Fish Express in Lihue, Kauai and a Hawaiian Thanksgiving

During our excursion to the Kapaa Farmers' Market, we stopped in at Fish Express in Lihue. The goal was to pick up some poke, as well as to get some fish to cook up for Thanksgiving dinner.



We ended up getting their Inamona Poke and their Spicy Ahi Poke.

Inamona Poke (sometimes called "Hawaiian" Poke) is named after the kukui (candlenut) paste that is used in it.The purple stringy bits are Limu, which is the Hawaiian word for seaweed or algae.



The seasoning was fairly subdued, but the texture of the fish was nice and we enjoyed the contrasting, fresh crunch of the Limu.

The Spicy Ahi Poke wasn't very spicy, but it did have good flavor to it



I liked both of these pokes more than the one we got at Koloa Fish Market - primarily from a texture perspective.

We also picked up some smoked marlin:



It was tasty, but had a bit too much of the sweet teriyaki flavor for me.

Lastly, we picked up a beautiful piece of Opah (Moonfish) as the centerpiece for our Thanksgiving dinner:



Given our bounty of local fresh fruit, we made several fruit salsas to go with the fish, and a definitively non-local cranberry sauce for a holiday addition.

Continuing the Thanksgiving feel, we also made up a batch of our traditional bread stuffing (ok, technically 'dressing' since it wasn't stuffed in anything, but it had the right flavors of sage and thyme).



The fish tasted so good all by itself that the fruit wasn't really needed.

Rich and completely savory, the Opah was a great stand-in for Thanksgiving turkey.

Fish Express
3343 Kuhio Hwy
Lihue, Hawaii
808-245-9918