Puka Dog, Poipu, Kaua’i

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Puka Dog, Poipu, Kaua’i

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Puka Dog, Poipu, Kaua’i

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The rods that toast the buns :: Puka Dog, Poipu, Kaua’i

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John at Puka Dog, Poipu, Kaua’i

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Puka Dog, Poipu, Kaua’i

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They spelled it right! :: Puka Dog, Poipu, Kaua’i

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Puka Dog, Poipu, Kaua’i

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Puka Dog, Poipu, Kaua’i

John had seen this special on the Travel Channel about hotdogs and all the different types around the country from kosher dogs, to the Chicago dog, to LA, etc. and one of the show’s favorite dogs was a Hawaiian-style hotdog. We’d never had one before, any of us, so when we saw Puka Dog in the Poipu Shopping Village, John became obsessed!

Puka dog has these rods that they put an uncut bun on and it makes a hole and toasts the bun from the inside out. Then they slide the dog in along with your choice of condiments.. actualyl, here’s the proper way to order:

  1. Choose your dog: Polish Sausage or Veggie Dog
  2. Choose a secret garlic lemon sauce: Mild, Spicy, or Hot
  3. Choose a tropical relish or traditional. Traditional is ketchup, mustard, guava sweet pickle relish. Tropical relishes are Kaua’i Special (mango relish), Pineapple Field (pineapple relish), Polihale Sunset (papaya relish), Coconut Beach (coconut relish), Waimea Canyon (banana relish), Na Pali Cruise (star fruit relish), and Poipu Beach (guava relish).

I got the Polish Sausage, Kaua’i Special with Mild Garlic Sauce and some lilikoi mustard. Here’s the thing, we all wanted to love this. The concept was brilliant! Sweet relishes with spicy sauce and a hotdog, all wrapped in a neat package. But they just didn’t pull it off right. Our complaints:

  • The sausage was too small in comparison to the bun. Look how big the bun is! And there’s just a skinny little dog in there. At then end you’re basically just eating bun soaked with condiments.
  • When you think relish you think chunks. Mango relish, coconut relish, pineapple relish.. they should all have chopped up fruits, like a pickle relish or salsa does, right? Except this relish was more like sauce. They just squeezed it into the hole with the hotdog. And it was wayyyy sweet and overpowering.
  • Some of us thought that the garlic sauce was a fatty mess and that it was just fatty mayo with way too much garlic. Fatty mayo + fatty sausage = bad hot dog.

We talked about how much we loved the concept but not the execution so much that I think this will be our next business venture. I can’t disclose all the changes we talked about making or what we’d call our restaurant, because it’s confidential (wink, wink).

One plus for Puka Dog was that the fresh lemonade was the only drink you could order and it was awesome. Also awesome was the fact that they spelled my name right without me having to spell it out.

After the Puka Dog letdown we laid around by the pool to rest off our Puka overload… mostly a carb overload from that big bun and the Maui chips we had. Btw, “puka” means “hole” in Hawaiian. Even though we had some complaints about the place, it didn’t stop John from having a second dog, or buying a Puka Dog tshirt, or declaring that when he got a dog for a pet he was going to name it Puka and call it Puka Dog.

5 thoughts on “Puka Dog, Poipu, Kaua’i

  1. Hey MichelleB,
    Your info on Puka Dogs was very observant and honest. I am looking for a business to retire into. I would be interested in any other ideas you have.
    Thanks

  2. The family and I travel to Kauai yearly and Puka Dog is always on the to do list. I agree with you on your complaints and I often thought that the idea would work well in California.
    I was just curious if you ever did pursue the business venture of starting up a better more improved Puka Dog here on the mainland?

  3. Hello,
    My husband and I went to Kawui a few weeks ago. I also saw the Puka Dog on the travel channel, and put it as a priority “to do” while we were there. I mean who would put tropical fruit on a hot dog. Anyways we were staying on the north east side of the island and it took us a while to finally get down to Poipu. But I loved it! I do agree that the polish dog was too small and the last part was all bun and condiments, but I would so eat it again!!!

    Amber
    Salt Lake City, UT

  4. We were in Kaua’i in mid-September and stayed in Outrigger Kiahuna Plantation in Koloa. We went to the shopping center across the street and had Puka Dogs with coconut relish. It was spectacular and now we are in search of the coconut relish. While we may not be able to reproduce their preparation technique, we would like to try. If you know how we can get the coconut relish…

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