Somehow, the Hawaiian hot dog stand Puka Dog kept cropping up in conversations before we left for Hawaii. I had it recommended to me on Facebook, on Twitter, and in my email, so I definitely wanted to check it out. When better than our last morning in Honolulu, as fortification before a visit to Pearl Harbor?
Plus, they open at 10, and there's nothing like a hot dog for breakfast. We packed up our room at the Hyatt and walked over to the Waikiki branch of the Puka Dog, where the day was just getting started.
Ordering at Puka Dog is more than a little confusing. I can't imagine how stopped up the line must get when they're really busy.
First, you pick whether you want a veggie dog or a polish sausage. Then, you choose which of four levels of spicy (ranging from mild to hot hot habanero) you want your special garlic lemon "secret sauce". Then you pick one from a roster of six tropical fruit relishes. Or if you don't want a fruit relish, you can have ketchup and mustard. BUT you can get yellow mustard, dijon mustard, lilikoi (passionfruit) mustard, or guava mustard, AND there's a sweet pickle relish if you'd like.
Can you tell why we were completely paralyzed with indecision? That's way too many Puka Dog Permutations. One of the counter girls was setting out samples of the various sauces and got really, really snippy with us when we wanted to try the relishes by themselves (but you HAVE to try them together with the garlic lemon sauce and the mustard, or you won't know what they TASTE like!). Logan assured her he could imagine what they tasted like together, but the whole experience was a bit off-putting.
So many sauces.
I ended up with the hot chili pepper garlic lemon sauce, the mango relish, and the guava mustard. Looking at the menu, I'm not sure why they made me choose three sauces, but the girl at the register was most insistent. Logan went the hot hot habanero sauce, ketchup and lilikoi mustard, with the pickle relish, and he somehow ended up with cheese all over his too.
"Puka" means hole in Hawaiian, and Puka Dog has a cute way of preparing their hot dogs. First, they're hollowed out and toasted on this contraption that looks uncomfortably like something from the Spanish Inquisition.
Then, the sauces are pumped into the hole (don't be dirty) and the sausage is jammed in after them. One more splort of sauce is dolloped on top, and there's your dog!
Our verdict: WTF, Puka Dog?! First, this was expensive for what we got - $17 for two hot dogs and one fresh-squeezed (watery) lemonade. That's a dollar less than we paid for our poke extravaganza - must be the Waikiki markup. Second, though they look huge, I was shocked at how tiny the hot dog actually was! When we got down to the bottom of the sausage, we were each left with maybe a third (really) of our bun, filled with a pool of sauces. The flavor was fine - too sweet and muddled, but acceptable for beach food - but the sauce overload was just too much, and I felt ripped off when I realized how much of what we'd been handed was bread. To add insult to injury, our buns weren't toasted enough and were cold around the outside.
So, No, Puka Dog. It might work just fine if you're on the beach, but I can't recommend it to beachgoing families at that price. On the plus side, we were full after we ate them. I was just sad that I wasted what could have been a visit to Beard Papa on this.
Not that I'm totally unhappy we went. The concept was interesting and the experience, even though it was disappointing, was kind of fun. I just wouldn't go back if we return to Waikiki. Maybe the Kauai branch is better?
Puka Dog's Wakiki location is in the back of the Wakiki Town Center (where you should definitely go, if only to check out their amazing banyan tree!) 2301 Kuhio Avenue # 2, Honolulu. 808.924.7887. Open 7 days, 10-10.
BTW, I know Tony Bourdain visited this joint on No Reservations - anyone know what he thought about it?
