Hawaii Day 3 Visited 5/20/2013 4 Forks

Lemongrass Express -  Waikoloa Beach Dr Kings Marketplace Food Ct, Waikoloa, HI 96738

Usually when I'm on vacation, I like to go to places that more of the locals hit up and less of the big chains or touristy places.  So after our massages, Deanna and I asked the lady at the spa for any good local recommendations that were near our hotel.  To be honest, there aren't a ton of restaurants on the Big Island in general but she was able to rattle off a few options.  The closest one she mentioned was in the nearby shopping center, Queens Marketplace.  Since we were pressed on time, we decided to give it a try, even though it looked like it was more of an expressversion of the original restaurant.

When we arrived at the mall, I didn't fully realize that it was literally inside a mall food court.  The other places inside the food court was a Subway Sandwiches and an ice cream parlor.  I'm usually not a fan of mall food courts so I was definitely a bit weary of this place.  But to their credit, Lemongrass had 3 tables and high top that seated 5-6 people, so it wasn't literally a food court to-go type of place.   Although I do love Thai and Vietnamese food, I was really more in the mood for Hawaiian style food, but they did try to fuse Hawaiian influences with their dishes.  They have your usual pad thai, curries, pho, and green papaya salads.  Luckily for their lunch specials, they had an ahi poke special ($12).  It was cubes of tuna marinated in soy and ginger and served with crispy wonton, pickled vegetables on top of rice.  While it's not a traditional poke, it was still delicious!  It had the right amount of heat and it was extremely flavorful.  It's not as clean tasting as a regular poke but the pickled vegetables and spicy flavoring was a nice touch and the white rice just made it more filling.  I cleaned my entire plate.  The one thing that was a bit off-putting was that when I cleaned my plate, you could see all the oil from the sauces on my plate.

The great thing about Thai/Vietnamese food is that they usually have good veggie options.  Deanna got the a tofu/veggie noodle dish that I didn't taste but she mentioned that it was great.  All in all, I gotta say that I was very pleasantly surprised by this meal.  Who knew that good food actually could exist in a food court?  Apparently the locals did.  I did notice that the only people in there were locals, so I guess this should teach me a lesson to not be so judgy. :)