Where to Eat on Oahu | Hawaiian Food & Local Favorites

ALOHA! When I first visited Oahu with my family over New Year’s in 2018, I thought that week-long trip would be the last time I’d be back on the island for a while. Instead, I’ve been lucky enough to travel back in October 2018 for the Hawaii Food & Wine Festival, allowing me to gain a deeper understanding of the cuisine by exploring everything from Oahu’s farms to the local shrimp trucks to the modern restaurants paving the way for the future of Hawaiian cuisine. I’ve highlighted my favorites for Hawaiian food across those two trips to Oahu below!

Koko Head Cafe

If you’ve been watching Top Chef from the beginning, then you remember Chef Lee Ann Wong. While she was the runner-up on the show’s first season and has worked in kitchens throughout NYC, she’s since made a big name for herself in Oahu thanks to her smash hit Koko Head Cafe. Popular with both locals and tourists, you can usually expect a line of hungry diners seeking Koko Head Cafe’s island-inspired brunch dishes. Chef Wong’s menu is not for the faint of heart, offering everything from extravagent pancakes and doughnut dishes to hearty skillets like the Koko Moco, her version of a Hawaiian loco moco with a beef patty, garlic rice, mushroom gravy, sunny up egg, and tempura onion. She even has a daily special “Dumplings All Day Wong,” which were of the fried variety with Vietnamese-inspired flavors the day we dined. Go with a group so you can sample from her extensive menu of Hawaiian style brunch dishes.

Eat this: Koko Moco, Hawaiian-style pancakes, cornflake french toast, dumplings all day wong, breakfast bibimbap, kimchi bacon scone

MW Restaurant

Chefs Wade Ueoka and Michelle Karr-Ueoka are the husband-and-wife duo behind MW Restaurant, a bright and stylish space near Ala Moana Center that is delivering elevated Hawaiian regional cuisine made with local ingredients. Much of the menu resembles Hawaiian comfort food, but with creative twists – like a “spam musubi” that combines a housemade spam-like sausage with crispy nori and rice to make bite-sized umami bombs and an ahi poke paired with ikura and uni with crispy rice crackers. They also celebrate the diversity of Hawaiian cuisine with a variety of Asian influences, from Korean grilled kalbi short ribs to Filipino-inspired pork adobo lumpia. Save room for Chef Michelle’s unbelievable desserts, from her elevated take on Hawaiian “shave ice” that uses fresh strawberries and a haupia (coconut) tapioca to her signature MW candy bar that’s the stuff of Willy Wonka’s dreams.

Eat this: ahi poke, ahi nachos, “fried chicken,” grilled kalbi short ribs, “spam musubi,” strawberry “shave ice,” MW doughnuts, MW candy bar

Helena’s Hawaiian Food

A favorite with both locals and tourists alike, Helena’s Hawaiian Food serves up no-frills, local food that’s 20x better than the versions you’ll find at a paid luau. It’s served in small portions so you can try many items at once, and they also have set menus that make it easy to order a sampling of their best dishes.

Menu set D is perfect for 2 people, and comes with their standout short ribs (note that the large order is pictured) & kalua pig that both pair great with the pink Himalayan sea salt & maui onions provided. We also loved the luau squid, with small chunks of squid cooked in taro leaves and coconut milk. The haupia, or coconut gelatin was also delicious, so much so that we ordered extra to go to eat in our hotel after dinner. Add on their laulau (pork cooked in taro leaves) and fish dishes if you have more people and dig into some great Hawaiian food that was my favorite local meal of our trip.

Eat this: Menu set D (pipikaula short ribs, kalua pig, lomi salmon, luau squid, haupia), fried buttermilk fish collar, poke, laulau, macaroni salad

See more photos from Helena’s Hawaiian Food

Musubi Cafe Iyasume

My fellow Spam lovers, Musubi Cafe Iyasume is the place for you. Spam musubi is the Hawaiian version of Japanese omusubi that takes marinated grilled spam and sushi rice and wraps it with nori, or seaweed. The result is a super addictive item that can be eaten any time of day, as a snack, or as its own meal. Musubi Cafe Iyasume has seemingly endless varieties of spam musubi, topped with everything from egg and bacon to Japanese toppings like shiso leaf and pickled radish.

Our absolute favorite version was their eel, egg and avocado spam musubi which I will dream about until I figure out how to make it myself (I had 5 of these in my 8 days in Oahu…). Even better, you can find Musubi Cafe Iyasume throughout the main tourist areas, with outposts inside the Ala Moana Center and International Marketplace, as well as standalone cafes. Their main cafe also serves a great poke bowl, as well as varieties of udon soup and Japanese bento boxes.

Eat this: spam musubi (our favorite were: eel, egg and avocado; egg and bacon; teriyaki spam; shiso herb; takuan pickles); salmon and spicy cod roe omusubi; ahi tuna poke bowl, macaroni salad

See more photos from Musubi Cafe Iyasume

Romy’s Kahuku Prawns and Shrimp

Garlic shrimp can be found on the menus of food trucks & restaurants all over the North Shore of Oahu. It’s listed as shrimp scampi, and served with rice and sometimes macaroni salad and pineapple. While we didn’t get to try as many of the vendors as we would’ve liked, we loved the garlic shrimp at Romy’s Kahuku, which were juicy and bursting with flavor from the golden brown garlic, and also come with a spicy shoyu on the sauce for extra umami. They also have ample, covered seating and clean bathrooms.

That said, the wait can be quite long and somewhat frustrating since numbers aren’t called in order (it probably took an hour from the time we got in line to the time we got our food). A few of the shrimp also weren’t deveined (which I don’t have a problem with but I know some people do). If you have time and don’t mind putting in the work to peel shrimp, you’ll be rewarded with seafood deliciousness. Their fried shrimp are also like little shrimp spring rolls since they’re wrapped in wonton wrappers and come with a tasty sweet chili sauce.

Eat this: garlic butter shrimp, fried shrimp, li hing pineapple

See more photos from Romy’s Kahuku Prawns & Shrimp

Giovanni’s Shrimp Truck

To be honest, we preferred Romy’s over Giovanni’s, as the shrimp just had SO much more flavor. That said, we still really enjoyed our meal and the wait was half that of Romy’s, so if you’re short on time this is a better move. The garlic butter shrimp were really tasty. We didn’t like the hot and spicy very much, as the shrimp texture was slightly mealy and tasted like they were drowning in a bottle of Tabasco sauce with not much other flavor. Make sure to also get the macaroni salad which was our favorite of the entire trip, and grab a marker at the window to sign the truck (I obviously had to add an Indulgent Eats).

Eat this: garlic butter shrimp with a side of hot and spicy sauce, macaroni salad

See more photos from Giovanni’s Shrimp Truck

Hungry for more? Check out my top picks for Oahu’s American and international restaurants and dessert shops and bakeries.