Back Home in Lahaina - Carson

Inflation sucks. I feel it most when eating out, as my beloved restaurants can barely feed a family of four for under a hundred bucks, and even a modest meal at McDonald's will cost more than the just-in-case purse-twenty that's tucked next to my phone. 

Affordable food exists if you know where to look, and Back Home in Lahaina has it. $10-15 will get you a meaty Hawaiian combo with generous portions and so many sides. 

Small island, big food. The Back Home Sampler is an appetizer-meal for two, a full platter with perfect pieces of crunchy fried chicken, meaty balls of Kalua Lumpia, crispy triangle wontons, sweet grilled beef on sticks, and even a dense Spam Musubi, cut into thirds. Delicious, all of it. 

Loco Moco has two big beef patties, salty brown gravy filling every nook and cranny, oozing with two egg yolks into a bed of rice. 

Fried Saimin with Hawaiian bbq beef is island chow mein, wok-kissed with chunks of meat and shreds of cabbage.

The Luau Platter marks my first Lau Lau, and I really enjoy this taro-leaf meat-ball. Pulpy green cradles shreddy, fatty pork, a bit of smoke, and a savoriness more subtle than its juicy Kalua Pork neighbor. This iteration is plenty pleasing, but it has a more braised-in-broth flavor than a buried-deep one.

There are so many sides, and all of them are awesome. A traditional chicken long rice is a cup of comfort soup, a simple chicken-based broth holding thin noodles which have coaxed the flavor out of the shreds of chicken breast. 

The ramen cabbage salad has some snap, the mac salad is always my favorite, and although I still don’t love Lomi Lomi, theirs is the first one in which I can see the salmon. 

That platter comes with a square of Huapia Cheesecake, which may be the most uniquely delicious dessert I've had this year. Haupia coconut flavors the gelatinous cream, a texture and taste as light and uplifting as it is sweet and surprising. I've never cared for coconut but this one makes me a convert.

Incredible place, irresistible island fare. Every bite is a spoonful of sandy beach and swaying trees, ukulele strings strummed to the setting sun. The South Bay has plenty of good Hawaiian, and this one competes with the best.