Others have tried to make the “pocha” happen in Honolulu, but Thank Q Pocha may be the first to succeed in the mainstream with its highly visible location and lively combination of Korean pop playing on TV screens, fun drinks and over-the-top food specialties meant to be shared by many.
For those who don’t know, pocha is the Korean equivalent of the Japanese izakaya, so bring the party and leave any seriousness at the door, as food and drinks flow from 5 p.m. to 2 a.m. daily.
The restaurant is in the space that was once home to Territorial Savings and, later, Sushi San, on Kapiolani Boulevard near Bank of Hawaii’s Ala Moana Center branch. All traces of Sushi San are gone, replaced by booths with wood partitions, with most tables geared toward parties of four to six. This is ideal for sharing many of the larger dishes.
If you’re after purely Korean flavors, this is not the place. The menu is a fusion of casual Asian and American fast food — french fries ($5) and onion rings ($6) meet edamame ($5) and toppoki, the tubular, chewy rice cake ($8 to $15), with cheese apparently the newly anointed food crush overseas.
You’ll find mozzarella bubbling over a thin bed of rice, butter and corn in a cast-iron skillet ($7); as a pool filled with toppoki ($10); served over mashed potatoes, tomato sauce and olives in a cast-iron skillet to spoon over garlic toast to make an ersatz pizza ($17); and forming a liquid pool under the picturesque Crown Squid Meets Fried Chicken ($29), a whole roast chicken crowned with deep-fried calamari, the spindly squid legs rising into the air to form crown points. There’s definitely a sense of humor at work here.
Luckily, we don’t have to overindulge in cheese because there’s no mystery in it for us.
My favorite dishes were the simplest: a footlong creamy, fluffy omelet ($15) that easily fed five; a comforting bowl of spicy seafood soup ($18) with bean sprouts, onions, calamari and shellfish; and garlic-fried chicken ($16) that didn’t shy from emphasizing the pungent bulb.
The alternative to garlic is a lackluster plain fried chicken ($15) or the same chicken drizzled with sweet-spicy sauce ($16) spiked with cinnamon. When I visited, there was not enough sauce to cover the large portion, so most of the pieces were dry. This could be a shock to the system for those who don’t associate Korean fare with a flavor reminiscent of breakfast toast and pastry.
Upon entering, you’ll probably be enticed by the colorful drinks at other tables. Soju cocktails in flavors of pineapple, lemon, yogurt, strawberry and pomegranate come in plastic carafes ($17) to share. Apple and orange soju arrive in style, served in their respective hollowed-out fruit, at $25 for three. Any of these cocktails will be a welcome source of relief from the summer heat.
Among premium drinks is the picturesque Shark Attack, an ocean blue cocktail ($9) accompanied by a plastic shark filled with strawberry puree. The shark is plunged into the drink to produce an uncanny blood-in-the-water effect. You get to keep the shark, whether for bathtub or bar experimentation at home.
A handful of American wines are also available.
Starters include a kim chee pancake ($9) containing just a sprinkling of chopped vegetables, and wonderful fresh and crisp house-made fried mandoo ($8).
Maybe because I’m always on the prowl for something different, none of the following “Local Favorite” dishes made it into my order on two visits, but you may be interested in Hawaiian fried rice served in a half pineapple bowl, kim chee fried rice pilaf ($13) or a skillet of wagyu and stir-fried bean sprouts ($13). There are stone-plate gizzard dishes ($17 to $18) as well.
Larger parties might try one of three fiery “Cook Your Own” stews. Spicy chicken ($35) has wide appeal, while Korean blood sausage ($30) and Spicy Korean Military Stew ($35) might not suit those who would rather steer clear of blood sausage, which tastes mostly of the chap chae that fills in the spaces between the blackened blood.
The military stew features a layer of ramen, with pho-style vegetables and blood sausage slices tossed into the mix. As Japanese ramen aficionados, none of my friends were captivated by the noodles, and the best part of the meal was that remnants of the dish were tossed with rice to create a wonderful kim chee-flavored fried rice that some of us took home to enjoy the next day.
Nadine Kam’s restaurant reviews are conducted anonymously and paid for by the Star-Advertiser. Reach her at nkam@staradvertiser.com.
THE WEEKLY EATER: BITE SIZE
A new Agu comes to Ward Centre
Woulda, coulda, shoulda. I hear it all the time. People wait two or three years to visit a “new” restaurant, and when they mention they still want to try it, I have to break the bad news: “It closed already.”
This time the news is good for those who couldn’t make it to Agu Ramen’s Isenberg Street location, now that a second, centrally located shop has opened at Ward Centre, fronting Auahi Street.
In addition to offering favorites from Jidori chicken yuzu ramen, to suit light palates, to the Innovative Hot Mess, for those with an over-the-top hunger for garlic and Parmesan, chef Hisashi Uehara is always experimenting and adding to his menu. To mark this opening, he’s exploring new territory with a taste of China.
His Tan Tan Tonkotsu starts with Agu’s rich pork broth, enhanced with mildly spicy sesame paste, then the ramen noodles are topped with ground pork, pickled Chinese mustard cabbage and aji tamago.
The only problem I foresee is that the space is already too small. And for those who still can’t get there, two more locations are in the works. Call 797-2933.
Bite Size documents the small, the new, the unsung.
