and so did the two friends I went with. This was mine, adorned with ahi tuna in a spicy yuzu sauce and “lava flow” salmon in spicy mayo with tobiko (tiny, salty, crunchy flying fish roe). I also opted for krab salad with shredded surimi in mayo, extra tobiko, and scallions to adorn the top of my rice bowl. It was so cool and fresh and refreshing, which is what I love about poke the most.

Here are the poke rice bowls my dining companions and I got. Mine is the one on the right. My good friend got the creamy garlic shrimp (bottom left), which is actually cooked, unlike the fish. There was also a hot garlic shrimp to choose from. Any of these combinations would be a delicious, filling, and satisfying lunch or dinner.

But I still had more choices to make, so beyond my rice bowl, I chose two quarter-pound containers of additional poke to go. I tried to pick two non-spicy styles so my wife would enjoy them too, back at home. This was paina ono: a raw fish also known as wahoo, mixed with shoyu (soy) sauce, a type of citrus called yuzu, and shredded surimi krab:

And this was Hawaiian tobiko salmon, tossed with onions, scallions, sesame seeds, and plenty of the flying fish roe.

I was even lucky because my generous friend was off to a few more stops after our visit to Rion’s Ocean Room, so he gave me his poke containers to take home with me. I asked “Are you sure?”, but when he said yes, I didn’t push back any further and graciously accepted the bonus bounty. He hooked me up with his ahi tuna in spicy mayo with tobiko (one of my favorite poke combinations):

And this was a “wasabi furikake medley,” a combination of ahi tuna and salmon with soy sauce, sinus-clearing wasabi horseradish, and furikake, a seasoning blend of dried seaweed flakes and sesame seeds, which was also delicious:

Rion’s sells little bags of Deep River Sweet Maui Onion kettle chips, which work perfectly for dipping and scooping into the various poke varieties. I consider myself a potato chip connoisseur (certainly a dubious distinction, but I review them in my various Tight Chips reviews), but somehow, I had never tried this flavor before. I love onions, and I love sweet and salty together, so it was a winner. And I’m also a big dipper (heh), so I appreciated having the firm, crunchy, strongly seasoned kettle chips to sample with my poke.

They also sell Hawaiian Sun fruit drinks, so I treated myself to a can of strawberry lilikoi. Lilikoi is passion fruit, one of my favorite fruit flavors, which I have trouble turning down in any form. With how salty, fishy, and spicy the poke party turned out to be (especially with the Sweet Maui Onion chips), it was nice to have a sweet, cold, fruity drink to wash it all down.

Stalwart Saboscrivnerinos, I cannot rave enough about Rion’s Ocean Room. This fish was so fresh, so delicious, so perfectly seasoned in every form and style, you’re in for a treat. I fully admit to liking raw fish much more than cooked fish, so your mileage may vary, but if you like sushi, trust me — you’ll also fall in love with poke. The flavors, the textures, and the refreshing coolness will whisk you away to Hawaii, if only for a few minutes while you’re blissfully devouring the artful combinations at Rion’s. It’s also quite healthy, especially if you eschew the spicy mayo mixes and skip the rice, potato chips, and sweet drinks.

I am famous for my obsession with delis, sandwiches, and cured meats, but those are “sometimes foods” that you can’t indulge in all the time. Poke, on the other hand, is as wholesome as it is delicious. I would and could happily eat it weekly, if not even more often. I’m so glad Sonny Nguyen has gifted Orlando with Rion’s Ocean Room — one more option for poke in town, and probably the most authentic Hawaiian-style poke of all. Every staff member I spoke to was incredibly warm, friendly, and full of useful information, so if you have questions, they will be more than happy to answer them and put your mind at ease.

I look forward to becoming a regular, and I hope to see YOU there! If you’re another pokeholic, what are your favorite fish and combinations for poke? Let me know!

OverRice

OverRice (https://www.overricecfl.com/) started out as a food truck that serves Hawaiian and Filipino food at various locations around Orlando. As much as I love both cuisines, I never encountered the truck in the wild. Luckily for us all, OverRice also opened a brand-new, permanent, brick and mortar restaurant location at 1084 Lee Rd in Orlando, west of I-4, between two other restaurants I like in the immediate area: LaSpada’s Original Philly Cheese Steaks and Hoagies to the east and Mee Thai to the west. I attended a soft opening at the OverRice restaurant after work on March 2nd, and let me tell you, it was amazing. I wish I had tried the food truck sooner, because the delicious food from the restaurant lived up to all the hype and praise I had been reading and hearing for years. I can see becoming a regular there, and I won’t be alone.

