Honolulu Weekly

Uncle Bo’s Pupu Bar & Grill / Next door to Irifune on Kapahulu Avenue in the old La Lieto Pasto’s space, Uncle Bo’s has arrived on unofficial restaurant row. ‘It looks like a sports bar from the outside!’ exclaimed a diner, and it would be easy to mistake it as such: There’s a banner in the front window advertising the late hours (5pm to 2am) and blocking the view into the dining room. The awning, strung with white icicle lights, and the exterior sign, in cheery McDonald’s red and yellow and subtitled with ‘Pupu Bar & Grill,’ aren’t as ambitious as the interior, which features neither red nor yellow and aims for sleek San Francisco urbanity.

But upon entering, you get a view of the larger and cooler-than-you-thought, lofted lounge dining room. From the high ceiling hang chain curtains hand-cut from a City Mill roll and mounted on metal curtain tracks ordered from a hospital supplier. The bar, situated in the far left corner, is backlit with pink neon light, and there are three widescreen TVs that broadcast movies (silent). The hostess gives a choice between a windowless dining room in back–an antechamber, really–that is not only quiet but feels sepulchral, and the friendlier lounge up front, which has high-backed banquettes with oversized pillows, more suited to the kind of nocturnal dining for which the chef, Uncle Bo himself, has designed the menu.

On the page-long, seafood-heavy pupu menu ($6-$10), there are strong flavors that stand up to successive rounds of drinks: oyster shooters, sweet chili calamari, dynamite shrimp, garlic black bean shrimp, firecracker garlic-shrimp wraps, crab cakes, Thai street-style grilled chicken wings, Cajun seared ‘ahi with honey glaze. While the sweetness eclipsed the taste of ‘ahi, the Dynamite Shrimp with chili garlic aioli went fast, and the Thai-style steamer clams ($9) were highly recommended and highly enjoyed. A full pound of clams came to the table in a whimsical clamshell bowl with a thoughtful mug for the shells. The sauce, a sweet chili garlic oyster sauce amply richened with butter, was made for sopping with the warm, crusty bread that comes alongside.

The same sauce is also featured in the entree Opakapaka Chiang Mai, pan-fried with a macadamia panko crust over sautÈed choi sum and tomato. While robust clams are aided by rich, complex sauces, such a mild fish as ‘opakapaka is best prepared simply, and you’d be better off ordering it steamed Chinese style ($19). Also on the seafood menu is a curious Indo-Lobster ($22), a split whole spiny lobster from Indonesia stuffed with crab and topped with a honey walnut sauce and a parmesan crust, which sounded overly heavy.

The steak menu features mostly naked, beefy flavors: New York steak and rib eye (each $18) are simply seasoned and nicely grilled (medium rare came actually medium rare). There’s prime rib, also available with Cajun seasoning ($19); the latter came with an unexpected and complementary sweet mustard marmalade, but for all the assertive herbing, the kitchen did some timid salting.

The plates come with still crisp sautÈed vegetables, but among the choice of sides, neither we tried fared very well. The garlic mashed potatoes had a strange tang to them, and after a few bites, their familiar flavor was placed: they tasted exactly like sour cream and onion Pringles. The side pasta of the day, penne tossed in butter, stewed tomatoes and parmesan, was more al denture than al dente. There’s a full pasta menu listing your standard marinaras, pestos, alfredos and a signature dish of shrimp pasta with Cajun butter sauce. Leaving no category uncharted, the menu also lists a few pizza options featuring kalua pork added both to the Hawaiian and to the meat lover’s versions.

Perhaps because the side starches with our entrees were disappointing, we had plenty of room for dessert and attacked the fried ice cream, a carb and sugar landmine. It wasn’t exceptional or even very good, but it was satisfying: a huge sphere of vanilla ice cream wrapped in what tasted like cinnamon and sugar dusted churro dough, doused with Hershey’s chocolate sauce and dotted with whipped cream.

By the time dessert came I was wishing for a proper cloth napkin, instead of the odd paper-cloth hybrids topping the tables. It’s a detail that hopefully the restaurant will work out in the coming weeks, along with sleeves for the bare paper menus, which had dirty smudges, for which our server apologized. Fortunately the service, led by manager Carlos, needs no tweaking. It’s warm, gracious, very informative and exactly what you would expect from a place where the chef prefixes his name with ‘uncle.’

Uncle Bo’s Pupu Bar & Grill

559 Kapahulu Ave (739-2426)

Hours: Nightly 5pm-2am Price Range: Pupus $6-$10, Entrees $10-$25
Recommended: Thai-style Steamer Clams, Dynamite Shrimp Payment: AmEx, Disc, JCB, MC, V

Honolulu Weekly restaurant reviewers dine anonymously, editorial integrity being our first priority. Reviewers may visit the establishment more than once, and any interviews with restaurant staff are conducted after the visits. We do not run photos of the reviewers, and the Weekly pays the tab. The reviews are not influenced by the purchase of advertising or other incentives.