Las Vegas has, for whatever reason, one of the largest Hawaiian communities in the mainland United States, and as a result, a proliferation of Hawaiian-themed restaurants.
A few of them, such as the Roy's chain, are upscale and feature fresh fish from Hawaii, filtered through a Pacific Rim sensibility, or creative delicacies such as spicy Asian ribs, plus other dishes today identified with the so-called Island cuisine.
But the overwhelming majority of our Hawaiian restaurants are considerably down market, the sort of places one would expect to find next to a Laundromat in a strip-mall on the windward side of Oahu.
Braddah's Kitchen, which belongs to a Hawaiian transplant named Brad, is firmly in the more modest category. It's a slightly down-at-the-heels bar, with the usual paraphernalia-style decor: lots of beer signs, sports banners, and a big-screen TV tuned to a news channel.
This is much more than just a bar, though. Adjoining the bar is an extensive dining section, with comfy booths and tables draped in green-and-white-checked cloth, the only sign that the kitchen isn't limited to burgers and onion rings being the bottles of soy sauce on each table.
Soy sauce is mother's milk to this cuisine, an amalgam of Chinese, Korean, Filipino and Polynesian influences. And the food here, despite a modest pedigree, is mostly delicious, hearty, filling fare, most of which is guaranteed to raise your bad cholesterol.
Most of the entrées come with a big mound of white rice and a tangy macaroni salad. It's a starchy plate of food, even with items like kalbi—grilled Korean short ribs redolent of sesame oil and garlic—and the seminal kalua pig and cabbage—Hawaiian-style pulled pork, which over there is cooked in a giant, lava-filled pit.
Appetizers can be lumpia, about a dozen cigar-shaped, fried pastries stuffed with spicy minced pork; Filipino egg rolls made to be dipped in the house sweet chili sauce; or shumai, which are sort of the same thing, if you exclude that they are shaped like rabbit droppings. (No disrespect intended. These things are good, too.)
Da' Sampla is a good deal, because you get four lumpia, four shumai, and four teriyaki chicken wings. But I'd still choose one of the musubi, basically a clump of rice wrapped in crunchy nori seaweed, with a topping such as Portuguese sausage, cooked chicken, or, hold your breath, Spam (the one aberration in what otherwise is a pleasing, comfort-food culture).
Saimin is what a Hawaiian calls spaghetti, which is eaten in a rich soup broth, Chinese style, with wontons or vegetables. Perhaps it is more often fried in a pile with green onions, chopped Japanese fish cakes (kamaboko), a julienned omelet, and once again into the breach, more Spam.
Now we are ready for the heavy hitters, and all of the ones I tried here are first rate. My favorite hands down is kalbi, beef ribs cut across their bones and pounded flat, deeply bronzed from a soy garlic ginger sesame oil bath. The drippings from the meat are wonderful when mixed with rice, and Brad does them as well, or better, than any Korean place in the city.
Kalua pork and cabbage is excellent too, meaty and smoky, with shredded hunks of pork shoulder as tender as you'd get at a Carolina barbecue. I also like meat jun, actually griddled beef wrapped in an egg batter, similar to what you get at a bunch of places in Los Angeles' Koreatown.
Both garlic-fried chicken and Korean-fried chicken are good companions for rice, and there is a nice chicken cutlet, more of a Japanese-style breading, for those who like more bland options.
The restaurant also serves Hawaiian-style breakfasts, the leading example being the dish called Loco Moco, a 5-ounce hamburger patty topped with two eggs, typically sunny-side up, a huge portion of rice, and a brown sludge that will pass for gravy if you grew up on school lunches in Honolulu.
I prefer a breakfast like pork-fried rice, made with chopped bacon, only a soupcon of Spam, chopped eggs and green onions, or even kimchee fried rice, made with chicken and the notoriously stinky, Korean, fermented cabbage, which the restaurant had mercifully run out of the last time I visited.
Hawaiian restaurants rarely serve dessert, and Braddah's Kitchen is no exception. If you have a sweet tooth, or still crave a bigger taste of the Islands, go to the grocery and buy a pineapple. Otherwise, it's a six-hour flight to paradise, partner.