Lunch Time Grinds: Favorite #3 of the year: Tanioka's

Monday, January 02, 2012

Favorite #3 of the year: Tanioka's

I can’t believe I never knew about Tanioka’s prior to 2011. Embarassing to admit, since it’s an institution out in Waipahu. It’s an institution, but yet they’ve modernized so well. When you go on a weekend, you know it’s going to be crowded. But they’ve perfected crowd management to a science. There’s a guy at the door, who only lets so many people in at a time. Once you’re in (air conditioning, thank goodness) the line snakes around: first past the cookies & crack seed, then you start getting to the good stuff. There’s 2 fridge cases with sushi, prepacked goodies, cupcakes, boiled peanuts, etc. After you get past the fridge cases, you get to the main event: the poke deli case. Unbelievable how many kinds of poke they have there (plus I always see menu items – I guess you can also order plate lunch stuff too? But I always am too distracted by the poke).

Once you’ve given your poke order, you move onto the final she-bang: the musubi and fish cake / other stuff window. And here’s the awesome kicker: your poke order very neatly follows you, and you can just stack up whatever musubi / bento / andagi you want to add, and it all follows you neatly to the cash register. Like magic.

One day I was in with a friend who was taking pictures of the store – they thought we were tourists? And we got some free fried poke with wasabi aioli. So good.

My standard order is trying some poke, plus a shiso musubi, plus a mochiko chicken musubi. And then I’m in a food coma for the rest of the afternoon. BUT that might change, since the last time I was there I got this awesome pack of 4 inari sushi, topped with spicy ahi poke. That was life changing. Those buggahs were so good. My new dream in life is to have a Tanioka’s poke cake for my birthday some day (when I get enough friends to help me eat it): a big foil catering tray filled with rice, topped with your choice of poke, and with your birthday message written in mayo on top!