Whipping up magic takes much more than three wishes from a genie. Just ask Youssef Dakroub, owner of the Xtreme Tacos food truck, and Poni Askew, Street Grindz food truck event coordinator. The pair have spent the past several months working to create an event around cuisine from Dakroub’s Middle Eastern homeland of Lebanon.

The focus of their efforts is “Arabian Nights,” a five-course pop-up dinner to be held at the Auahi Business Center Warehouse this week.

“Arabian Nights” kicks off a series of pop-ups — a one-night-stand restaurant —  featuring the cuisine of various food-truck chefs. Each pop-up will fund a wish for a sick child through Make-A-Wish Hawaii’s Adopt-A-Wish program.

Askew said the events have multiple purposes.

“There are different versions of a foodie, and we wanted to cater to foodies who appreciate an indoor environment,” she said. “We also want to expose folks to chefs not from the usual restaurants. … There’s great talent in food trucks, and we want to highlight them through this.”

For “Arabian Nights,” an empty warehouse will be transformed into “a Middle Eastern experience,” Askew said. “It will look like you’re walking into a tent with shimmering fabric and music.”

Though Dakroub serves Mexican fare through his Xtreme Taco truck, he has deep ties to the Lebanese culinary world. He was born and raised in Beirut, where his family has owned and run a Lebanese bakery since the 1980s.

Among Dakroub’s menu items: Batata Bi Kizbara (fried potatoes with cilantro and garlic), Falafel (deep-fried crushed chickpeas and spices), Tabouleh (salad of bulgar, tomatoes, cucumber, parsley, mint, onion and garlic seasoned with olive oil and lemon juice), Shish Tawook (boneless chicken marinated in yogurt, lemon, garlic and spices, then grilled), Shish Kebab (cubed beef marinated in Middle Eastern spices, then grilled), Lebanese Moussaka (eggplant and chickpea stew), Ma’amoul (date-filled shortbread pastry) and Ashta B’Aasal (condensed milk layered with bananas and honey).

Dakroub said the main challenge of presenting such a menu is accessing ingredients. He sourced special pita and spices from Michigan, where a large Lebanese community has settled. Yet he also realizes that the dishes must not be completely foreign to the local palate. Potatoes, chicken, beef, rice, tomato and garlic are familiar foods.

“We’re just using different seasonings,” he said.

‘ARABIAN NIGHTS’ >> Where: Auahi Business Center Warehouse, 683 Auahi St. >> When: 7 p.m. Thursday, and 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday >> Tickets: $60 >> Info: www.honoluluboxoffice.com

Dakroub empathizes with people pushed too far too fast culinarily.

“When I first came here, someone once took me to a Japanese restaurant and gave me squid and sashimi, and I had a hard time. I had to start with teri chicken, which is grilled. Now, after some time, I can eat sashimi — I’m a big fan. But you have to start with something people will accept.”

In the lineup for an upcoming pop-up are Eric Okamura and Windy Aubrey of Baja Style. The duo plan to offer an evening of Latin American tapas and are tossing around ideas of roasted mussels, stuffed calamari and roasted bone marrow, the latter a fan favorite from a pop-up they did last year.

“We want to balance authenticity with the local palate,” he said.

They are envisioning two to three tapas per plate, with four to five plates for their dinner, to offer a wide sampling of food.

Baja Style has been a vendor at farmers markets and a tent vendor at Eat the Street. They set up shop in a food truck six months ago.

Both Okamura and Aubrey have culinary pedigrees. Okamura learned to cook at his mother’s Wahiawa okazuya, while Aubrey’s father was an award-winning chef in Los Angeles. The pop-up affords them a chance to try out new ideas.

“We were excited when we heard about the pop-ups,” he said. “We were both restaurant owners in the past, and we don’t want to go down that path again. But we like to exercise our creativity, and this is one way to do it.”

Part of the Street Grindz mission has been to benefit other organizations in the community and Askew said the pop-ups are a perfect way to do that.

“Eat the Street is a low-profit event, so it’s not a good venue for a benefit,” she said. “For this pop-up, we worked out of the ‘Arabian Nights’ theme and thought of a genie in a lamp and granting wishes. That led us to Make-A-Wish Foundation.”

Siana Hunt, president and CEO of Make-A-Wish Hawaii, said the organization is funded 100 percent by donations, and though times are lean, wishes continue to be granted.

“Even though budgets are dwindling, people get more creative — Street Grindz is an example of that,” she said. “People are now coming together as a group.

“There is a child on the Big Island who has a wish, and 40 different entities in Kona and Waimea are working to make it happen. Some give money, some offer discounted service rates or an in-kind donation.

“The kids are being served, but really, it’s the whole community that’s being served when they come together,” Hunt said.

That’s true for Dakroub, who has long wanted to share his culture.

“The pop-up is not to build a following. I want to do this because I love this food, and I want to do this for the culture,” he said. “I’m Lebanese, but most people here don’t even know where Lebanon is. I want to help people understand.”

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Contact Youssef Dakroub for catering at xttacos@gmail.com or call 954-5477. Reach Baja Style via the Twitter handle @BajaStyleHI.

Food trucks help new and existing eateries develop

When the food-truck phenomenon began booming on the mainland, Poni Askew felt Hawaii was missing the boat on a concept for which we were forerunners.

“For Hawaii, food trucks are new wave,” she said. “Lunch wagons were old school. … Even the Chinese man with the manapua basket was a form of street food.”

So Askew decided to use her marketing and business background to become an organizer and supporter of the food trucks. A year and a half later, Street Grindz has become a popular resource for hungry folks seeking a list of the food trucks around town, their menus, and where and when they park to serve their fare.

Askew also organized Eat the Street food truck rallies, where a lineup of trucks park at one site. Eat the Street has become such a huge event that the rally in Mililani last month drew 10,000 people. Askew says 42 vendors are part of the Eat the Street lineup, with a waiting list of more than 100.

Some long-established eateries, such as Elena’s Restaurant, have opened food trucks because of the craze, while other chefs prefer the lower costs of a food truck to a brick-and-mortar establishment. Still others use the food-truck concept to build a following before they graduate to a brick-and-mortar restaurant.

“When chef Sean Priester parted ways with the Top of Waikiki, he went from a four- or five-star restaurant to a food truck,” Askew said. “It was an affordable way to enter the food scene. The truck was his launching pad to Soul restaurant.”

Likewise, the Melt food truck crew, which delivered gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches, has since moved on to Prima restaurant and the Pig and the Lady pop-up restaurant.

“The food trucks were a baby step to their big dreams,” Askew said. — Joleen Oshiro, Star-Advertiser

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On the Net:
>> www.streetgrindz.com
>> pacificsoulhawaii.com
>> primahawaii.com