I’m sitting at a picnic table in the Hawaiian sun, searching for the mahi mahi. My plastic fork probes a heaped paper plate to find where the fried fish is hiding – as it turns out, it’s under two scoops of white rice, a sphere of macaroni salad gluey with mayonnaise, a breaded chicken breast and two palm-sized cutlets of teriyaki “meat.” (The Rainbow Drive In menu is vague; it could be beef, but I think it’s pork.)

I finally put tines on the fish and a few shreds of raw cabbage, which is the only green in sight besides the painted cinder blocks and cracked tiles. I regret not ordering my mixed plate “with gravy” and with “chili on the rice,” like the woman in front of me. She weighed about 300 pounds, apparently a regular who looked like she really knew what she was doing.

As demented as this meal might seem to fast-food-vilifying, Atkins-indoctrinated mainlanders, it’s common fodder on Oahu. At US$5.90, this one was on the pricey side for a huge, cheap meal. It’s called “plate lunch,” a delicacy served at snack shacks, drive-ins and fast-food joints across the island.

Honolulu is the land health food forgot. Its streets are crowded with greasy spoons, noodle shops, burger joints, Korean barbecues and bakeries. In one of the last beachheads of Spam, you can buy two musubi (giant, nori-wrapped nigiri sushi topped with canned meat slabs) and a Big Gulp at 7-Eleven for US$2.89. For breakfast, locals eat something called a loco moco (Spanish for “crazy booger”): white rice, a hamburger patty and a fried egg, bathed in gravy. And Hawaiians love their plate lunch.

“Hawaiians are big eaters,” shrugs Eddie Flores, the owner of the biggest plate-lunch chain, L&L Drive-Inn, a wry, wiry guy wearing a bright Hawaiian shirt under his blazer. I assumed that “plate lunch” came from the same linguistic and culinary melting pot as “blue plate special.” But local lore – and scholars like the University of Hawaii at Mãnoa ethnic studies professor Jon Okamura – say it evolved from the lunch-hour bento boxes of Japanese plantation workers. “The food is more Japanese than anything else. It’s really a fusion of Asian-American food,” says Flores.

At a gleaming new L&L outlet by the upscale Ward Center mall, Flores lays out some plate-lunch specialties: smoky shredded kalua pork, crisp-shelled garlic shrimp, grilled short ribs and panko-breaded chicken katsu strips. I break into meat sweats. Everything is delicious, cooked to order and piping hot – so hot, Flores claims the addition of a bed of cabbage evolved to keep the food from melting its Styrofoam container.