When Ono Hawaiian Cafe opened in winter 2007, it was unlike anything I’d had in Boise. Here was a menu made entirely of appetizers, matte black plates of stacked food resplendent with soy, sugar and edible orchids. Of all the restaurants to survive the economic nosedive of the past few years, you might not give the best odds to a little tropical cafe behind a tire store on Broadway Avenue. Even in 2008, that year of tapas, my wife and I felt like we needed to appreciate Ono while it lasted.
Ono is a wing of the thriving Kanak Attack catering enterprise, and synonymous with chef and owner Mike Mohica, whose business sense and willingness to take on challenges are well known in the restaurant community. Ono is a survivor because it has been unafraid of change.
The dark red-walled dining room has doubled in size, spilling over into a space once used for only catering sales, but the original welcoming spirit is intact. There is always Hawaiian music, and on weekends, there are hula dancers, lei-draped men and women opening their hands and swaying to the sounds of a live ukulele player.
Survival has come at the expense of some of the original concept’s uniqueness, and presentation is less elaborate. Gone are the tremendous Korean kalbi wings with blue cheese-chevre sauce, a deli case full of offerings packaged to-go, and a whole page of sushi, memorable for the crackling strands of flying fish roe. There is now a more conventionally structured menu, and we did not find this new incarnation to be wholly successful.
Like Hawaii itself, the food is a cross-pollination of Asian and Pacific island cuisines. First courses are still the menu’s strength, and a good value is a sampler of any three for $13. One of Ono’s hallmarks is its Kalua pig — smoky, salted pulled pork that is likely to linger in your thoughts. You will find that oozing, unctuous pork on roasted garlic flatbread ($10) with arugula, onions and hoisin barbecue sauce. But we prefer it on the kalua pig sliders ($9), miniature sweet rolls with tempura onions, a wedge of pineapple and pineapple barbecue sauce.
Grilled chicken Bibb lettuce wraps ($8) are sweet, spicy and refreshingly unlike the many versions of PF Chang’s knockoffs one might expect. The promising shoyu poke ($13) is a mound of cubed ahi with a tangle of seaweed, wasabi and Srirachi mayo that was tasty even though the fish was not fresh enough for this kind of presentation. The coconut shrimp ($8) with plum sauce, however, were sweet-fleshed, crispy, and perfectly cooked.
Choices directed at mainlanders were hit-and-miss. We liked the plum-teriyaki-pineapple burger ($9) on a soft, sweet bun. We appreciated the simple, straight-ahead macaroni salad, even — and perhaps especially — in what seemed to be an inundation of plum-teriyaki-pineapple-barbecue at every turn. But we found the teriyaki-chicken Big Kahuna wrap ($8) thrown together, a mass of inartfully chopped roughage and hard bits of chicken in a standard-issue spinach tortilla. A cup of Thai macadamia coconut soup was too cloying and nutty to be something other than a sauce.
An all-you-can-eat buffet of cafe favorites is available on weekdays and weekend nights ($12 and $15 respectively). You’ll find the basics like (very sweet) teriyaki chicken, (ever delicious) Kalua pig, and coconut rice as well as some unusual items like yellow curry chicken with hard-cooked egg and vegetables, steamed pork meatballs, and quite good pork wontons. Also included are pineapple upside-down cake. On one recent visit, as a nod to the season, there was pumpkin pie.
Service seemed a little disconnected, with the timing of courses feeling unplanned and piles of plates left on tables throughout the meal.
One entree in particular exemplified our recent experiences. The Waipahu ($11) is Filipino-style pork belly adobo: cubes of indulgently fatty pork simmered in a sweet, peppery broth, ungarnished, funneled in a large bowl over plain rice. Like so much of the menu, it was literally what it said it would be — exactly the sum of its parts. But as an entire meal, it was too much of one thing, lacking variety of color, flavor and texture from bite-to-bite, striking just a single note. As a smaller version — an appetizer perhaps — this could play a part in a larger symphony.
Email Alex Kiesig: scene@idahostatesman.com
