Lookin' for reasonably priced eats in volume? Here are a couple of options.

STORTO'S DELI

Storto's has been stoking surfer energy cells on the North Shore for more than 30 years. Since May 15, however, as their ad says, they're "surfing the South Shore," too, at their new Kaimuki outlet on Wai'alae Avenue.

Subs are the thing here: hefty 8-inch half-sandwiches ($6.25-$8.25) or, for dawn patrollers who hit the waves without breakfast, ridiculously large 15-inch whole sandwiches ($12.50-$16.50) — with six meats, if you want 'em.

The style is vaguely New York, though when I think New York deli sandwiches, I think sandwiches that are piled much higher than Storto's tend to be. And I definitely don't think of the style of bread they use: a soft, sweet baguette-shaped loaf that struck several tasters as odd when the office pitched in for a free-for-all Storto's lunch. This bread is one of those love/not-so-much things; some tasters really liked it, some thought it was wrong.

The sweetish bread was especially disconcerting for the two of us who ordered tuna subs, since the tuna mixture was sweet, too. "Why would anyone want to do that to tuna?" my friend asked.

The general conclusion was that the softness of the bread made sense; the hefty sandwiches were easy to bite into. But most of us would have preferred a more savory bread. You can choose instead of the sub bread to have your sandwich on whole wheat, dark or light rye bread at no extra cost.

The Reuben always comes on sliced bread — rye, as it should be; with a pickle, as it should be; hot, as it should be; and topped with sauerkraut, once again, as recorded in the dietary laws that govern Jewish delis. This sandwich ($7.25) met with a grin from the person who ordered it, even though it had gotten a little cold on the ride back to the office.

Not so thrilled was the person who ordered an Ali'i (pepperoni, salami, pastrami) with dressing on the side. The sandwich-makers did remember to leave the dressing off the bread, but they forgot the on-the-side part.

Speaking of dressing, back up the truck, Wanda. You need to know that this is a place where you have to make some serious eye contact with the menu (on a board above the service area or on printed forms) because you'll be making lots of column A, column B, column C decisions: choose one to six different meats, one of five types of cheese, one of five types of dressing, one of four types of bread and (pant, pant!) extras such as avocado or extra cheese ($1). With these you can have a dill pickle ($1.20), potato salad ($2.25), chips ($1.05) or a slice of New York cheesecake ($5) or an ice cream float ($3.50, $4.50, $5.50).

And, final choice, you can sit at one of a half-dozen tables and look over the collection of vintage concert and surf meet posters, or watch the flat-screen TV, or take your sandwich to go, wrapped in memory-inducing pink butcher paper.

SWEET HOME CAFE

Sweet Home Cafe doesn't need you. But you may need them.

The 2-year-old restaurant, in a strip mall perpendicular to South King Street across from Stadium Park, is so busy the owner doesn't want publicity and declined to have photographs taken.

Dropping by at 5:30 on a Monday night, we almost didn't get a table because we lacked reservations.

But we just had to write about it anyway. Because this Chinese hot pot spot is worth making reservations for, worth negotiating some language barriers, worth figuring out a somewhat complex ordering system.

A friend of mine had raved about Sweet Home, calling it a nabe or shabu-shabu restaurant. Wrong. And it's not yakiniku, either, though it bears some relationship to all: tabletop cooking and lots of decisions to make.

Sweet Home showcases the distinctly Chinese approach to bubbling broth with all the trimmings, called hot pot or steamboat stew. Choose from a page full of broth types, several varieties of meats, three chill cases full of other additions and a half-dozen sauce options.

Pick your broth, add meat if you want and give your order to the waiter, then wander over to the glass-fronted refrigerators and pick from several dozen plates of ingredients (from out-of-the-ordinary — pig's ear, beef tongue or tripe, anyone — to more customary stuff as green vegetables, noodles, five kinds of tofu, various dumplings and meat- or fish-balls). The plates ($2.95, $3.75 or $4.75) are heaped high. Over it all, you can drizzle sauces such as Chinese-style steamed soy, Thai-style sauce or chili garlic sauce.

At tables all around us, families chattered in Chinese while stirring wide, shallow pots of broth set on round inductive burners that are hot only when they come into contact with metal, so you can't get burned.

We ordered spicy sour cabbage broth ("suan cai," Chinese sauerkraut; $8.95), which danced its fiery, tangy way across our tongues, but left no unpleasant burn behind. With this, we ordered beef, shaved paper-thin and was so well-marbled it melted into the broth. We loaded the soup with vegetables and udon noodles. Once we'd eaten our fill, we asked for takeout containers and the friendly hostess returned with three (three!) hefty tubs.

"Breakfast, lunch, dinner," she announced, thumping each one down.

Just remember to make reservations.