Tag: take out

Food Review: Hokaben Japanese Kitchen Maumelle

Hokaben is the new-ish Japanese place for take-out here in the Maumelle. It replaced the Captain Express Hawaiian BBQ place, which originally replaced Dominos Pizza. While we have plenty of Japanese food options here in Maumelle (2 food trucks and 1 full restaurant), this new addition has a few items no one else has…and I’m loving it!

MENU

The expansive menu can be found on their site. There are plenty of appetizers, a ton of sushi options, poke bowls, bento boxes, and then the typical hibachi dinners with one exception: you can get noodles instead of rice!

While I haven’t tried one yet, the bento boxes are supposed to be so good! I just can’t bring myself to not order those hibachi noodles!

FOOD

OMG Roll: $12.
Description: Sushi rice, spicy tuna, crab stick, avocado, topped with crunchy, sriracha aioli, eel sauce, scallion

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I’m a sucker for a fried sushi roll, so this is easily delicious! Even though it was packed hot, it was still plenty crunchy at home.

Spicy ahi poke bowl: $11.50

Source: https://hokaben.square.site/

This was such a great surprise. While I love making my own poke bowl so I can add to it what I like, this had just about everything I could want!  There was salmon in a spicy sauce, seaweed salad, avocado, onions, roe, wasabi, scallions, and more on top of a bed of rice. It was spicy! If you want a fresh, healthier option, go for one of these poke bowls. They are quite large, as well.

Hibachi Shrimp with Noodles: $10.25

While I love fried rice, these noodles are even better! So saucy and flavorful, plus they give you extra yum yum sauce to use as you please. I just dumped all of it over the noodles, veggies, and shrimp and mixed it all up. Absolutely delicious!!! These made for amazing leftovers, reheated in the microwave, as well….for days. This is a HEAVY box, full of more food than you would ever expect.

Hibachi Chicken with Noodles: $9.75

Everything I said about the shrimp holds true here. The chicken was perfectly cooked and so tender and flavorful. There was a lot more chicken here than there was shrimp in my shrimp box, so I’m going to stick to the chicken hibachi from now on.

Side Order of Grilled Vegetables: $4.75

I always order extra veggies to put with my leftovers so I’m not just eating noodles only for lunch.

Overall, you can’t go wrong here. There’s still so many things I want to try on the menu, but I’ll always have to get those hibachi noodles! I’ll get a bento box soon, though!

Food Review: Captain Express Hawaiin BBQ & Sushi in Maumelle

I got word this morning that the new take-out only restaurant, Captain Express Hawaiian BBQ & Sushi opened yesterday! So, guess what I had for lunch?

I found their vast menu online here. Mostly, the menu consists of Hawaiian bbq styles of chicken, beef, pork, and shrimp and mahi mahi. There’s also a few appetizers, such as egg rolls, gyoza, and spam musubi (like spam sushi). Then, they also have noodles, rice bowls, and plenty of sushi rolls to choose from as well. It was hard picking out what to get just Drew and me for lunch, but I did it!

This take-out restaurant is located in the old Dominos Pizza location, right off the Boulevard at 115 Carnahan Dr, Maumelle, AR 72113. When I pulled up, there were three others awaiting their orders as well.

More and more people were piling into the parking lot as I waited for my food. They told me it would be about 25 minutes and it ended up being about 30, which is great for day two of business and how busy they were.

I must say the moment I opened the door, the smells were INCREDIBLE. I knew then the food would not disappoint. So, can we get to the food yet?

We ordered the bang bang shrimp as an appetizer, and just one combo meal that consisted of Hawaiian bbq chicken and Hawaiian bbq beef. This combo comes with white or fried rice, sautéed veggies, and potato salad, plus two sauces.

The shrimp appetizer was $4.50, which is fair. There wasn’t much shrimp there, but it was tasty. It had a tempura batter and was slightly crispy with their bang bang sauce, all on top of iceburg lettuce. I probably won’t get this again only because I want to try the egg rolls and spam musubi.

The combo- holy cow. This photo does not do it justice. It was packed to the brim of food. Underneath the ridiculous amount of chicken and beef, there was even more rice than you can see. Then, underneath all of the rice is sauteed/ grilled veggies that included broccoli, cabbage, carrots, and onion.

To make it even better, everything was delicious! The fried rice was similar to what you get at a Japanese hibachi restaurant. It was very flavorful. The beef was very tasty steak, but divine when dipped in the brown sauce. I have no idea what kind it was, but it was thick and complimented the steak with even more umami. The chicken was tender and flavorful and went better with the yum yum sauce provided, in my opinion. The potato salad on the side was very creamy and a little bland. Though, to be fair, I’m not much of a potato salad kind of girl.

After tasting everything separately, we just mixed it all up, including the sauces. Gah, it was delicious. I devoured it like I hadn’t eaten in days.

After both Drew and I ate as much as we wanted, there was still this much left over. Guess what I’m having for dinner tonight? And I’m excited about it.