Each Tuesday The Register reviews an area restaurant, with an emphasis on establishments where a couple can dine for $30 or less. Reader suggestions are welcomed.

Vallejo is loaded with fast food and ethnic restaurants. L&L Hawaiian Barbecue is a surprising blend of both.

L&L’s sign at Gateway Center (the Costco complex) promises a “taste of Hawaii” as the locals might experience it. This is the kind of Hawaiian food not usually found within the islands’ tourist resort compounds.

Hawaiians are famous for consuming vast amounts of Spam, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise to see Spam featured prominently on the menu.

There’s a Spam and egg sandwich, noodle soup with Spam and Spam appetizers. A sign behind the register even touts a Spam gift pack for $20.

Fortunately, L&L Hawaiian Barbecue does not put all its eggs in the Spam basket. This tiny eatery offers deep-fried or grilled chicken and fish, barbecued beef and chicken, beef short ribs, curried meats and a vast amount more.

Whole sections of the menu can appear baffling. Does everyone know that lau lau with Kalua pork translates to mean pork chunks wrapped in taro leaves with roasted pork on the side?

Or what exactly are the side dishes such as poi, lomi and haupia?

Menu illustrations help demystify some of the more indigenous offerings. Others, such as French fries, garlic shrimp and hamburgers, need no translation.

We arrived on a Saturday night. The place was packed with a mixture of Asians and Anglos, with most coming for takeout.

This is a bright, tiled decor, with a mini surfboard hanging from the ceiling, prints of islanders in native dress and a plaque boasting that this establishment, or perhaps an island cousin, won the Honolulu Star-Bulletin’s “Best Place for Hawaiian Barbecue” award in 2005. Soft Hawaiian music suggests a gentle place far, far away.

We chartered a familiar course, ordering “Hawaiian BBQ Chicken,” which the menu describes as Hawaii’s “hottest seller.” This $5.95 platter features boneless chicken that has been marinated in a proprietary barbecue sauce, then grilled.

In a mood for all things BBQ, we also ordered the seafood and BBQ combo — a $7.50 medley featuring fried shrimp and mahi mahi and short ribs.

Finally, on a healthier note, we chose a small serving of grilled mahi mahi for $4.50.

Ten minutes later, our number was called. We carried our clamshell containers back to our table and opened up.

The full dinners come with a big scoop of a creamy macaroni salad, an even larger amount of white rice and a token amount of lettuce lightly dressed. These form the base layer, with the meat and fish arrayed on top.

It didn’t take but a few bites to identify the true winners. The deboned barbecued chicken, which retained its skin, was spicy sweet and juicy. Hands down, it was some of the best we have tasted.

The grilled mahi mahi was moist and flavorful. With a lemon and tartar sauce served on the side, we were able to adjust the fish to our taste specifications.

In contrast, the fried mahi mahi was heavily breaded, which smothered the fish’s delicate natural flavor. This was fried fish at its most generic.

The fried shrimp were another disappointment. They looked big, but it was all breading.

The beef short ribs may well have been marinated in a house BBQ sauce, but they had been grilled to far less than the promised “perfection.”

The ribs were 95 percent bone and gristle. We took little mouse bites around the edges.

Judging from L&L’s use of macaroni salad, it must be a big seller on the islands. We found it largely flavorless. An acquired taste at best.

The combo plate included two strips of barbecue beef, which may have been a mistake since we had picked the short ribs. We didn’t complain. The beef strips were chewy and sweet.

It was unwieldy eating our fish and meat items on top of the rice, macaroni and lettuce stuffed into small Styrofoam containers. L&L offers plastic utensils as well as chopsticks.

Having identified what we considered to be winners, we would go back to L&L again and order what had worked best for us. Quantities were generous. Undoubtedly there are some discoveries yet to be made.

Spam, anyone?

L&L has two locations. The site at Gateway Plaza, south of Highway 80 at Highway 37, is below Costco, next to Jamba Juice and Quizno’s. It is open from 10:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. except on Fridays and Saturdays when it stays open a half hour longer.

A second outlet is at the Raley’s shopping center, 4300 Sonoma Blvd., facing Broadway. Hours are 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily.

Readers with tips about interesting places to eat should e-mail diningout@napanews.com