There’s the captivating visage of a giant alligator painted on the ceiling, Spam sushi on the menu and tropical drinks at the bar at Little Aloha Hawaiian BBQ, a new addition to the increasingly diverse range of restaurants in Mid-City.
Opened in September at 2901 Tulane Ave., it’s a restaurant with a dive bar feel, and prices to match.
The opening menu is a list of refreshingly affordable barbecue plates and other Hawaiian dishes, plus burgers, fries and wings. Most dishes range from $5 to $14, and domestic beers and well cocktails are $3 at the bar during all hours.
Barbecue plates, sandwiches, Spam musubi and cocktails are on the menu at Little Aloha Hawaiian BBQ in New Orleans.
Staff photo by Ian McNulty
Hawaiian barbecue is grilled, not smoked. The key is in the marinade, a mix of soy, pineapple, ginger, garlic and chilies. The appeal lands somewhere between Korean barbecue and teriyaki.
The barbecue chicken is tender with a mix of sweetness and char from the grill. Kalbi beef short ribs peel from the bone with a pleasing chew, sweet but not sticky, fragrant with garlic. Get these on a mixed platter with rice and a creamy macaroni salad that’s crunchy with red onions.
The menu has loco moco, the notoriously filling dish of gravy-soaked hamburger steak over rice and topped with an egg, and also kalua pork, a staple of the luau barbecue pit, like a Carolina pulled pork with more of the fatty bits mixed in.
Traditional Hawaiian food like this is not light, but it is ideal drinking food.
Spam musubi is a classic Hawaiian snack served at Little Aloha Hawaiian BBQ restaurant and bar in New Orleans.
Staff photo by Ian McNulty
That brings up the Spam musubi. It’s a staple of Hawaii’s melting pot food culture, in this case Japanese and industrial-age Americana via Polynesia. It’s a bar of sushi rice filled with a slab of grilled Spam, trussed with a nori wrapper. It’s dense, salty, porky, snappy from the grill, a little sour and delicious.
An alligator dive
Most of the drinks are under $10 on a list of margarita variations and tropical drinks, like the whiskey tiki sour (Buffalo Trace bourbon, pineapple and tiki bitters).
Little Aloha Hawaiian BBQ, a restaurant and bar in New Orleans, serves Hawaiian flavors and burgers at lunch, dinner and late night.
Staff photo by Ian McNulty
Little Aloha began as a pop-up from John McSpadden, a native of Hawaii, from the big island. He moved to New Orleans in the years after Hurricane Katrina for construction work. When jobs dried up during the pandemic, he started cooking and selling dishes he missed from home, working a circuit of bars in the Bywater and Uptown.
He was back in construction, and working on repairs of the Tulane Avenue building, when he got the idea to develop a restaurant and bar.
John McSpadden holds Pearl the dog at his Little Aloha Hawaiian BBQ restaurant and bar in New Orleans.
Staff photo by Ian McNulty
The address has been home to a succession of bars through the years and was once the great, almost underground Honduran restaurant Telemar (today, the great and very popular Honduran restaurant Tia Maria’s Kitchen shares the block).
He built a little makeshift beach hut to frame the bar and brought in some plants for a divey/tropical look. The centerpiece of the bar, though, is on the wood slate ceiling, where local artist Lillian Aguinaga created the striking alligator fresco.
A swamp scene decorates the ceiling at Little Aloha Hawaiian BBQ, a restaurant and bar in New Orleans.
Staff photo by Ian McNulty
From the vantage of a bar stool or a low booth, with a musubi and longneck Kona lager at hand, it presents a massive predator serenely floating by the water’s surface between water hyacinth.
Beyond the front bar, there’s a small stage where the restaurant will periodically host bands or parties, and there’s a rear room McSpadden plans to equip with pinball and other games.
Little Aloha Hawaiian BBQ
2901 Tulane Ave., (504) 756-5444
11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 11 a.m to 11 p.m. Friday through Saturday
Dining and Cooking