Keoki’s Hawaiian Barbeque

Food is undeniably the focus of Keoki’s Hawaiian Barbecue, which is good, because the place, tucked in an L-shaped strip mall in Marina, isn’t long on ambiance. The tiny dining area – one communal table for six, a six-stool wall counter, leis, framed seascapes, aloha and mahalo plaques – gives the place bona fide dive status. Not surprisingly, more than half the orders are carry out.

Fine dining? Nope. Just rib-stickin’ food from a friendly neighbor’s kitchen. Forget the formalities. A bell on the door tinkles and Diane Watson comes out in her apron to take your order while her brother, owner George Manabe, does his thing in the kitchen. If you’re a newbie she’ll give you the scoop on every dish, scrawled on a no-frills whiteboard above the counter. (By the way, Keoki is George in Hawaiian.)

On my first foray I asked her which dish best keeps with the traditional Hawaiian plate lunch concept. No hesitation. She suggested the loco moco ($8.50), an 8-ounce hamburger steak on a mound of sticky Japanese rice, smothered in a brown gravy and topped with two eggs cooked to your liking. Over easy adds a nice burst of yolkiness to the brown gravy. For this dish, wimpy appetites need not apply. I needed two sittings.

Next visit: chicken katsu ($8.50) with Manabe’s special dipping sauce. Another on Diane’s must-try list. Thin strips of panko-breaded thigh meat are fried to golden brown crispiness. A side dish is included, with choices limited to the two most traditional Hawaiian plate lunch mainstays: potato salad and mac salad (each $1.50 a scoop a la carte). Or you can go half-potato, half-mac as most plate lunch aficionados do.

Both sides are creamy without being gooey, slightly sweet with no overpowering flavors: nice complements to the hearty main dishes. Also included in this dish and most others is the sticky rice ($1.50 a la carte).

My third and final visit happened on a Friday. Lucky, because that’s the day they offer the revered, centuries-old island delicacy – lau lau ($11) – pork and salted butterfish wrapped in taro leaves and steamed inside another wrapping of tea leaves. The nutty, slightly spinachy flavor of the taro leaf is the spice of this dish. For another $3, kalua pork becomes part of the feast.

Watson had been raving about Keoki’s chicken wings ($8.50) so I tried a batch of those too, which come 12 per order. Wonderful! The secret: As soon as they’re out of the fryer each piece is dipped in Manabe’s sweet and sour sauce for one second. The skin absorbs the flavors without affecting the crispness. No sauce is even observable until it hits the tastebuds. It’s a memorable flavor I will revisit.

Manabe proudly offers two other traditional Hawaiian treats. One is an assortment of musubis (similar to sushi rolls) – rice filled with a choice of spam, hot dog, teriyaki chicken or teriyaki beef wrapped in seaweed ($2.25 to $2.75). The other is shave ice ($3) with 10 different flavors to choose from. Add ice cream for $0.50 more. Manabe stresses shave ice is much different from a snow cone. It’s all about the machine, he says.

Keoki’s started in mid-2012 operating out of a 10-by-10-foot tent at local farmers markets and festivals like the Reggae Fest, Strawberry Festival, West End Celebration and P.G.’s Good Old Days.

In August 2014, bro and sis, Hawaii natives who moved here with their family in the late ’60s as Fort Ord army brats, started operating in their current. According to Manabe, business has been growing steadily ever since.

Currently Keoki’s shares space with Catering Magic, owned and operated by Connie Norris, who runs a bakery business. Her assorted pies, cookies and other treats – including Danish ($2.25) and mini-loaves ($5) – are on display and readily available to Keoki’s customers.

Besides the menu for walk-in clientele, which Manabe and Watson estimate to be about 60-percent CSU-Monterey Bay students, they offer three different sizes of take out. Party trays range from around $30 to $110 depending on the dish. Three sizes of mac salad, potato salad and steamed rice range from $15 to $38.

Three-egg breakfasts are served all day, any style, with rice and a choice of two meats: Portuguese sausage, Vienna sausage, bacon, corn beef hash or Spam ($5.50). Omelettes ($6.50) also include any two meats.

With all the kitchen prep and other work that goes into running a restaurant, Manabe is at it Monday through Friday, 6am to 8pm. He recently decided to close weekends to give himself and his sister a much needed rest until they can find some extra help.

Whatever plans this brother and sister team has for the future of Keoki’s, they say they want to always keep the mom and pop feel going. As Manabe puts it, “I want to keep itohana.” That’s family in Hawaiian. Aloha.

KEOKI’S HAWAIIAN BARBEQUE. 3170 H Vista del Camino, Marina. 11am-7pm, Mon-Fri. 831-809-864, keokishawaiianbarbeque@yahoo.com,www.facebook.com/pages/Keokis-Hawaiian