{"id":46889,"date":"2025-11-14T20:35:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T20:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/46889\/"},"modified":"2025-11-14T20:35:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T20:35:09","slug":"moa-kai-hawaiian-diner-brings-fuss-free-island-classics-to-colonial-drive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/46889\/","title":{"rendered":"Moa Kai Hawaiian Diner brings fuss-free island classics to Colonial Drive"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Moa Kai Credit: Matt Keller Lehman<\/p>\n

I walked into a diner one fall evening in a bit of a state. The better team losing a certain winner-take-all baseball game had me enveloped in a brooding stupor for nearly 48 hours. Not that I felt a need to act out a cinematic trope, mind you, but stepping into this diner, an empty diner at that, did just that. In my mind, I\u2019d park my keister on a backless red-leather stool, bury my head in a cup of black coffee, and sulk about the team\u2019s lost opportunities. Only this was Moa Kai \u2014 a bright, buoyant, aloha-spirited Hawaiian diner. Here, the backless leather stools gleamed, and the words \u201cHuli Pau\u201d lit up the tropical wallpaper behind the bar in vivid neon. But instead of coffee, it was h\u014dk\u016b poni, a purplish beverage of Kula white rum, ube syrup, coconut milk and lime juice, in which sorrows were drowned. Refreshing, yes, though it didn\u2019t help my mood much.<\/p>\n

But I gotta hand it to the server. He encouraged me to eat, even as they were readying to close Moa Kai in 25 minutes. So I landed on the most comforting item I could find \u2014 loco moco ($15), Hawaii\u2019s answer to Salisbury steak. Here the patty of beef is served over white rice and topped with a fried egg. A slather of brown gravy, sauteed onions and mushrooms, however, wasn\u2019t just mood-enhancing, it lent the dish proper diner status, and I scarfed it down.<\/p>\n

My disposition was somewhat more pleasant when I returned with a pal, himself in a state of lament thanks to the vagaries of fantasy football. Enter the healing effects of fried spam musubi ($7). The panko\u2019d block drizzled in a spicy sauce helped turn his frown the other way \u2019round, so that by the time we sunk our pearlies into soft, doughy manapua ($8) \u2014 steamed bao filled with char siu pork \u2014 our grins were evident. The restaurant\u2019s name, BTW, is in reference to moa \u2014 those treasured, feathered, feral chickens that freely roam the Hawaiian Islands.<\/p>\n

\"\"Moa Kai Credit: Matt Keller Lehman<\/p>\n

No surprise, then, that chicken is very much present on Moa Kai\u2019s menu. In the garlic fried noodles ($16), the morsels are flavored with shoyu; in the skewers ($10), they\u2019re marinated in teriyaki; in the Korean chicken ($15), they\u2019re battered, fried and sauced. And it\u2019s all so unfussy, so void of frills and so very diner to the core. Owner Hoi Nguyen, who operated The Mongolorian in this very space for a year before closing it last summer, and who also owns Poke Hana just down the street, wanted a concept that tapped into his love for Hawaiian culture. And Hawaii\u2019s culture, as I\u2019m sure you\u2019re now aware, is infused with plenty of Asian influence.<\/p>\n

Moa Kai\u2019s \u201cplate lunches,\u201d Hawaii\u2019s version of meat-and-three (or meat-and-two, in Moa Kai\u2019s case), offer heftier options, none heftier than kalbi ($24). The thick-cut ribs marinated in shoyu and pineapple juice are a tad sweeter than their Korean counterparts, but crowd-pleasing nonetheless. The ribs are served with sides of white rice flecked with sesame seeds and mac & cheese. Plate lunches can be enjoyed with everything from kalua pork and cabbage ($15) to panko-fried mahi ($20) to garlic shrimp ($17).<\/p>\n

The Portuguese also left their mark on the island cuisine, most notably the deep-fried donuts called malasadas ($8). To say the sugar-coated puffs filled with haupia (coconut custard) and lilikoi (passion fruit) left us cheerful would be somewhat true. To say they negated our blues would be more accurate. In fact, in true Hawaiian fashion, they were swept away.<\/p>\n

(Moa Kai Hawaiian Diner, 2217 E. Colonial Drive, 407-270-7916, moakaidiner.com<\/a>, $$)<\/p>\n

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Orlando\u2019s daily dose of what matters. Subscribe to The Daily Weekly.<\/p>\n

This article appears in Nov. 12-18, 2025<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Moa Kai Credit: Matt Keller Lehman I walked into a diner one fall evening in a bit of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46890,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[30596,30597,139,141,140,30598,18792],"class_list":["post-46889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-diners","tag-hawaiian-food","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-orlando-restaurant","tag-restaurant-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}