If you were to scan all the food outlets lining Farrington Highway from Nanakuli to Waianae, you’d find all the usual suspects popular in any local community: burger joints, poke and seafood stops, drive-ins and bake shops.

Honolulu is large enough to accommodate other outliers such as the occasional Jamaican jerk, Peruvian and Middle Eastern specialists, but in the relatively insular Waianae community, Coquito’s Latin Cuisine stands out as the one restaurant that doesn’t belong.

The setting was simply a matter of convenience for Stevina Kiya­bu, who hails from Puerto Rico but married local. “My husband is from Waianae, and he didn’t want me to work. He wanted me to stay home to raise kids, but I told him no.”

Trained as a pastry chef at the Culinary Institute of America in New York, cooking was in her blood, and the best she could do as a good wife was to stay close to home.

“I looked at the demographics in Waianae and saw there are a lot of Puerto Ricans on this side of the island,” she said. So, with her husband’s blessing, she opened Coquito’s in 2012. It’s become a popular stop for military personnel from her native island in search of a taste of home, as well as locals from all parts of Oahu eager to try authentic Latin cuisine.

The menu is manageable for a small kitchen yet pays homage to specialties of Cuba, the Caribbean and Argentina. Dishes tend to be heavy, so you would have to make several return trips to fully explore the menu, starting with appetizers of deep-fried Colom­bian empanadas ($9) stuffed with beef and potatoes, and lightened with a side of tomato salsa.

Camarones al ajillo ($14), shrimp sauteed with cilantro and plenty of garlic, would seem to be a lighter option, but these are layered over filling tostones, golden discs of double-fried plantains.

The most novel of the dishes is mofongo, an African-influenced dish of mashed fried plantains studded with bits of bacon and garlic for extra flavor. (It’s the equivalent of American mashed potatoes.) Atop this miniature plantain “platter” sits your choice of entree options such as sauteed shrimp ($16), grilled steak ($14), pernil (roasted pork shoulder, $14) or stir-fried vegetables ($12) that add juiciness to the dish. The mofongo dries out quickly and is best eaten when hot and the exterior is more crisp than spongy.

Entrees come with a choice of two sides: habichuelas, a mild kidney bean stew; tostones; white rice; gandule rice; fried yucca; sweet plantains; potato salad; or mixed green salad.

Gandule rice is one of the dishes that differentiates Kiya­bu’s cooking from that of locals who grew up with black olives in their rice.

“Local Puerto Rican food is very different from food at home,” Kiyabu said. “One old lady told me that when they immigrated here, it was hard to find certain ingredients, so they used what they could find. To this day they add black olives, but I use green, the Spanish olives.”

Those olives also show up in juicy pork-filled pasteles ($13). A Cuban sandwich ($9.75) is served Puerto Rico style on Italian bread with layers of ham, roast pork, Swiss cheese, pickles and plenty of mustard. More rare on this island is the tripleta ($9.75), a sandwich of steak, pork and chicken with lettuce, tomatoes, Swiss, mayo and ketchup.

Heavier selections include carne guisada ($14), beef stew with potatoes and carrots; chuleta de cerdo ($14), a rather bland pork chop finished with sweet onions; and tender, garlicky Argentine flank steak ($18.99) slathered with chimichurri sauce, one of my favorites for beef, with its combination of cilantro, parsley and spice. This is another of the restaurant’s must-try dishes. I requested extra chimichurri to give the chuleta an assist.

I was too full for dessert, but for those still hungry, Tres Leches ($4.99) is a vanilla cake soaked in milk and topped with cream. I was more interested in the tembleque ($3.99), a haupialike coconut custard topped with cinnamon, but it had run out.

More recently, Kiyabu opened an Italian restaurant, Valentina’s Ristorante, a block away from Coquito’s, but that’s a story for my next trip to the west side.

BITE SIZE

Raw fish dish from Samoa is worth a try

As Hawaii’s food continues its march around the globe, making as much news in the U.K. as stateside, there’s been plenty of talk about poke circulating in the media.

But poke is not our only claim to fish fame. Within Samoan communities the raw fish dish of choice is oka ia (fish salad), the fish marinated in coconut milk with diced tomatoes and cucumbers. It’s closest relative is Tahitian poisson cru.

In Waianae, A T Polynesian Market offers Samoan and Tongan specialties to go, including oka, recently selling for $12.99 per pound, and palusami, the American Samoa equivalent of Hawaiian laulau, at $3.59 for taro leaves only, or $6.99 with meat (corned beef and turkey tail).

I love the sweetness of coconut milk in the palusami, which also tenderizes the leaves.

The small community grocery store is at 87-1784 Farrington Highway. Call 668-6630.

Nadine Kam’s restaurant reviews are conducted anonymously and paid for by the Star-Advertiser. Reach her at nkam@staradvertiser.com. “Bite Size” documents the new, the small, the unsung.