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| - The pig was legit! This place is like a Hawaiian Chipotle, where you walk in and create a salad/burrito/bowl from an assembly line of delicious ingredients. I made a salad bowl with pig (I like that their menu refers to pork specifically as pig), chicken, lettuce, grilled veggies, hot salsa, and habaneros. My buddy also got chips and guac, which I shared with him.
The pig was a bit more salty than I expected, but it was really good. I like salty food, so no biggie for me. The chicken was good; not extraordinary but not bad at all. A solid showing on the chicken. The grilled veggies were grilled veggies; I wish places would give me more onion and less green bell pepper -- Chipotle has the same problem, all peppers -- but also no biggie. Veggies were cooked alright and tasted fine. Habaneros were hot. I've had some that were not quite as hot as you would expect a habanero to be, but these were not like that. I took a bite with a bunch of habanero on it and I paid the price for the rest of the meal.
The chips and guac were pretty good! I have this thing about cilantro being disgusting and I hate it, but the guac didn't have an overpowering cilantro taste like some places can. The chips were great.
So it sounds like I have a bunch of above-average things to say, why only 3 stars? Food quality. Look, Braddah's, I know I didn't come here for health food. And I know I should have certain expectations about fast food, but you don't have to rub it in my face. I looked at the kitchen area and saw a bunch of huge oil jugs. "Sesame flavored oil" -- flavored? What? You're not using sesame oil? No! Lucky for me I have 20/15 eyesight so I can read the ingredients list: Soybean oil, sesame oil. Okay great, so you want the sesame flavor because your island-style food is made with it, but you also want to make more money by using the cheapest, lowest quality oil possible (soybean) and then adding flavor to it so nobody knows.
EXCEPT I KNOW. And now everybody that reads my review will know. So even though I liked the food well enough, and the pig and chips/guac were great, I can never get higher than 3 stars for a place that just so blatantly feeds me low quality junk. Which also makes me wonder: everything else I'm eating, what's the quality of it? I can only assume it is also poor.
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