CLOSED | Hawaiian Grub Shack in San Jose
Update | Grub Shack Has Closed | Update
CLOSED | Grub Shack tl;dr
When I think of Hawaiian food I know it’s terrible to say but sometimes my mind just goes directly to L&L and those types of places with heavy rice plates and macaroni salad that will weigh you down preventing much movement in the foreseeable future after the meal.
Bringing Island Food to DTSJ
However, with that said, I love fresh poke (it’s one of my favorite dishes in general) and when I first heard about Grub Shack I was intrigued and bookmarked it immediately. Having had it on my list for so long, I finally got an opportunity to try the food when we were looking for something to eat on a Friday night while we were drinking at Iso.
Walking in, you can wafts of delicious food in the air! Looking at the menu I had a hard time deciding but ended up going with the Grub Shack special since it had a combination of a few things I wanted to order. The special came with Kalua pork, garlic shrimp, rice (brown or white option), macaroni salad and is topped with a fried egg!
A hearty meal but wow was it good! Portion sizes were definitely fair, a good amount of meat and the box was full! Even being a fairly large eater, I was only able to finish about 75% of the box before sharing with my other half.
Full Island Flavor
In terms of the actual quality of the food, the Kalua pork was filled with flavor, the macaroni salad was tasty (not heavy on the mayo, which I prefer) and rice, well it’s rice. The garlic shrimp while being plump I wish had more flavor.
My other half ended up getting the loco moco. Loco moco while hearty is not usually a favorite of mine simply because it just feels heavy. For me, theirs wasn’t anything spectacular and I probably wouldn’t order it again. I wish the meat was seasoned more and the gravy was actually a light gravy, different that what I normally see served with loco moco. If you’re in the mood for loco moco, I’d probably suggest having it at 4th St. Bowl instead.
We also ended up having a side of the fries with a sauce. Not sure what was in the sauce but I can only imagine that if it was topped with the kalua pork and crab which I’ve seen in some pictures, that would be an amazing Hawaiian poutine like concoction!
Overall I enjoyed the food and look forward to trying more of the menu, especially the poke since they were out that day!
CLOSED | Grub Shack
Have you tried their poke?
Do you have any other suggestions from their menu?
