I find most Hawaiian plate places are pretty much the same, but on occasion a certain place might surprise me on the little differences that can set them apart even though they're serving the same usual menu.
We grabbed a Combo Plate C-3 which is BBQ chicken, fried shrimp and mahi-mahi ($8.20) and a mini chicken katsu ($4.95).
They give you the option of steamed rice or fried rice. Now normally I stir away at Chinese places that have lunch specials with fried rice since i usually gets the Panda Express treatment- just taste like soy and oil and not much else. I figured I never had fried rice at a Hawaiian place so we ordered one entree with the fried rice and one with steamed (just in case).
BBQ chicken was nice in flavors and give the teriyaki sauce a try with it. Normally I skip the sauce since most places it's this thick sticky cloyingly sweet salty thing. Theirs is light, kinda with a garlicky taste and you can taste some ginger in there. A little bit complimented the meat instead of overpowering.
Fried shrimp- standard, but good. Batter is light with some panko and you can see the fryer oil is clean since the batter taste how it should.
Mahi- not in the panko batter, but this was decent. My problem is some places give a super thin piece that it's eating batter with a side of fish. Also many places it's fishy and it's something to skip. It wasn't bad here.
Katsu was great. Light batter and panko since a lot of places overdo the batter and use it to mask the not so quality, fatty chicken. White meat, clean batter good sweet, but a bit worstershire-sque sauce.
Fried rice was pretty good! It had a sweet shoyu taste and just simple with egg so it's not overly flavored, but just enough. It's also not greasy either.
It's the little details that count and what makes this a better plate option over some of the competitors close by.