Kona Kitchen Keeps Its Saimin Super Simple

Noodle: Saimin

Source: Kona Kitchen, 8501 Fifth Ave. N.E., 517-5662.

Price: $6.99

Let's just get this straight: Saimin looks like ramen, tastes like ramen, but isn't ramen. Oh, no! It's one of Hawaii's national dishes, a culinary hodgepodge like plate lunch and Spam musubi. The noodle soup is a little Japanese, a little Chinese, a little Western . . . and McDonald's restaurants across the islands serve it.

Kona Kitchen in Maple Leaf is owned by actor Yuji Okumoto -- his Karate Kid II action figure is tacked up behind the cash register -- and draws a heavily islander crowd with zero tolerance for pupu platters or coconut anything. This is real-people Hawaiian food. That means KK's a homey diner that serves its entrees with sides of mayonnaise-dosed mac salad and white rice instead of iceberg lettuce and fries. (Although you can get those with a burger.)

The restaurant makes the Reader's Digest version of saimin, lean and stripped down: a clear broth, ultra-soft noodles, a few slices of red-rimmed Chinese char siu, a handful of chopped scallions, and half of a hard-boiled egg. No seaweed, no pink-and-white fish cake, and certainly no fancy longanisa.

That's too abridged for me; I found myself looking at the tables around me for Sriracha or a little leftover tonkatsu on someone else's plate to spruce up the noodles. You'd be better off ordering a small bowl of saimin on the side with a plate lunch of Kona Kitchen's smoky, salty Kalua pig and cabbage. Slow-roasted pork is the Will Ferrell of foodstuffs: Even when the performance is dialed-in or over the top, you're always glad to see it.

I hear Mark Fuller has concocted an elaborate saimin with slow-cooked pork shoulder and ham stock for brunch at Spring Hill. Any others you can recommend?