If you believe the marketing muck put out by L & L Franchise Inc. stating that a visit to any of its Hawaiian barbecue eateries sends you to the land of leis, you’ll need to chew hard and swallow fast. And you might want to ask your travel agent for a refund afterward.

In an age when Americans are easily duped by anything wrapped in concepts or themes, it’s no wonder that L & L Hawaiian Barbecue attracts fat lines. Just load a boom box with slack guitar music and slather on the teriyaki sauce and you’ll hear the “hollies” driveling “aloha” and “mahalo” more than they ever should.

The Honolulu-based franchise, known for its cheap “plate lunches” and grilled Spam with traditional saimin noodles, has encroached like a lava flow on the fast-food industry, boasting about 90 locations throughout Hawaii and on the West Coast. Founded in 1976 by two aspiring restaurateurs, the company takes the admirable business approach of assisting immigrants and ethnic minorities with relatively low-investment franchise opportunities. But the strength of the organization, it seems, withers at the kitchen door.

From the five eateries in San Diego County, my partner and I arrived enthusiastically at L & L’s newest location at Sports Arena Shopping Center. Scrunched between a generic deli and Starbucks, the bland, overly lit interior offers about as much comfort as a Subway. And the ever-present line of customers intrudes heavily on the limited dining space, which led us into grabbing one of three outdoor tables after ordering from the counter.

Pretty food pictures matched to cheap menu prices kept us engaged only until we popped open the bulging Styrofoam lid on the No. 2, a mixed barbecue of beef, chicken and short ribs. The meat was an unsightly jumble of veins and suet difficult to cut, which explained its $7.75 price tag. After throwing down my plastic eating utensils and wiping from my mouth a streak of mayonnaise from the all-American macaroni salad (typical of plate lunches) I returned the meal for a refund.

We then turned our attention to the much-touted Chicken Katsu, an island favorite made normally with boneless, skinless chicken breasts and dusted in panko flakes. Here, the kitchen uses thigh meat with all its fatty imperfections hidden by an appealing batter that screams for better-quality poultry. And judging from its fishy undertone, we guessed it was sizzle-cooked in the same oil used for frying shrimp. The accompanying katsu dipping sauce was unremarkable and tasted more like teriyaki than the traditional blend of Worcestershire and ketchup.

My partner wanted the Grilled Spam Saimin Bowl. But lucky for me – since I sample from the plates of my dining companions – the kitchen had run out of the funny meat, which despite its vacillating cult status does little for creating a Hawaiian fantasy.

He instead chose the No. 20, Kalua Pork & Pork Lau Lau, a safer bet compared to the beef and chicken entrées. The Kalua pork is shredded and pan-cooked with cabbage, though in Hawaii it’s cooked in an imu (underground oven). It yielded a pleasant smoky flavor, but tasted a lot like white-boy carnitas. The latter involved chunks of pork steamed in banana leaves, which were nearly black in color and imparted a pungent taste to the meat.

An order of Garlic Shrimp proved to be the most attractive item we ordered – big orange prawns glistening in garlic butter, but with their skins stubbornly attached from overcooking. The salty butter sauce combined with excessive garlic was the final straw. These weren’t the Asian-American plate lunches I remember from visiting the islands, where the meat was succulent, slower cooked and trimmed of its blubbery shortcomings.

In addition to macaroni salad, most entrées come with at least one scoop of gummy rice, which holds up to Hawaiian standards. The menu also features barbecue burgers, fried mahi mahi, Spam and eggs, beef curry and a hamburger-over-rice concoction called Loco Moco. The recipes may indeed be “island style,” but the quality at L & L is about as depthless as reality TV.