Shrimp Shack in Punaluu: Oahu, Hawaii

While we're on the Hawaiian theme, I'll have to post about my favorite Hawaiian hole in the wall. On the side of the Kamehameha Highway, on the North Shore of Oahu, there is a yellow truck. Out of the back of that truck are served some of the greatest culinary works of art to ever come out of a yellow truck. Okay, that might be setting the bar a little low - not a lot of culinary works of art come out of a yellow truck. Anyway, it's great "fast food".

The Shrimp Shack is, as I mentioned, a yellow truck parked by the side of the road.

The menu is pretty short (written on a surfboard - see picture), and frankly, I haven't had everything on the menu. The first couple of times, I got shrimp and crab combinations. However, the last time, we just got shrimp - their "famous" sauteed shrimp and their coconut shrimp. If you've never had coconut shrimp in Hawaii, you should. Both of these shrimp dishes are excellent. The service is always friendly, in true North Shore fashion - I had pretty long conversations with the proprietor a couple of times that I was there. But the real reason to go is for the food.

The plates are simple - in fact, they're styrofoam. Each one has a couple of scoops of rice (pretty sure she uses an ice cream scoop to dispense), and a pile of whatever kind of shrimp you ordered.

The shell-on sauteed shrimp are more work to eat - you have to follow their "complicated" instructions ("suck, peel, dip, and eat") in order to get the full flavor.

There's a little heat in the sauce they use to sautee - provided by red chili flakes, I believe. There's also a good garlic flavor, and quite obviously lots of butter (you can see the remnants of it on your plate when you're finished).

Most of this flavor is on the shell, since they are sauteed shell-on. That's why you have to suck on them before you peel and eat them. The coctail sauce is good - proper amount of horseradish heat, very tangy. However, it's frankly unnecessary. They are good as-is.

The coconut shrimp were excellent as well. They come with a sweet dipping sauce - I don't recall what kind of sauce it was, but it complemented the (coco)nutty flavor of the breading perfectly.

Could I do this at home? I have actually done the sauteed shrimp at home, and they turned out decent. However, I don't have shrimp that just came out of the ocean to start with, I don't have the ocean breeze blowing across my picnic table, and I definitely don't have fresh-from-the-tree coconut to bread my coconut shrimp. There is something to be said for the experience.

Criticisms? The only one I could come up with is, by the time you're finished eating it, it might not be hot anymore. The cool breeze off the water, the fact that you're eating outside, and the fact that you have to peel each shrimp all conspire to cool off the food before you're finished. That breeze also means that you need to hold on to your plate sometimes if you don't want it to blow away. That's all part of the experience, though. All in all, I think it's a "don't miss" if you're on Oahu. I know that there are other shrimp trucks along the side of the road, but this is the "original" one, and it's the only one that I've been to. I recommend that you go there too.

This one gets 4 1/2 hungry emoticons: