Ono Korean BBQ

For a great slash and go Korean meal in styro, the ram goes to the Kaimuki Shopping Center. Bunkered below Columbia Inn is a combo Japanese-Korean takeout place that does both inside-out crab and mayo maki and bulgogee. Most of the action is on the Korean side. The workers are multitaskers and can easily slide back and forth.

The sushi side of Ono has an open kitchen and you can watch them stuff and roll their morsels of goodness. The Korean side is curtained and cloistered. No one knows what is going on back there. Styro containers filled with rice and three or four choices of vegetables slide behind the curtain, only to slide back out, minutes later, heaping with Meat Jun or Kalbi. It’s like the mystery at Rainbow Drive Inn. How do they get that BBQ steak plate back to you in thirty seconds flat? Is the meat precooked and then microwaved? Do they have a poor soul with an asbestos glove and a acetylene torch scorching the meat? The kitchen at Rainbow’s is also blocked from view. One of these days we’ll find out. No matter how it’s done, the result is delicious.

Now a little primer on how to make your veggie selections. You order a full sized meal and you get your choice of four. A mini entitles you to three. So you stand in front of a vast array of choices and the server is telling you, under her breath, to move it cause the line of hungry patrons are getting antsy. Older, boring people will make healthy choices to go along with their oil-ladened kalbi: tepid bean sprouts, tasteless boiled cabbage, bitter watercress, and for some spice, sweetened and slightly hot strands of daikon. Boring. Most men forget they’re eating Korean and try to localize their meal: two orders of mac (that’s macaroni salad), won bok kim chee and chunks of potato cooked in a mystery sauce. This is a free country, but this is a carbs to the max meal. My eating partner normally orders a mystery vegetable that has been kim-cheed, a gruesome clump of seasoned black sea weed and the bean sprouts. If they had offered broccoli in any style, she would have ordered that. What does the ram say? Hey, this is a Korean meal and it should be all-Korean. The ram normally orders a double order of their sweet cucumber kim chee, a single order of the won bok kim chee and taegu - seasoned, spicy codfish.

Some question the authenticity of these fast-food Korean places. I say pooh pooh to them. What do you want for a few bucks? A view of the DMZ? The food at Ono’s is delicious and economical. What more can you ask.