Anything but poke. At this point, it’s great to see people serve Hawaiian food and pivot from a trend that’s draining the seas. At Broken Mouth in DTLA’s Fashion District, Hawaiian-born chef husband Timothy Lee and front of house partner/wife Louise specialize in plate lunches. The couple serves star proteins like garlic butter shrimp and meat jun (egg-battered ribeye) with potato-mac salad and sticky purple Korean-style rice.

Broken Mouth is a play on the Hawaiian saying for satisfying food, broke da mouth. The restaurant also takes fried chicken sandwiches seriously. The couple clearly doesn’t mess around with another island classic, SPAM musubi. Yes, SPAM is the savory canned pork loaf that became a popular staple on Pacific islands like Hawaii and Guam during World War II. In this case, Broken Mouth cooks griddle SPAM slabs in a considerable amount of oil. They wrap the seared results in nori with savory furikake and more of that glutinous purple rice. I’m not sure that you can find a version of SPAM musubi quite like this in Hawaii, but hopefully island inspired food this good takes hold in Los Angeles.

Dose of Vitamin P spotlights my favorite pork dish from the previous week.