The first time I visited Hawaii, I was a kid and ate whatever my parents bought me. The second time was our honeymoon and Paul and I ate at some pretty amazing restaurants (House Without A Key, A Pacific Cafe and The Beach House to name a few), but I wasn’t food blogging yet back then so there are no photos the food (boo!).
Since starting kitchen frolic, we’ve been back to Hawaii twice (Oahu/Kauai last year and Oahu/Maui this year) and on both trips we tried to eat as “local” as possible. You can read more about the many Hawaiian foods we discovered in my post from last year, {this list goes to 11} our favourite hawaiian eats.
Thanks to several online and print “Best of” lists and a couple of food writers and friends here in Toronto and in Hawaii, we always hit the ground running eating when we landed (I think we had a list of over 50 places to eat mapped out). Obviously, we weren’t able to try them all during our short trips and I know there are some great places that we haven’t visited yet, but we do have some personal favourites that we would recommend to anyone visiting the Aloha state!
Here are 11 of our favourite places to eat in Hawaii (in no particular order):
OAHU
LEONARD’S BAKERY
933 Kapahulu Ave, Honolulu, Oahu. www.leonardshawaii.com
Malasadas rate highly on our list of favourite baked goods of all time. We adore these Portuguese doughnuts and have tried them from several Hawaiian bakeries, but our must-haves still come from Leonard’s Bakery. Paul’s favourite is the pineapple malasada puff (a flavour that’s only available in certain months of the year).
Made to order, Leonard’s malasadas are large, hot, fluffy and bursting with flavour. There’s almost always a lineup, but it moves quickly. The bakery also sells many other baked goods, but we’ve never gotten anything except for dozens of malasadas and malasada puffs whenever we go.
TITA’S GRILL
56-485 Kamehameha Hwy, Hauula, Oahu
Whenever we drove up to the North Shore, we always had to stop at Tita’s for something to eat. Their garlic shrimp is one of our favourites on Oahu and their loco moco is definitely filling. Another casual eatery with picnic tables outside and a covered seating area for when it’s raining, every time we went, there were tons of local families enjoying a meal together.
HELENA’s HAWAIIAN FOOD
1240 N School St, Honolulu, Oahu. www.helenashawaiianfood.com
A small family-owned eatery located in a quiet residential neighbourhood, Helena’s serves authentic Hawaiian cuisine. The first time we went, the friendly staff were more than happy to help us pick out some dishes that they thought we’d like, and suggest ones that we HAD to try. Everything was amazing. Everything. This is definitely the place to go if you’re new to Hawaiian food and want to try some great authentic dishes like lomilomi salmon, kalua pork, laulau, poi, and haupia.
ONO SEAFOOD
747 Kapahulu Ave, Honolulu, Oahu
Another must-stop for us, Ono Seafood has some of the best poke in Hawaii. Voted by Yelpers as the #5 place in the USA to eat in 2015, this tiny little shop is basically take-out only (there’s two picnic tables outside if you want to eat there), and the menu is pretty simple. Their main item – the poke bowl (your choice of two types of poke on either white or brown rice) is filling and the fish is fresh, flavourful and basically melts in your mouth.
KICKIN’ KAJUN
1518 Makaloa St, Honolulu, Oahu
A food blogger from Toronto suggested this place to me and the concept is fun – you order the seafood you want, it comes in a large plastic bag, you eat with your hands and make as much of a mess as you want. I’ve always been a “tear the lobster apart with my hands” kind of girl anyway, so this place was right up my alley. You’re given plastic gloves, bibs, mallets and shears to help make the job easier (I always forego the gloves as they make eating harder).
Fun eating concept aside, the food here is always perfectly cooked and the flavour is great (we always go with their Signature Kickin’ Sauce).
KAUAI
SHAVE ICE TEGE TEGE
4480 Hookui Rd, Kilauea, Kauai
The shave ice on Hawaii is super-fine, which allows the ice to really soak up the syrups (of which there are dozens of flavours) and you can top your shave ice with options like ice cream, azuki beans, condensed milk, and more.
