CITY GUIDES | HAWAI’I
Moon & Turtle on the Big Island is Where Smokey Sashimi is the Calling Card
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By Mei Chen | Feb. 16, 2026
Moon & Turtle is chef Mark Pomaski’s small, downtown Hilo restaurant where the menu changes, but the point stays the same: local seafood, cooked with swagger.
Pomaski opened the place in 2013 with his wife, Soni, and his brother, Tedd, and he picked up a 2022 James Beard semifinalist nod for Best Chef: Northwest & Pacific, which shows the kind of attention he’s getting from this small corner of the Big Island.
Start with the smokey sashimi, the dish everyone talks about for a reason: today’s local fish—often ahi—dressed with kiawe-smoked soy, Hawaiian chili pepper water, and extra-virgin olive oil, which makes sashimi taste faintly smoky in a way that brings out the freshness.
The rest of the menu tends to orbit the same “Hilo, but traveled” sensibility: seafood dumplings wrapped up in house-made fishcake wonton, Saigon scampi built around sweet prawns and butter, and beef tataki sushi that treats dry-aged steak like it belongs on rice with dashi ponzu and daikon.
The menu is a moving target, but the point is steady: this is what a serious neighborhood restaurant looks like in Hilo.
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