Little Pickle, owned by Kyle and Josephine Wai Lin, is not, in fact, a specialty pickle shop. The business, located next door to the husband-and-wife team’s ice cream shop, Please Come Again, just celebrated its grand opening on Saturday.
“‘Little Pickle’ is actually a nickname for our 7-year-old son,” Kyle explains. “We call our five-year-old son ‘cornichon,’ so he’s the mini version of little pickle.”
While the biz does sell pickles — “We love pickles, and we serve local pickles from Ho Farms,” Josephine says — its primary specialty is gourmet hot dogs.
These aren’t your typical Costco food court hot dogs, Kyle notes.
“They’re all-beef, pasture-raised hot dogs with no hormones and no antibiotics,” he says. “Nowadays, a lot of people are health conscious and don’t want to put ultra-processed meats in their body. This (what we’re serving) is a super high-quality hot dog; we hunted down the perfect bun, as well.
“It took us months,” Kyle adds. “It’s so hard to find buns that don’t have preservatives. We found a local baker who could do them, and they were perfect. It was a journey to get there.”
The journey began before the couple got the space next to their ice cream shop. While they do love hot dogs, Kyle and Josephine say they were trying to come up with a savory concept that was both affordable and family friendly.
“We love food, but we love community more than food,” Kyle says. “We wanted to do something amazing next door to our ice cream shop, to keep building community and invite more people in. This spot opened up — it was supposed to be a bakery, but the couple that was doing it had to pull out for personal reasons — and it became available. It was open for a while; we decided to go for it.”
He says that if they didn’t settle on hot dogs, the space could have been a pizza, hamburger, dumplings or sandwich shop.
“We want to make places and experiences for the neighborhood,” Josephine says. “We always consider ourselves a family party that the whole neighborhood is invited to. I guess that can be manifested and expressed in many ways.
“It’s expensive to eat out in Kailua — you can’t really grab and go for anything less than $30 — and we were like, ‘What can we do?’” she adds. “There aren’t a lot of hot dogs on the Island. We really challenged ourselves to find a relatively healthy hot dog with no nitrates.”
The couple officially got the space last December, but say the build out and sourcing for their products took longer than expected.
Little Pickle’s opening menu features six specialty hot dogs ($12 each); flavors will rotate every month or two, according to Kyle. Customers can choose from Chicago, Seattle, nori, chili cheese, tropickle and L.A. Dirty dogs.
“They’re all kind of different and unique; they all have sweet and savory flavors,” Kyle says. “Jo is from L.A., so for her, the L.A. Dirty Dog is kind of like a homecoming. The chili cheese dog is my favorite — just savory and delicious; you put cheese and onions on top of that, I won’t say ‘no.’”
The business’s Chicago dog features an all-beef, premium hot dog with yellow mustard, sweet relish, chopped white onions, tomato wedges, pickled sport peppers, poppy seeds, celery salt and a dill pickle spear. Meanwhile, the Seattle dog features a schmear of whipped cream cheese, housemade yellow onion jam, a sliced jalapeno and Sriracha zig zag.
“We didn’t even know what a Seattle dog was, initially,” Kyle says. “Somebody came in and was like, ‘You should do a Seattle dog.’ We looked it up; apparently, it’s a whole thing to put cream cheese and jalapenos. The nori dog is for people who love kewpie mayo; it has Japanese flavors.”
For customers who want something unique, Kyle recommends the tropickle dog, which comes with lilikoʻi mustard and pineapple-mango salsa. Josephine says the biz will eventually offer a vegan and vegetarian option.
He says the flavors will keep rotating — with the exception of the Chicago dog and chili cheese dog, which will likely stay on the menu — to give customers new options to try. He says they also want to do chef partnerships and collaborate with different chefs to create a specialty hog dog.
“We’ll create something really special (with them),” he says. “We’re also going to have fun and maybe do meatball sandwiches, oysters on the half shell and fun things that we rotate in to keep it exciting.”
Besides its gourmet hot dogs, Little Pickle also offers side dishes — ranging from kale yuzu salad ($9) to chili cheese fritos ($8) — and drinks.
“We make our own agua frescas ($5),” Josephine says. “We do a lilikoʻi iced tea and yuzu lemonade. We do a pickled Coke ($6), which features salty, dill pickle brine. Since we have the ice cream shop next door, we’ll have root beer floats (with Please Come Again’s vanilla ice cream) as well.”
While the business will start by opening from noon to 8 p.m. Wednesdays to Sundays, Josephine says the shop’s goal is to eventually open from 8 a.m.
“We’ll start serving breakfast sandwiches,” she says. “Then, as soon as we can, we’ll open more days. We’ll probably always be closed on Mondays.”
“We just wanted to have fun (with this new concept); accessibility, quality and affordability are important to us,” Kyle adds. “We just want to give people a high-quality option that doesn’t break the bank; something they can pick up on the way home from the beach.”
CONTACT
Little Pickle
320 Kuʻulei Road, Kailua
Instagram: @littlepicklehawaii
Open 12 to 8 p.m. Wednesdays to Sundays, closed Mondays and Tuesdays
Parking available in the surrounding municipal lots
Kelli Shiroma Braiotta can be reached at kelli@alohastatedaily.com.
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