Tanioka’s: Come for the Poke, Stay for Everything Else

There is a kind of business that people on Oʻahu talk about the way they talk about family. They don’t describe it as the best, although it has won its share of “best” lists. They describe it as theirs.

Tanioka’s Seafoods & Catering, on Farrington Highway in Waipahu, is one of those businesses. Ask a regular why they go, and the first answer is always the poke. Ask again, and you get a list: the ahi patties, the cone sushi, the fried chicken, the musubi picked up for the drive home.

That second answer is the more interesting one. It explains how a single seafood counter, opened in 1978 by a man without a steady job, grew into a company of more than 150 people without ever losing the feel of a neighborhood store.

A fish market or a gas station

In 1978, Mel Tanioka was 31 years old, a Wahiawā native and Leilehua High graduate with no steady job and a second child on the way. As he told the Honolulu Star-Bulletin years later, he had narrowed his options to two: a service station or a fish market. He liked to fish. He chose the fish market.

He didn’t rush it. Before he sold a single pound, he spent six months testing poke recipes on his wife Lynn’s co-workers. Then, in October 1978, he opened in a rented space of about 1,000 square feet in Waipahu. Their son, Justin, was born a month later, so Lynn couldn’t help much at first. Mel’s days started at 4 a.m. buying fish. Then he cut it, mixed the poke, worked the counter and did the paperwork.

Help came from family, and from a woman who used to sell seaweed to the market. Joann Abilla, working alongside Mel’s mother, Betty, shaped the seasoning that made the limu poke stand out. Mel hired her, and he later called her a key part of the company’s success.

Poke takes “good hands”

Mel’s philosophy of poke is easy to describe and hard to copy. In a 2016 interview with the Star-Advertiser, he explained that it starts with salt, balanced so the fish is neither too salty nor flat. Chili pepper or inamona can come after. The mixing should be gentle, folded the way you’d fold cake batter, so the poke stays light instead of smashed. It takes good hands, he said, and a lot of love.

The refrigerated case has held around 30 preparations in recent years, built on locally sourced ahi and aku. When Honolulu Magazine ranked the island’s best poke, Tanioka’s took the No. 1 spot. The writer named the ʻahi onion limu as the one poke he’d eat for the rest of his life, and the spicy marlin as the one to try if you never have.

The rest of the counter

Plenty of places on Oʻahu make good poke. What sets Tanioka’s apart is everything around it. The business started with fresh fish and simple okazuya dishes, the Japanese deli-style foods local families have bought by the piece for generations, and it never stopped building out that side of the counter.

Some of the most-loved items carry family names: Grandma Tanioka’s ahi patties, Grandma Sakuma’s maki sushi, Aunty Betty’s inari sushi. Around them sits a spread made for grazing. Fried chicken, mochiko chicken and garlic chicken. Shrimp tempura. Cone sushi. Spam musubi. Sweet potato haupia squares for afterward. There’s a pūpū platter for parties, and poke nachos when you want something hot.

The kitchen likes to play, too. In 2021 it rolled out poke tots: tater tots topped with a quarter pound of poke, unagi sauce and spicy mayo. Pastele tots and Hawaiian BBQ pork belly katsu came out alongside them. Tad Yamakawa, then the assistant general manager, told Honolulu Magazine that a pop-up at Ala Moana had shown how well made-to-order food sold, so they brought the idea home to Waipahu.

That’s the real pattern here. People come in for a pound of poke, and they leave with a bag. Every small treat in the case is one more reason to come back, on a different day, for a different craving. The business has been built, item by item, around that habit.

Growing without growing apart

By 1999, Tanioka’s was making about 300 pounds of limu poke and 200 pounds of shoyu poke a day, and catering had grown to roughly half the business. Today the company owns a 7,000-square-foot building and employs more than 150 people. It caters luaus, graduations, corporate events, funerals and weddings, and in 2023 the Star-Advertiser’s Hawaiʻi’s Best awards ranked it the No. 1 caterer.

Over the years there have been other outposts: downtown, in Waipiʻo, a pop-up at Ala Moana Center. But when people say “Tanioka’s,” they mean the counter in Waipahu. It still runs on the motto Mel and Lynn started with: Quality Foods with a Friendly Smile.

The second generation runs it now. Justin, born a month after the doors opened, is COO and oversees daily operations. His sister, Jasmine, is president and CFO. Mel and Lynn have stepped back after decades on the floor. In 2013, Mel was named a “Legend of Waipahu,” which seems about right.

The family also gives back in a structured way. Tanioka’s Charity Foundation supports hospitals, EMS, churches and schools, and its annual golf tournament raises money for local charities. In the first months of the pandemic, the business donated more than 3,500 bentos to health care workers.

How to do Tanioka’s

• Start with the poke. The ʻahi onion limu is the classic. If the spicy marlin is in the case, get some.
• Add two things you didn’t plan on. An ahi patty, a cone sushi, a few pieces of mochiko chicken. This is the whole point.
• Take a musubi for the road. You’ll be glad you did somewhere around the H-1.
• Hosting a party? Ask about the pūpū platter or the catering menu. Orders go through a coordinator, so call ahead.

The quiet strategy

Most businesses spend their energy getting customers through the door. Tanioka’s figured out something subtler a long time ago. The poke brings people in. Everything else gives them a reason to come back, to bring the family, to order the platter for the graduation party, to stop in on the way to a funeral or a wedding.

Mel Tanioka started with a fishing hobby, a few recipes tested on his wife’s co-workers, and a lot of 4 a.m. mornings. More than four decades later, his kids are running the place, and the line at the counter still looks a lot like a neighborhood. That’s not an accident. It’s the business.

Looking for more stories like this? Browse our Oʻahu business spotlights. And if you run a local business with a story worth telling, apply to be featured. It’s always free.

This spotlight draws on Tanioka’s own website and on reporting from the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Honolulu Magazine and the Punahou Bulletin. Hours were current at the time of writing and may change. All photos are illustrative and were not taken at Tanioka’s. Top photo: Openmalware.exe, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.