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Huli Huli Chicken Cheesesteak Collaboration with Joe’s Steaks
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When Kiki Aranita finally cried last September, it wasn’t because her restaurant had closed. Poi Dog, which the 36-year-old had opened with her former partner in 2013, had grown from a food truck into a popular fast-casual restaurant with a neon pink Aloha sign, her grandfather’s art on the walls, and a standing order for 30 to 40 pounds of fresh ahi a day.
Poi Dog was the first in Philadelphia to feature the local cooking of Hawaii, where her dad’s side goes back five generations, and it meant everything to her, but when Aranita decided to make its temporary pandemic hiatus a permanent closure in July.
“I blacked out,” says Aranita. “I went into organizational overdrive and wasn’t processing emotions. I turned into a complete robot.”
The peppers brought the tears. Months before COVID-19 ran away with the foot traffic and catering revenue Poi Dog depended on, Aranita had agreed to participate in the Forever Food Experience, an agrobiodiversity symposium with Pocono Organics, a 351-acre regenerative organic farm in the Pennsylvania mountains. The farm sent her a bushel of Red Rocket, Lunchbox, and Padrón chilies, “and some of them were so spicy I was literally crying,” she says.
Aranita had to figure out a way to use the chilies for the event, so she decided to make Chili Peppah Water: “[It’s] a really common condiment in Hawaii. Something you would make at home. Or restaurants would basically get a bunch of vinegar and then cram a few peppers, maybe some garlic or onions, in it, and just put it on the tables next to the soy sauce, typically into a repurposed Kikkoman container.”
6ABC’s FYI Philly catches up with Frizwit’s Ari Miller and Poi Dog’s Kiki Aranita on their pandemic project shifts.
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Philadelphians loved Poi Dog’s Hawaiian-style plate lunches, ahi poke, and Spam musubi since it opened in Rittenhouse Square in 2017, and for years before that during its life as a food truck. Luckily, the now-closed restaurant lives on with Kiki Aranita’s line of Hawaii-inspired sauces.
“I want people to encounter these sauces in places (grocers, shops, independent restaurants selling pantry items) that are reminiscent of what Poi Dog's restaurant was: small but an integral part of its community and maybe a little quirky,” she says. “I want people to have that feeling of discovery many of our customers felt when they happened upon our restaurant or food truck, but I want them to be creative with the sauces.”
The Maui Lavender ponzu sauce, made with lavender grown on the island, makes a lovely, aromatic dip for sushi and dumplings. Though since its recent launch, the chef notes she’s heard the sauce has been used to make cocktails, and even sipped straight from the bottle.
The Philadelphia Inquirer
We had to say goodbye to Poi Dog’s beloved ahi poke bowls when the financial hit from the pandemic closed the restaurant. But you can still enjoy a taste of its Hawaiian flavors. Starting Dec. 15, Poi Dog will offer two sauces online. The ponzu ($14) is made with lavender blossoms from Maui, steeped with dried bonito in Japanese yuzu juice, soy sauce, and rice vinegar. It’s a fun, floral soy sauce substitute for dipping fried dumplings and sushi or for seasoning a pan of noodles.
The Chili Peppah Water ($8.50), a staple condiment in Hawaii, lends a moderately spicy, vinegary tang to all sorts of food. It’s made with local hot and sweet peppers brewed in vinegar, with hints of ginger and a saltiness from Hawaiian Sea Salt. “We say, ‘Chili peppah water over everything,’ and ‘everything’ refers to rice, meats, macaroni salad, and vegetables,” says former Poi Dog co-chef and owner Kiki Aranita.
food & Wine’s communal table with Kat kinsman
A year ago, Kiki Aranita was in Hong Kong for a cousin's wedding when she heard the first rumblings about a virus that was highly contagious and beginning to spread. There's no way she could have known that just months later, she'd have to shut down her much-loved Philadelphia restaurant Poi Dog because of its impact. It was an agonizing decision, but the multi-talented chef, writer, and artist is finding purpose in the pivot with a line of condiments that are based in her Hawaii heritage, making objects that soothe her soul, and finding new ways to keep the Poi Dog dream alive and thriving. She joined Communal Table for an in-depth conversation about the practical, financial, emotional, and intellectual work it takes to be a chef in an age of unrest.
Upon ordering it, you will be presented with smoky, impossibly tender and juicy strands of pulled pork, blended with green cabbage, all ideally cooked in the steam of an imu, an oven built below the earth and lined with lava rocks. Crack seed? Is that a broken…seed? Is it drugs? No, it is the vast array of preserved fruits, sweets and mouth-puckeringly sour pickled things. Crack seed refers to a world of hopelessly addictive li hing mui, salted plums, fruit peels and ginger root drowned in bright red syrups.
Every family has an uncle or grandpa mixing concoctions in repurposed mayonnaise jars, throwing chili peppers from the garden into vinegar, leaving them in there and calling it a day. Some children are told repeatedly to not judge a book by its cover. My grandpa’s fridge taught me to never trust the labels of jars. The reddish-brown liquid could be noni juice, or it could be a deep-hued chili peppah water. It might also be soup or leftover hot cocoa. Read more.
After closing Poi Dog, chef Kiki Aranita’s food life turns to fiber art and bottled sauces by Craig LaBan, April 2021