We ate a lot of shave ice on all three islands but our absolute favourite place to get shave ice in Hawaii is Shave Ice Tege Tege on Kauai. This tiny little truck shaves each serving using a hand-crank machine (instead of the automatic ice shavers seen most everywhere else) and the syrups are made with fresh local fruit. They often include chunks of fresh fruit in their shave ice as well.
They only create 100 shave ices a day, so it’s always best to get there early as they always sell out pretty quickly. The lineups can get a little long, but it’s worth it.
CHICKEN IN A BARREL BBQ
5-5190 Kuhio Hwy, Hanalei, Kauai. www.chickeninabarrel.com
This was one of our favourite places to eat on Kauai – it’s open a bit later, the food is solid and the staff is super friendly. We ate here several nights and were never disappointed. It’s nothing fancy, but since there are few places open late at night in Kauai, this place was always on our radar when we started to get hungry in the evening.
There are two locations on Kauai (the only place on this list that has more than one location), but we always ended up at the one in Hanalei.
MAUI
STAR NOODLE
286 Kupuohi St, Lahaina, Maui. www.starnoodle.com
A Hawaii food writer suggested Star Noodle to us and we ended up here after we couldn’t find Shark Pit on our first day in Maui. I’m so glad we did.
This lovely little restaurant has a beautiful ambience and the food is amazing. On our visit we had garlic noodles (perfectly flavoured and made with fresh handmade noodles), steamed pork buns and kalbi steak (melt in your mouth beef). The staff is friendly and efficient and everything was well worth the price.
SHARK PIT
78 Ulupono St, Lahaina, Maui. www.facebook.com/dasharkpitmaui
This little food truck was a little hard to find (it took us at least 6 passes to finally spot it hidden inside a side lot), but it’s definitely worth the hunt. Ranked by Yelp as the #6 place to eat in the USA in 2015 (and the top ranked food truck), we tried several different dishes on our two visits here and everything was amazing. Unfortunately, we never got to try their famous fish tacos, but their shrimp tacos, korean steak tacos and their Hawaiian patty melt were all delicious (Paul still talks about the patty melt.)
We met Chris, the owner, who sat with us for a bit and chatted about the Shark Pit, Yelp, the food truck industry on Maui and his plans for his upcoming restaurant. We’re not sure if the food truck will be open much longer after the restaurant opens (Chris did say the food truck would stay open for at least a year), but if you’re on Maui, try to make it to the Shark Pit.
GESTE SHRIMP TRUCK
Kahului Beach Rd, Kahului, Maui. www.gesteshrimp.com
Last year, we had a lot of garlic shrimp (aka shrimp scampi) on Oahu and Kauai and we had our favourites, so we were excited to hit Maui and try Geste, which was voted best Garlic Shrimp food truck two years in a row on Maui (yes, garlic shrimp is such a big thing there that there are dozens of food trucks and small shops that focus solely on serving garlic shrimp).
As soon as we sat down with our box of garlic shrimp (along with the requisite scoop of white rice and mac salad), we knew we were hooked. The garlic shrimp (Geste calls it Hawaiian Shrimp Scampi) here is absolutely amazing. Ah-may-zing. The next time we go to Hawaii, we’d consider a trip to Maui just to eat at Geste.
MAMA’S FISH HOUSE
799 Poho Place, Paia, Maui. www.mamasfishhouse.com
Mama’s Fish House was one of the “fancy meals” we planned for during our 2015 trip. It’s a pricey restaurant, and reservations are highly recommended, but wow. It was totally worth it. We went for lunch instead of dinner (we couldn’t get a good reservation time for dinner) and the view was stunning (we had a table by the window).
The food was perfect and the service was just what you expect from a restaurant of this caliber. We loved that the seafood is so fresh that they actually list the name of the fisherman who caught the fist on the menu! And, although the restaurant is pricey and classy, it’s still casual (shorts, flip-flops and sundresses were everywhere) enough to make anyone feel comfortable.
So there you have it. Trust me, it was REALLY tough narrowing down all the amazing places we ate at while in Hawaii into a list of 11 and we can’t wait to go back and discover even more. So, does this list have you planning a trip to to this tropical paradise? If you’ve been to Hawaii before, what were some of your favourite places to eat?
