I walked into a diner one fall evening in a bit of a state. The better team losing a certain winner-take-all baseball game had me enveloped in a brooding stupor for nearly 48 hours. Not that I felt a need to act out a cinematic trope, mind you, but stepping into this diner, an empty diner at that, did just that. In my mind, I’d park my keister on a backless red-leather stool, bury my head in a cup of black coffee, and sulk about the team’s lost opportunities. Only this was Moa Kai — a bright, buoyant, aloha-spirited Hawaiian diner. Here, the backless leather stools gleamed, and the words “Huli Pau” lit up the tropical wallpaper behind the bar in vivid neon. But instead of coffee, it was hōkū poni, a purplish beverage of Kula white rum, ube syrup, coconut milk and lime juice, in which sorrows were drowned. Refreshing, yes, though it didn’t help my mood much.
But I gotta hand it to the server. He encouraged me to eat, even as they were readying to close Moa Kai in 25 minutes. So I landed on the most comforting item I could find — loco moco ($15), Hawaii’s answer to Salisbury steak. Here the patty of beef is served over white rice and topped with a fried egg. A slather of brown gravy, sauteed onions and mushrooms, however, wasn’t just mood-enhancing, it lent the dish proper diner status, and I scarfed it down.
My disposition was somewhat more pleasant when I returned with a pal, himself in a state of lament thanks to the vagaries of fantasy football. Enter the healing effects of fried spam musubi ($7). The panko’d block drizzled in a spicy sauce helped turn his frown the other way ’round, so that by the time we sunk our pearlies into soft, doughy manapua ($8) — steamed bao filled with char siu pork — our grins were evident. The restaurant’s name, BTW, is in reference to moa — those treasured, feathered, feral chickens that freely roam the Hawaiian Islands.
No surprise, then, that chicken is very much present on Moa Kai’s menu. In the garlic fried noodles ($16), the morsels are flavored with shoyu; in the skewers ($10), they’re marinated in teriyaki; in the Korean chicken ($15), they’re battered, fried and sauced. And it’s all so unfussy, so void of frills and so very diner to the core. Owner Hoi Nguyen, who operated The Mongolorian in this very space for a year before closing it last summer, and who also owns Poke Hana just down the street, wanted a concept that tapped into his love for Hawaiian culture. And Hawaii’s culture, as I’m sure you’re now aware, is infused with plenty of Asian influence.
Moa Kai’s “plate lunches,” Hawaii’s version of meat-and-three (or meat-and-two, in Moa Kai’s case), offer heftier options, none heftier than kalbi ($24). The thick-cut ribs marinated in shoyu and pineapple juice are a tad sweeter than their Korean counterparts, but crowd-pleasing nonetheless. The ribs are served with sides of white rice flecked with sesame seeds and mac & cheese. Plate lunches can be enjoyed with everything from kalua pork and cabbage ($15) to panko-fried mahi ($20) to garlic shrimp ($17).
The Portuguese also left their mark on the island cuisine, most notably the deep-fried donuts called malasadas ($8). To say the sugar-coated puffs filled with haupia (coconut custard) and lilikoi (passion fruit) left us cheerful would be somewhat true. To say they negated our blues would be more accurate. In fact, in true Hawaiian fashion, they were swept away.
(Moa Kai Hawaiian Diner, 2217 E. Colonial Drive, 407-270-7916, moakaidiner.com, $$)
Orlando’s daily dose of what matters. Subscribe to The Daily Weekly.
This article appears in Nov. 12-18, 2025.
Related
Source link