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Chef Makani walked me through the patty first: organic grass-fed beef, real wood fire and her own dry rub, which she wouldn’t tell me about without killing me. By itself it’s lightly salted, and you taste the char and the smoke from the wood. It isn’t packed tight either. That’s one of my pet peeves, when they mash a patty together and squeeze the flavor out. This one is loose.
Piku is Hawaiian for fig. She gets the figs drunk on port wine, then adds toasted hazelnuts, a fancy cheese, bacon and arugula spritzed with rosemary-infused hazelnut oil. Drunk figs make for happy figs. That needs to be a T-shirt. You get the crunch of the hazelnuts, the gooey cheese, the sweet figs and a little bitterness from the arugula, and every bite is different. Some bites the figs hit you first, some bites the salt comes through.
The rustic fries start as organic whole potatoes, cooked twice in rice bran oil, with house aioli and parsley. The aioli has a nice tang that hits the back of your tongue. I discriminate on french fries, because so many people do them wrong, and these are right. Then a salted caramel shake with bacon showed up out of nowhere, and I dipped my fries in it.
If you’re in Santa Monica, go to Pono Burger. The chef is a genius, and she’s hilarious.
Some meals here are on me, some are hosted. Either way, it is disclosed and the score is mine. If this helped you decide where to eat, a coffee helps keep it going.
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