M&W Drive Inn
October 9, 2009 by Jo McGarry
Filed under Featured, Main Course
Fried rice is a specialty at M&W Drive Inn.
There’s no better example of the effect the economy is having on a large section of the restaurant community than at Kaneohe’s M&W Drive Inn.
In the days before the economic collapse, M&W was so busy, the ramshackle roadside restaurant served up plate lunches from dawn till dusk. Sometimes owner Tommy Tsun would be so rushed at lunchtime he’d have orders stacked twenty deep for his reasonably priced plate lunches. Construction workers, office staff and those in search of Hawaii’s true ‘hole-in-the-wall’s’ would pull over from the busy main road for an all-day breakfast or some home made roast pork and gravy.
“All of the offices over there were full,” he says, pointing across the street and down towards Windward Mall. “Now look.”
Teri chicken comes in numerous combination plates.
It’s a sobering sight. M&W is now surrounded by empty office buildings and halted construction projects. “Sometimes the construction workers and the carpenters, they’d come at lunchtime and order 15 plates lunches at a time,” says Tommy. “It was so busy.”
He took over the ownership of M&W thirteen years ago, shortly after arriving in Hawaii from Hong Kong where he owned a seafood restaurant and specialized in Hong Kong style Chinese food. Some of the influences from his previous life appear on the menu. “There are some Chinese dishes here,” he tells me, pointing out colorful menu board photographs of red pepper and char siu, ma po tofu and sea bass with broccoli.
The menu is vast, especially when you consider the tiny kitchen and limited number of employees. 50 or so photographs of Tommy’s dishes are displayed on plastic wrapped boards that cover the outside of the kitchen; many of them recognizable as favorite plate lunch standards, other contenders for some of the most unusual combination plates in town.
Char siu and roast pork are made in house.
Pepperoni pizza, for example, comes with sides of mac salad, French fries and hamburger steak.
“I sold ten of them in the first day,” he says of his carbo-loaded combinations. “People like them – and my French fries are famous because they’re so good.”
He’s created a host of new dishes because, he says, for a long time people only thought of M&W as a place to get a hamburger or some spam and rice.
“I created many many menu items because when people come they are surprised. They like to see that we have local style food – and Chinese style – and now we have pizza and French fries too.”
Top selling dishes include chicken katsu, and roast pork with gravy that comes smothered with gravy and accompaniments of rice.
It’s humble home cooking, of that there’s no doubt. The tables fronting the ordering counter slope towards the road, there’s no speediness to the service, but its friendly and sincere and you can see that everything is being made from scratch. There’s excellent char siu ( made by Tommy) and some excellent fried rice, topped with golden fatty chunks of pork. It’s a big seller and a dish that’s been popular for years.
My French fries are famous around here,
If you do stop by, check out the unbeatable value that a breakfast plate offers.
The ultimate drive through - a customer orders while still on his bicycle.
A breakfast combo of two eggs, two scoops of rice, one slice of bacon, one link sausage and one Portuguese sausage is just $4.94; for larger appetites two eggs, two scoops of rice, one slice of bacon, one slice of spam, one link sausage and one Portuguese sausage with a side order of hamburger steak is just $6.29 . These dishes, are served all day.
Entrees start at $4.60 and the highest priced menu item is $7.95. Most combo plates are around $6.95.
With its distinctive green trellis fencing and lopsided tables, it goes without saying that M&W is one of those fast disappearing hole-in-the-walls, the kind that those of in search of comforting carbs and old fashioned flavors love so well. And the kind that are struggling to survive this economy.
Owner Tommy Tsun has been making plate lunches and local food for more than 14 years.
But you have to admire Tsun’s spirit. His prices haven’t changed in years, despite the increase in fixed costs that all restaurants face, and he plans, when the economy picks up, to build a three-story market, restaurant, and shave ice stand on the site where his ramshackle green restaurant stands today.
“I will just keep my prices very cheap and serve good food all day long,” says Tommy, “that’s what my customers need right now.”
M&W Drive Inn
45-1106 Kamehameha Hwy
Kaneohe 96744
235.6226
