Skip to main content

Giovanni's Shrimp

People selling food out of old trucks and RV's are a pretty common site around the island. They usually look pretty run down and dingy, but sell amazingly good food. Some are better than others though and they usually develop a reputation among the populace. We know of a guava chicken tent (not a truck, just a tent) that absolutely makes me giddy with glee every time we pass near it. With this in mind, we finally stopped at one of the top shrimp trucks on the island:

Giovanni's.

We'd heard about Giovanni's dozen's of times. It and Fumi's are the two top shrimp trucks on the island if you're judging by number of times they are mentioned. Fumi's is about an hour away from us though, and Giovanni's is only about a twenty minute drive. Not a tough decision to make.

We knew that sometimes the wait in line to place your order can be thirty minutes or more, so we went for a late lunch and fortunately only waited a few minutes.

Giovanni's had three shrimp meals to offer as well as a garlic hot dog. Kerry, Ben, and I all ordered the shrimp scampi, Katie opted for the lemon butter shrimp, and Emily, because she is allergic to dairy, took the only option available to her, the hot and spicy shrimp. The hot and spicy shrimp comes with the scary warning, "Very Hot - No Refunds".

The shrimp scampi has LOTS of garlic on it (we love garlic, so this was good) and comes with two large scoops of rice as a side dish. Katie's lemon-butter shrimp was actually my favorite.

We amazingly got a table under an umbrella (the tables were all full when we arrived and Katie wanted to eat in the car, but no way were we taking all that rice and garlic in a vehicle).

Emily's hot and spicy no-refunds shrimp was definitely flaming hot. She was only able to eat three of them before she gave up. The rest of us ate one each and that was plenty.

So here's the verdict: The shrimp was very good. It was really tasty. But that was it. I was really expecting something phenomenal, I guess. I don't like white rice so one of my main disappointments was that there was no option of a green salad as a side dish. Also, we all ate with one hand, while fanning away flies with the other. They were everywhere. The one exception was that not one single fly landed on Emily's "no refunds" shrimp. We paid $70 to eat shrimp and fan flies. The kids ate a little of the rice.

Apparently, when they can't get a table, or maybe just to escape from the flies, some folks eat in their cars, so this sign has been placed in front of the parking lot:

Please turn your car engines off. People are eating and you aren't the only person here!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mammogram

I'm having my annual mammogram today. I always hear about how painful they are, but honestly, I've never thought they are that bad. Not the most comfortable, but not painful either. Every time I have a mammogram, I'm reminded of this story. It won the Erma Bombeck Writing Competition and I still get a kick out of it every time I read it. So I'm posting it here today for your reading pleasure: Erma Bombeck Writing Competition 1st place in Humor Category Winner Leigh Anne Jasheway of Eugene, Oregon "The First Time's Always the Worst" The first mammogram is the worst. Especially when the machine catches on fire. That's what happened to me. The technician, Gail, positioned me exactly as she wanted me (think a really complicated game of Twister - right hand on the blue, left shoulder on the yellow, right breast as far away as humanly possible from the rest of your body). Then she clamped the machine down so tight, I think my breast actually turned inside o...
2 comments
Read more

Sumida Watercress Farm

This week, we went on a field trip to Sumida Watercress Farm in Aiea. Ben was not happy about going with us. He grumbled the entire way there about me waking him up early to "watch things grow". Sumida Watercress Farm grows 75% of all the watercress produced in Hawaii. It has been run by the Sumida Family for three generations. One of the most interesting things about this farm is that the Pearlridge Mall was built around it because the Sumidas did not want to sell the land. It's very cool to look at this little farm and then see the city buildings all around it. One wall has the tails of marlins they have caught, each of which weighed over 600 pounds! One was even from an 800 pound fish! Mr. Sumida brought out a giant bowl of crawfish which live in the water. He showed the kids how to pick one up and where to hold it so it couldn't pinch them. Katie picked one up and it promptly twisted itself into a backflip and pinched her finger. We got to walk out through ...
1 comment
Read more

Japanese Fishing Shrine

Here's an interesting little spot we stopped to see. I'd passed this many times before and had never stopped to see what it was. Since GG and Sherry were here, we decided to check it out. There is a shrine of some sort with a statue and a carved rock. There was no information on sight as to what it is that I could find. There were flowers, food and incense left around the base of the shrine. There was a ceramic statue and a rock with a figure carved into it. None of the food was old or rotting (although plenty of it had clearly been pecked by birds) and the flowers were all fresh which made me think it must be cleaned and cared for on a regular basis. After we got home, I did some research and found this article about it from the Hawaii Star Bulletin, our local newspaper (I have edited out some bits, but otherwise the article is unchanged): "Maintenance" of the monument has been assumed by a group of Vietnamese Buddhists - Shingon Shu Hawaii, the Buddhist temple th...
2 comments
Read more