Nuka: Japanese sushi restaurant in Maui
On my recent cruise to Hawaii, we had a 2 day stop in Maui. On our second day in Maui, we spent our day driving along the road to Hana, a highway route with lots of different stops on the way to see. Because of this long route, we were pretty much on the other side of the island and just looked for whatever restaurant was on the way.
We had dinner at Nuka, a Japanese restaurant offering sushi, sashimi, rolls, small plates and noodles/soup. Note: all the prices listed in this post are in USD.
Drinks
Grapefruit shochu ($11)
For my cocktail, I order the shochu in grapefruit. Similar to the one at Kingyo, it requires me to do work. This can be a fun little activity for some, but for me I would rather not make my own cocktail when I am already paying for it lol. At least we know they use real grapefruit I guess.
After adding in the grapefruit juice, the drink was still quite strong but I liked it.
Food
This is everything my boyfriend and I ordered to share between us and 2 additional dishes my friends ordered that I tried a little of.
Karaage chicken ($11)
To start, we order the chicken karaage. These are lightly fried and quite juicy inside so I was content. I think it’s pretty hard to mess up chicken karaage. Portion size to price ratio was relatively ok for Hawaii (Nuka is on the pricier side), but if I convert this to CAD and Vancouver restaurants, it’s very expensive.
Prawn tempura ($14)
I love shrimp and I am a sucker for prawn tempura. The order comes with 4-5 pieces of prawn tempura which, again, is quite pricy for the portion. They are lightly battered and fried in rice bran oil, pretty tasty and met my expectations.
Sushi platter ($34)
The suhi platter comes with 9 nigiris – 2 of each for hamachi, salmon, tuna, snapper, and 1 shrimp. The nigiris are pretty fresh and keep in mind we’ve been stuck on a cruise ship for 10 days eating steak and caesar salad so we’ve all been craving some good sushi. The salmon is still not as fatty or good as BC salmon, but the tuna and hamachi were great.
The sushi platter also comes with a 9 piece tekka maki roll with tuna, so that was also quite nice.
Teriyaki chicken kushiage ($7)
Kushiage are grilled skewers and we chose the chicken teriyaki. The chicken was juicy and the teriyaki sauce was slightly sweet and savoury. Overall, these were 2 pretty good skewers and we finished them in a flash.
Uzura nigiri ($8)
So my friend ordered the uzura nigiri that comes in 2 pieces, expecting it to be quail eggs on a bed of ikura (salmon egg), but instead what came was actually just quail eggs on sushi rice. You lift up the shell and the quail egg yolk sits on this piece of sushi. It is super disappointing and not worth $8 USD.
Miso cream pasta + salmon ($22)
My friends ordered a miso cream pasta that uses spaghetti, garlic and miso and added on the salmon, making it $22. If you just want the miso cream pasta, it would be $16 but there would literally be nothing there except the noodles.
The portion size is actually pretty huge so definitely sharable with 2 or more adults. The sauce for the miso cream pasta was actually quite good. The salmon was cooked ok – not too dry but not too moist either.
Final thoughts
Loewe’s rating: โญโญ
Nuka was the first real Japanese restaurant we’ve eaten at since we got on our cruise. Since we are all from Vancouver, we were all craving some good sushi and on that degree, Nuka does have good quality fish for nigiri and sashimi but it comes at a higher price tag.
Out of everything we ate, I think the sushi platter is not a bad deal and the specialty rolls some of my friends got were also quite large. Fried small plates also met our expectations.
The only downfall is that we are probably too spoiled by how cheap and good Vancouver sushi and Japanese restaurants are. For the prices we paid, it just wasn’t as worth it if we compare to places we eat at regularly back home. But for Hawaii and Maui, I would say Nuka is an upscale and trendy izakaya style restaurant with good sushi.
Sincerely, Loewe