I’m often asked whether I’ve visited every restaurant on the island. Not even close. The number of eating and drinking places in the state numbered 3,370 in 2015, according to the Hawaii Restaurant Association. That number seems low to me because I’ve visited nearly 600 new food outlets in the last four years. But even though I get around, there are restaurants I miss because of timing or they simply escape notice.

Countless small enterprises open without fanfare, secreted away in desolate areas or bedroom communities that don’t get much traffic beyond area residents.

Recently I received an inquiry about Lagoon Chinese Restaurant, which I’d never heard of. Turns out the restaurant has operated out of the Pacific Marina Inn near the airport for six years, turning out decent Cantonese fare and going above and beyond the minimum expected from a hotel with a captive audience in the middle of nowhere. That is, in addition to a complete menu of Western breakfast and Chinese fare, there are also burgers and plate lunches for a local daytime crowd.

It’s all the more appreciated because I was obligated to stay at an airport hotel in San Francisco while traveling with friends last year, and the food experience was abysmal.

If you want to avoid the Chinatown crowds over the Chinese New Year period, Lagoon Chinese Restaurant is far off the beaten path, making it a come-as-you-are casual sort of place even on festive occasions. Plenty of hotel parking spaces are available, and plenty of street parking if you come on the weekend, when you can avoid traffic as well.

There’s very little Chinese about the restaurant’s ranch-style interior. A few lucky bamboo plants serve as decor. The walls are lined with nine tables for four, and in the center are three tables that can seat parties of eight for family get-togethers.

This is a place for those who take comfort in old-school cuisine and the days when shoyu and Chinese mustard were the only condiments on the table.

Those who need to eat and run will find basic hot-table selections such as beef broccoli, pork with eggplant, kau yuk and stir-fried green beans at the front of the restaurant, starting at $6.50 for a single entree selection. If you have a few minutes, opt for plate lunches of teriyaki beef ($6.25 mini/$7.75 regular) or Chinese-style garlic shrimp ($6.50/$7.99) that doesn’t skimp on the redolent bulb. It’s sauteed in butter with green onions and is also available in combination with hamburger steak or barbecue chicken, at $9.75 and $9.99, respectively.

The Chinese at heart will settle in and stay for the full sit-down experience. It starts with some hefty appetizers, not only crispy won ton (65 cents apiece or $6.25 for a dozen) and crispy gau gee (80 cents per piece or $7.50 for a dozen), but also a half-pound of char siu ($6.50) with the delicate perfume of five-spice. One of the stars of the menu is a half-pound of delicious roast pork ($6.99), with a light crisp to the skin instead of a tough, chewy rind. It can be shared family style or, if ordering individually, over rice for $7.75.

From there you can move on to soups or straight to standard meat offerings such as cold ginger chicken ($9.25), what I thought was an overly sweet Mongolian beef with plenty of onions ($8.50), pork with bittermelon ($8.50), pot roast pork ($8.50) or seafood selections such as kung pao shrimp ($8.99) and sweet-sour shrimp ($8.99).

I always try to avoid carbo-loading, but for whatever reason, this doesn’t apply to Chinese restaurants where rice and noodles often share the table, and both prove irresistible.

Chicken and dried salty fish fried rice ($8.99) is among must-try dishes, the soft, fluffy rice spiked with morsels of fish. To me there wasn’t enough pungency, but it’s likely toned down for hotel guests who didn’t grow up with the local chop-suey palate or a predilection for salt and fish.

My family always has to have the yellow curry Singapore fried rice noodles ($8.25) as well, described on the menu as spicy — again, perhaps so to travelers but not to most of us.

Cake noodles here are an inch thick, crisped on the outside while the interior maintains its soft, chewy consistency. The noodles come topped with a choice of crispy chicken, minute chicken or oyster sauce chicken, for $8.25.

It’s too bad Lagoon doesn’t also have dim sum, but that would be too much for the small kitchen to handle. I also scoured the menu for the nostalgia of pork hash with salted duck egg. It wasn’t there, but I might try to request it next time because they do have the ground pork that goes into won ton mein ($6.99) and salt duck eggs ($1.95). That would complete the visit to the foods of my childhood.

Nadine Kam’s restaurant reviews are conducted anonymously and paid for by the Star-Advertiser.

Reach her at nkam@staradvertiser.com.