OverRice has long scrolls of brown paper hanging on the wall to the right of the entrance, with the menu hand-written in huge letters. You order and pay at the counter, take a seat, and wait for deliciousness. Mayra was very patient as she took my order, considering I wanted to eat something there and take the rest to go.

The standard plate lunches can be ordered Filipino style (served over jasmine rice with pancit noodles and one lumpia, a crispy spring roll filled with pork), or Hawaiian style (served with two scoops of jasmine rice and one scoop of ono macaroni salad). You can choose between braised Papa’s Filipino adobo pork spare ribs, marinated and grilled huli huli chicken thighs, or kalua pig, pork shoulder seasoned with Hawaiian sea salt and wrapped in banana leaves while it is slow-roasted for eight hours.

The walls are brightly decorated with hand-painted art that makes you feel like you’re in the islands. A bamboo (or fake bamboo?) wall separates the open kitchen from the small dining area.

For the soft opening, they served everyone a lovely tropical mocktail made of pineapple juice, apple juice, and muddled mint, blended and poured over crushed ice. It was a delightful and refreshing little surprise.

I had to try the Papa’s Filipino adobo pork dish while it was hot, especially with the pancit noodles and lumpia spring roll (the Filipino style option). I chose wisely. I’ve had different versions of adobo, pancit, and lumpia before, at DeGuzman Oriental Food Mart and the late, great Taglish, and I already knew I would love the flavors.

The bone-in spare ribs were fork-tender, and the bones slid right out. The savory flavors were incredible. The sweet, sour, sticky sauce was perfect for dipping the crispy lumpia, but I ended up stirring it into the soft, fluffy jasmine rice. The pancit noodles were nice and tender, mixed with shreds of carrot, cabbage, and sautéed with lots of garlic.

This is OverRice’s version of sisig, a Filipino dish of fried pork belly chunks tossed with onions and chilies in a soy and citrus sauce. I wonder if the citrus involved is calamansi, which are kind of like limes, but smaller and rounder, and with orange flesh inside. Regardless, the sisig was delicious. Totally different from the version I loved so much (and miss) from Taglish, which shows a wealth of variations in Filipino cuisine, which I am still learning about. I ended up stirring in some jasmine rice, which was included, but packaged in a separate container for my takeout order. The rice did a great job soaking up those incredible flavors.

OverRice offers Spam musubi, the popular Hawaiian snack of grilled Spam and rice wrapped tightly in nori (seaweed). One of my favorite restaurants in all of Orlando, Poke Hana, also serves Spam musubi, so I’ve had several before. But OverRice also sells chicken and kalua pig musubi, all for $3.50 each, and I couldn’t help but get a kalua pig musubi so I could try this classic Hawaiian pork dish too. It was so good, very tender after being slow-roasted for eight hours in those banana leaves, with a subtly smoky flavor that permeated the rice.

I didn’t think my wife would care for the adobo, which is why I enjoyed that at the restaurant. But when I brought home the rest of the food, I asked her to try the kalua pig musubi and the pork belly sisig, and she pleasantly surprised us both by liking both. I don’t know why I was surprised, because both were really delicious, and even the sisig wasn’t spicy. I was thrilled she was now a fellow OverRice fan!

Finally, I can’t go to any deli, sandwich shop, grocery store, or Hawaiian restaurant and not sample the macaroni salad or pasta salad, whenever they are available. Poke Hana’s macaroni salad is absolutely the best I’ve ever had. I found a recipe online for Hawaiian-style macaroni salad and have made it a few times before, to great success, but mine still isn’t as good as theirs. Well, OverRice makes a very similar Hawaiian mac salad recipe (with a side order for $4 if you don’t get it in a Hawaiian-style plate lunch), so it is also pretty amazing. The major different is that OverRice tops theirs with finely diced nori, so that added some additional tastes and textures once I stirred it into the cool, creamy, chewy mac salad.

I just wish I had tracked down the OverRice food truck sooner, so I could have tried their wonderful food years ago. But I was waiting months for this permanent location on Lee Road to open, and I was so happy and lucky to attend one of the first soft openings. This is a place I can see returning to again and again, and hopefully turning others onto. If you were a fan of the food truck, don’t despair. It will be continuing, so keep checking the website for updates as they work through their soft opening hours at the restaurant.

I don’t think OverRice is serving any desserts, at least not yet, but if you dine here and decide you want to stick to the theme for dessert, it really isn’t that far from Hanalei Shave Ice for the tropical flavors of Brandy Ford’s refreshing Hawaiian shave ice, or another sweet new addition to Orlando’s culinary scene I will be reviewing in the weeks to come, Samapaguita Filipino Ice Cream. Until then, aloha and paalam, stalwart Saboscrivnerinos!