Kiki Aranita has actually been doing a bit of this and a bit of that given that her restaurant, Poi Dog Philly, closed in 2020 after 3 years of bringing Hawaiian customs to a Center City shop, and for 4 years prior to that, as a food cart on Temple University’s school.
There’s been fiber art, and there’s her writing, which brought her a James Beard election in 2015 for her essay “How It Feels to Close Your Restaurant for Good,” which appeared in Food & Wine.
Her primary gig nowadays is a line of bottled sauces under the Poi Dog brand name, consisting of the gingery Chili Peppah Water that Inquirer critic Craig LaBan said might “warm a dish of pulled pork or rice like a splash of sunshine,” along with Guava Katsu sauce. On Saturday at the Cherry Bombe Jubilee in New York, the yearly conference commemorating females and creatives worldwide of food and beverage, she will formally launch Huli Huli, a pineapple-based sauce and marinade.
Since Aranita is an author, I’ll let her explain the Huli Huli backstory: “I grew up in Hawaii Kai, a suburb of Honolulu. It was an idyllic place to spend one’s childhood — a couple miles away from Hanauma Bay, where my sister and I would swim in calm waters while fish nibbled at our toes. There is a Foodland at the halfway point between home and the road up the mountain to Hanauma Bay and on weekends, the perfume of smoke and roasting chickens would nearly reach our house. Huli Huli smoke was a siren call for us to line up — in the Foodland parking lot, but also the backroads of Kaneohe and the edges of the Swap Meet at Aloha Stadium — knowing that our fingers would soon be oil-slicked and blackened, tearing into chicken flesh, seasoned with soy, maybe some pineapple, and a lot of smoke.”
She says Huli Huli goes finest with chicken or mushrooms.
Aranita hopes this sauce (recommended retail: $17-$18) will sign up with the lineup of Poi Dog’s other sauces dispersed through Lancaster Farm Fresh to smaller sized groceries and specialized markets from New York to Virginia, consisting of such Philadelphia stores as Herman’s Coffee, Rowhouse Grocery, and Riverwards Produce Market.
Initially, however, Huli Huli will be available primarily in 64-ounce food-service sizes. Which raises an odd coincidence.
Her food-service redistributor is Ari Miller of C.W Dunnet in South Philadelphia, previously of Food Underground and 1732 Meats.
Aranita’s spouse, whom she wed in 2021, is likewise called Ari Miller, the previous chef-owner of Musi in South Philadelphia and now chef de food at Ivan Ramen in New York.
Miller the food supplier remains in her phone as “Ariyeh Miller,” while her spouse remains in there as “Ari Miller Lite” — a within joke due to the fact that she has actually been lobbying him to produce a beer with that name.
