Since the place that Root works at did a contract over at the Pastele Shop on School and Gulick, he scored a freebie plate a few months back that I got to sample. The Pastele was really good, and the gandule rice it came with was good too. The tossed greens that came with the plate were fresh and a voluminous, and the dressing was good too. Ckucke was in the area, so he picked us up lunch from there. I gave the Pastele Moco a try. I saw it on the menu and it sounded like an awesome idea. Combine Loco Moco and Pasteles? How could you go wrong? Fabio made it by earlier in the month and had given it his seal of approval. For those who don’t know what a pastele (“pah-tay-lay” – the “s” is silent) is, it the Caribbean/Central American equivalent of the Mexican tamale. This steamed dish arrived in Hawai’i with Puerto Rican immigrants during the sugar plantation days. It uses ground plantain or green bananas in place of the cornmeal since this dish hails from more tropical regions where corn does not grow well.
The Pastele Moco was constructed as a bed of rice topped with a pastele, which was then overlaid with two fried eggs and a Puerto Rican style “gravy”. The brief menu description called it “stew gravy”, so it must be the sauce that their “pastele stew” comes in. I am not certain, but it appeared and tasted like it contained ground chorizo sausage. The Pastele Moco came with a large scoop of macaroni/potato salad. I would have preferred a tossed salad or maybe tried the codfish salad, but the mac salad was fine. In all, I’d give it an A-. The pastele was a nice size and had a nice texture. Jeff said it was smoother than Yama’s Fishmarket’s pastele, but it was smaller also. He preferred the coarser texture of the Yama’s pastele: I’m more used to the smoother texture (Maui ‘das why?). In all honesty though, this delicious creation looks really awful. No… I won’t say what it looks like… Just no.
Three-and-a-half out of four gravy covered monkeys
About $9.70 USD after State sales tax
Highly recommended
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