San Francisco isn’t exactly known for its affordability these days. But for one Sunset District takeout restaurant, budget-friendly meals are the heart of the menu.
Ever since it opened in March 2024, Little Aloha has been a neighborhood gem known for its focused menu of seven Hawaii-inspired entrees, like spam musubi, hurricane shrimp and decadent loco moco. For local families and nearby high school students, Little Aloha has become the go-to stop for hot meals priced between $6 to $16, before taxes.
“We purposely try to keep our prices low so that we can appeal to more families as well as students who typically aren’t going to have the biggest wallet,” Little Aloha co-owner Winchell Chow recently told SFGATE.
Chow and co-owners Brian Lew and Benson Chiu, who are all native San Franciscans, opened Little Aloha after traveling to Hawaii and falling in love with the cuisine. Chow said that during visits to Oahu and Maui, they explored off-the-beaten-path food trucks and mom-and-pop restaurants where meals were often less expensive than touristy spots and far more memorable. Among the standouts: fragrant garlic shrimp prepared from the popular Geste Shrimp Truck in the town of Kahului in Maui. Chow recalls that the food truck cranked out “miraculously” flavorful dishes that were also “so simple.” He knew that he wanted to bring a piece of Hawaii back to San Francisco, and thus Little Aloha was born.
“We have to use quite a bit of ingenuity to come up with a menu that will appeal to enough people and stay somewhat true to the flavors of Hawaii that we want to replicate,” Chow said…