GUIDE CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE
Oahu has become a hub for Pacific and Japanese cuisines, seafood, and seasonal ingredients. Learn about 27 places where you should eat in Honolulu, the capital of the state and the biggest city on Hawaii’s third largest island.
Establishments appear in alphabetical order instead of order of preference.
Helena’s is a Hawaiian treasure that serves share-friendly comfort food.
Helen Chock founded this legendary Kalihi restaurant 1946 and received a James Beard Award for being a Regional Classic in 2000. Grandson Craig Katsuyoshi now presides over Helena’s pastel green walls with Hawaiian art and black and white photos. The restaurant’s only open Tuesday through Friday, and stays packed. The family’s best known for pipikaula, marinated, bone-in short ribs that hang over the grill to dry before getting deep-fried. Really, though, any dish is a great interpretation of Hawaiian cuisine, whether it’s fried butterfish collar with crispy skin, Kalua pig cooked in an imu, luau squid blanketed in taro leaves that are seasoned with coconut milk, or ahi poke tossed with ogo, onions and opihi, a tiny, briny sea snail that resembles abalone. Each meal comes with an order of haupia.
MUST ORDER: Fried Butterfish Collar, Kalua Pig, Luau Squid, Poke Fish with Opihi, Short Ribs Pipikaula Style
8. Imanas Tei Restaurant
Imanas Tei is an izakaya that serves flavorful small plates like grilled butterfish with miso sauce.
Imanas Tei is a sushi bar and izakaya that’s been set back from King Street for the past 20 years. The space features an L-shaped wood bar with bamboo stalks overhead and moody dining room. My wife and I snagged the last order of pleasantly chewy flounder engawa (fin) sushi) and our neighbors at the bar countered by ordering the final baby abalone. It’s unclear who won that exchange, but we definitely cleaned up during the rest of our dinner. Crispy deep-fried heads quickly followed a correlated order of silky sweet shrimp sushi. Grilled butterfish with miso sauce featured rich caramelized flesh and crispy skin. Grilled yellowtail kama with soy sauce featured myriad textures tucked between cartilage and bone ranging from fluffy to fatty. For Honolulu, it was a relatively cool night – 70 degees, gasp! – which called for soothing rice soup with crab meat and shiitake mushrooms.
MUST ORDER: Flounder Engawa Sushi, Grilled Butterfish w/Miso Sauce, Grilled Yellowtail Kama, Rice Soup with Crab Meat, Sweet Shrimp Sushi
Ireh restaurant specializes in Korean noodle soups and flavorful bowls of shrimp jook.
Pyoung Ok Kim’s Korean restaurant in Honolulu’s Manoa-Makiki/University District specializes in simple comfort food dishes in a homey setting, including noodles and jook. Don’t expect many culinary fireworks, and the panchan are simpler than at most other Korean restaurants, but the food’s hearty and good. Chewing noodles have good bite and come slathered in “special spicy sauce” similar to gochujang. Bean Noodles are similarly rewarding, featuring a frothy fresh-ground soybean broth. Jook is a hearty Korean-style porridge that’s available with mung bean, red bean, mushroom, seafood, chicken and more.
MUST ORDER: Chewing Noodles, Bean Noodles, Shrimp Jook
Kaimuki Superette focuses on breakfast and lunch, including a standout breakfast sammie.
Hometown hero Ed Kenney and wife Kristen run Kaimuki Superette across a patio from sister restaurant Mud Hen Water and down the street from the couple’s original restaurant, Town. This concept specializes in breakfast and lunch in a setting with pastel aqua and white color scheme, grey wood banquettes, ceiling with corrugated metal arches, and map of Hawaii on the wall highlighting their purveyors. Soft Scramble Sammie is a great breakfast sandwich co-starring kale and Brie on a toasted bolillo. Bacon isn’t part of the standard construction, but add bacon because…bacon. French toast is another standout plate featuring buttery Breadshop brioche from the neighborhood dusted with powdered sugar and served with maple syrup and cooling crème fraiche. The pastry case is also worth raiding, particularly for buttery banana bread and a small peanut banana scone studded with roasted peanuts.
MUST ORDER: French Toast, Soft Scramble Sammie, Banana Bread, Peanut Banana Scone
Kamehameha Bakery fries stupendous malasadas in uniquely Hawaiian flavors like poi.
Daniel Paglinawan and wife Geramie opened Kamehameha Bakery in 1976. Now daughter Lisa helps her parents run an establishment named for the King who united the Hawaiian islands. There’s a reason pastry boxes are perpetually stacked to the ceiling. The Paglinawans produce royal donuts, and they don’t stop at rings, even after a recent move.
MUST ORDER: Poi Glazed, Glazed, Chocolate Donut, Hopia
KCC Farmers Market constantly adds to their deep roster. Grilled prawns are a recent find.
According to the sign in front of the Kapi’olani Community College parking lot, the legendary Saturday morning KCC Farmers Market opens “at the sound of a horn,” and it might as well be race day, since so many people charge the stalls throughout the morning that casual observers might mistake the scene for the starting line of a marathon. However, the crowd finds a flow by mid morning, and vendors who are lucky enough to secure space in the market that Dean Okimoto, Joan Namkoong and Conrad Nonaka founded in 2003, contribute to one of the best selections of produce and prepared food of any U.S. market. Different stalls specialize in massive grilled prawns with roe attached, Big Island abalone grilled with garlic butter, and sugar cones topped with swirls of Otsuji Farm frozen yogurt made with farm-grown fruits like coconut and papaya. Eat Pao de Queijo is another recent favorite featuring breakfast sandwiches on crusty, supple Brazilian-style tapioca rolls with combos like Portuguese sausage & egg.
MUST ORDER: Big Island Abalone, Eat Pao de Queijo Slider with Portuguese Sausage & Egg, Grilled Prawns, Grandma’s Kitchen mochi, Kukui Sausage Co., OnoPops popsicles, Otsuji Farm Frozen Yogurt, The Pig & The Lady pho French dip
Leave a Comment