Dining Scene
Lunch Break: Relish hot dogs? Get your buns to Joe's

By Catherine E. Toth
Advertiser Staff Writer

Joel Flowe sells Polish, Cajun and smoked hot dogs, as well as sodas and chips at his umbrella cart on Mililani Street near the old downtown post office. Three bucks gets you a combo. Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser

Lazy afternoons, lounging at the beach, eating shave ice.

Lunch was the perfect combination of hot dogs, chips and lemonade.

Well, ditch the daydreams and get yourself to Joe's Hot Dogs, a shiny little hot dog stand nestled between the Federal Building and Ali'iolani Hale on Mililani Street.

For $3 you can indulge in a hot dog — ketchup, mustard, relish, onions, sauerkraut — with your choice of chips and a drink. The dogs, done as New York-style as possible in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, were pretty standard: Boiled not fried, juicy not crunchy. It's more the fact that you're eating a hot dog from a stand in the middle of a workday than the actual meal itself that makes the lunchtime experience so good.

And while you're there, chat with the owner, Joel Flowe. (Yes, that's his real name.) The New York native has been towing his stand from Kane'ohe — over the Pali, no less — to the downtown street location since March 2000, five days a week.

You can tell he loves it when the regulars call out to him by name, their orders already being prepared as they walk toward the stand.

So look for the blue and yellow umbrella and forget your office woes for just an hour. Grab a hot dog and sit under a tree.

After all, it's summer.

Hours: Around 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays.