5 Hidden Waikīkī Restaurants You Need to Try

Look between the tourist hot spots and chain restaurants to find these five hidden gems.

By Mari Taketa

Taste of Aloha sampler plate and Kobe-style loco moco at Aloha Table.

Photos: steve czerniak

Aloha Table

“Hawaiian Dishes,” the hand-lettered sign says. “Garlic Shrimp. ‘Ahi Poke. Mochiko Fried Chicken.” And above all these, “Kobe-Style ‘Supreme’ Loco Moco—111-Hawai‘i Award No. 1.”

On the second floor of a nondescript building on a tiny side street, Aloha Table is the kind of restaurant locals barely notice. If you’re from Japan, it’s a foodie mecca. The first time I heard anyone mention it was in Tokyo, when the man who opened Moena Café in Harajuku told me his friend owned it. Japanese value authenticity, he explained, so in order to build a chain of Aloha Table restaurants in Japan, his friend first needed a flagship in Waikīkī. It worked: Aloha Table’s Japanese website lists about 20 Aloha Tables in Japan, four in South Korea and a slew of other Hawai‘i-themed restaurants serving malassadas, beer, barbecue and something called “Hawaiian-Mexican” food. Waikīkī’s Heavenly and Goofy Café & Dine are on the list as well. “We built our flagship in Waikīkī,” the website proclaims, “to impart the food and culture of the real Hawai‘i.”

Kobe-style mini loco moco

No wonder Aloha Table is often booked, with lines snaking down the stairs at times. But never mind authenticity, I’m here for the loco moco ($19). Kobe-style beef? Voted No. 1 in Japan’s online 111-Hawai‘i poll? That’s cred right there. Japanese are crazy about loco mocos. It’s a fixture at Japanese 7-Elevens, visitor magazines feature the latest versions, and Forty Carrots at Bloomingdale’s sells more off-menu $65 foie gras-and-lobster loco mocos to Japanese than any other group. When it comes to the king of rib-sticking dishes across the state, I’m pretty sure food-obsessed Japanese have left no patty unturned.

Aloha Table’s twin beef patties are rimmed in a sea of mushroom-and-onion demi-glace that fills the entire plate. Ignoring the orchid garnishes and violently hued Blue Hawai‘i and Lava Flow cocktails around me, I dig in. My spoon glides through a juicy patty so soft it practically cups the mounded rice underneath. And that demi-glace! “It’s delicious—very similar to hayashi rice,” a Japanese man who’s scraped the last smears off his plate agrees. Oddly enough, hayashi rice is made with beef, onions, mushrooms and demi-glace. “It suits Japanese tastes well.”

Days later, I’m still reliving my moments of Kobe-Style Supreme Loco Moco. I guess it suits my taste, too.

2238 Lau‘ula St., (808) 922-2221

Zigu

Tommasi Rafaèl, Rib-eye steak

Hidden inside an unassuming 1939 walk-up, Zigu Japanese restaurant and sake bar charms with a lively setting and simple yet remarkable dishes. String lights and bistro seating beckon guests to its courtyard terrace. But it’s the inside that seduces me: Large, colorful liquor bottles parked on the bar. Sake boxes stacked high. Bartenders and chefs abuzz in the joint bar and kitchen. And is that “Jailhouse” by Sublime I hear?

Zigu may be nearing its first anniversary, but the restaurant and every visit to it remain a constant discovery. From the unique bar program and small plates menu to the chef’s counter, I’m surprised and delighted at every simple-sounding menu item which belies unique twists and precise technique. Zigu, which means, “eat local” in Japanese, advertises its fare as “authentic Japanese cuisine inspired by Hawai‘i’s fresh local ingredients.”

Read the full story here.

413 Seaside Ave., (808) 212-9252, zigu.us

Pau Hana Base

Tofu salad

Remember the ramen shop in the movie Tampopo? No frills, working-class and all about the ramen? That’s what the izakaya Pau Hana Base reminds me of. The location, first: It’s down a narrow alley that doesn’t promise much. The small paper lantern to the left of Tsunami’s bar on Kūhiō Avenue will show you where to enter. The ambience, second: Like Tampopo, only bigger and brighter. More paper lanterns. Uncushioned chairs. Signs exactly like the ones you see at Japanese cafeterias and street food stalls advertising grilled squid, omelet rice and fresh beer.

Garlic butter fried rice, Imo-mochi

KAKUNI

But here’s the third thing: Like Tampopo, Pau Hana Base is all about the food. It comes out in waves: Kakuni simmered pork belly with acres of melty skin. A tofu salad dressed in sesame-miso and topped with crispy fried lotus root. Garlic butter fried rice in a bento tin. Most of the small plates are in the $5 to $8 range; only our spicy mabo tofu ($8.50), Kewpie mayo-and-ketchup-drizzled omelet rice ($8.50) and menchikatsu meat croquettes (three for $9.50) cost more.

We call for more: Imo-mochi that tastes like a marriage of french fries and clouds. Tender pork belly fired on skewers. Whole grilled shishamo fish that, spritzed with lime and dipped in Kewpie, disappears in three bites.

Grilled shishamo fish

In the end, the bill for four after 13 dishes, three grapefruit chuhais, two glasses of shochu and one draft Asahi is $131.94. It’s placed on the table with four small cups of pastel sugar crystals—an invitation to swirl your own cotton candy at a machine by the door. This last sweet taste is the one you take with you as you exit the alley. It leaves you wanting more.

407 Seaside Ave., (808) 492-1280

Hawaiian Happy Cakes

Happy Cake

You probably wouldn’t expect to find a slice of food history at 424 Walina St., site of a modest five-story building behind TR Fire Grill on Kūhiō Avenue. The iconic Hawaiian Happy Cake lives here—or rather, owner and baker Owen O’Callaghan does. Short of ordering the pineapple, coconut and macadamia nut-studded fruitcake off the happycake.com website or buying one at the Saturday farmers market at Kapi‘olani Community College, this is where, by prearranged appointment, you can pick one up directly from O’Callaghan.

The building at 424 Walina St. isn’t a storefront; it’s O’Callaghan’s home office. Fifty years after the first Happy Cake came out of the kitchen at Kemo‘o Farms in Wahiawā, it’s O’Callaghan who keeps the tradition going. Most of the cakes go to Japanese tourists buying omiyage gifts to take home. A portion goes to locals living on the Mainland and veterans who remember the cake from when they were stationed at Schofield Barracks. Once or twice a week, O’Callaghan packs some cakes in a red logo tote bag and runs downstairs with an order. At Christmastime he does this 10 or 15 times a day.

“Locals who know how it works love it. They don’t want to deal with parking in Waikīkī,” he says. “They pull up in their car and we pass the cakes through the car window. If the police were watching it would look dodgy, but it’s very legitimate.”

When he bought the rights to Hawaiian Happy Cakes from Dick Rodby, son of the founders of Kemo‘o Farms, Rodby told him how he’d leave cakes on his front porch in Kapahulu for people who didn’t want to drive to Wahiawā. “When you go up to the house, there’s a hedge on one side and a fence on another, and a gate,” O’Callaghan recalls. “I can see it now. You go in the gate, and in front of the house there’s a table. Mr. Rodby said sometimes there would be three, four orders lined up on it. You’d pick up your cake and leave the money in the planter.”

It makes O’Callaghan happy to talk about Rodby, the way it makes him happy to talk about his customers. Sometimes, if it’s the end of the day and he knows locals are driving up, he’ll run downstairs in a rashguard and boardshorts. Locals won’t fault him for wanting to jump in the ocean. Repeat customers from Japan bring gifts of sake. And the other day, someone called from JTB, a Japanese travel agency, and asked him to come downstairs with cakes for an elderly couple. They presented him with an album of sorts—photos of them with O’Callaghan at his farmers market booth in 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2016.

“A big customer still is Mr. Rodby’s wife,” O’Callaghan says. “She orders Happy Cakes at holiday time, makes sure all her friends get a Happy Cake. That means a lot to me.”

That’s what you’ll find at 424 Walina St.

424 Walina St., (808) 922-1957

Mami’s Empanadas

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Assorted empanadas

At Mami’s Empanadas, the flavors of the dumplings convey the exuberance of Alex Arango’s island-hopping. He cooked his way through Manhattan, Martha’s Vineyard, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands before settling on O‘ahu, where he found the urban-beachy vibe of Waikīkī exactly to his liking. Colombian-style beef and potato is always on the menu board of his tiny trailer by the zoo, as are sofrito chicken and black beans with mozzarella. On occasion you’ll also find Spam and egg, bacon cheeseburger, shrimp with avocado, or guava with plantains and cheese.

“For Halloween I did a black dough and on the inside I had peanut butter, toasted coconut and pumpkin,” Arango says. “For Valentine’s I’ll do dulce de leche-stuffed strawberries dipped in white chocolate. Those I sometimes don’t sell, I just give them to the ladies.”

Arango opened a café last spring just below street level in downtown Honolulu. Both places serve the same menu of empanadas, Colombian-style open-face arepas and Cubano sandwiches with house-made bread. But while the bigger kitchen lets him dish up such specials as arroz con pollo and Cuban-style pulled pork, it doesn’t allow for the easy chitchat of his one-man trailer. Between tourists from the hostel down the street and regulars who phone in their orders, at times it’s just Arango, empanadas crisping in the air-fryer, and you. It’s easy to pull up a stool. “I do American flavors for the kids and people who aren’t so daring, and sometimes I’ll do the Puerto Rican-style pastelillos (meat turnovers) or more specialty ones like Argentinian-style beef,” he says. “The Latinos, they all come to me because this is the only taste of home.”

The half-moon empanadas ($3 each, four for $10) come out crunchy and piping hot. Arango has written the different flavors on the lid of the takeout container in the same order he’s arranged them inside. He knows when I hit dessert. “Are you trying the pineapple-cheese-mac nut one? Tell me that’s not banging.” I’m eye-rolling above clouds of molten fruity crunch. It’s banging.

2575 Cartwright Road, (808) 202-4920

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