Where I eat on Oahu

Where I Eat on Oahu: My Repeat-Favorite Spots in Waikiki and the North Shore

Marcie from Hawaii Travel Made Easy shares her personal repeat-favorite places to eat on Oahu, starting with a tip to skip the dine-in line at Pa’ia Fish Market Waikiki by ordering takeout (she recommends the mahi-mahi with home fries and homemade tartar sauce). She highlights Musubi Cafe Iyasume for Spam and tuna mayo musubi, Waffle & Berry for thick acai bowls, and urges stopping at Hawaii’s 7-Eleven for musubi and sushi rolls. For North Shore days, she plans food stops at Kahuku Farms (plus farm-store favorites like lilikoi balsamic and passion fruit syrup), Fumi’s or Romy’s shrimp trucks (garlic butter; choose by line length), Seven Brothers for burgers, and Sunrise Cafe for acai bowls and lattes. She also recommends Rainbow Drive-In for plate lunch and sit-down picks House Without a Key, Merriman’s, and Deck at Queen Kapiolani Hotel, plus notes on reservations, views, parking, and her itinerary audit service.

00:00 Skip the Paia Line
00:31 Personal Oahu Food List
01:03 Musubi Cafe Breakfast
01:38 Waikiki Acai Bowls
02:10 Paia Fish Order
02:35 Hawaii 7 Eleven Snacks
03:00 North Shore Food Stops
03:06 Kahuku Farms Must Do
03:34 Shrimp Truck Strategy
04:02 Seven Brothers Burgers
04:19 Sunrise Cafe Coffee
04:40 Rainbow Drive In Plate Lunch
05:04 Sit Down Favorites
05:13 House Without a Key
06:04 Merrimans Date Night
06:36 Deck Diamond Head View
07:01 Wrap Up and Resources

About Your Host: Marcie Cheung is a Certified Hawaii Destination Expert who has visited Hawaii 40+ times and spent 20+ years as a professional hula dancer. Through Hawaii Travel with Kids, she helps families plan authentic, affordable Hawaii vacations that respect local culture while creating unforgettable memories.

Learn more at hawaiitravelwithkids.com

Connect: @hawaiitravelwithkids on Instagram | Book a Consultation

🌺 Join 11,000+ families receiving free Hawaii travel tips, island guides, and insider advice - subscribe now!
https://hawaiitravelwithkids.com/free-5-day-email-course-how-to-travel-to-hawaii-like-a-pro/

Transcript

0:00

Before anything else, I need to tell you something about Pa'ia Fish Market on Waikiki, Market in Waikiki that will save you a chunk of your afternoon. There is always a line to sit down and eat there, always. But you can completely skip it. Walk up to the counter, tell them that you want takeout, order right there, and then wait outside. They bring the food out to you. I always take mine back to my hotel lanai and eat the best mahi-mahi of the trip while other people are still standing in the sun. You're welcome Hey everyone. Welcome back to Hawaii Travel Made Easy. I'm Marcie. Today's episode is simple, where I eat on Oahu, not the best restaurants on the island, not hidden gems, not where the locals eat, just my personal list, the places I keep going back to trip after trip. Some of them you've heard of, and that's fine. They're on the list because I love them, and that's the only requirement. If you want the fuller picture on planning an Oahu trip, episode 90 is my honest Oahu trip report, and episode 115 is where I walk through an itinerary from scratch. Think of this as a food companion to both of those Most mornings on Oahu before we do anything else, I stop at Musubi Cafe Iyasume. A PR contact told me about it years ago when the first location opened, and my family has been hooked ever since. Musubi is that iconic Hawaiian snack: rice, Spam wrapped in nori, and my kids go straight for the classic Spam version every single time without even glancing at the menu. I always grab a few other varieties too, especially the tuna mayo. They travel beautifully: hotel breakfast, car snack on the way to the North Shore, or even a beach snack. There are a couple of locations in Waikiki and a couple at Ala Moana Center, so they're easy to work in no matter what your day looks like. For acai bowls in Waikiki, I send everyone to Waffle Berry. It's a little tucked away underground at the Waikiki Shopping Plaza on Kalakaua, which means a lot of people walk right past it, and it's worth finding. What makes their bowls different is the texture: thick, almost like sorbet, not the watery smoothie situation you get at a lot of places. You choose your own toppings, the portions are actually satisfying, and when we landed in Oahu back in February, this was our first stop off the plane and it was the right call. There's no better way to arrive in Hawaii than with a cold acai bowl. Okay. Intro aside, let me tell you what to actually order at Pa'ia Fish Market. The Waikiki location is on Kuhio Avenue under the Laylow Hotel. I always do takeout, bring it back to my lanai, and eat with a view. Each trip it's the same order: mahi-mahi sauteed in butter, lemon, wine, and garlic, home fries, and their homemade tartar sauce on everything. The tartar is the reason I keep going back, so don't skip it. All right, do not pass a 7-Eleven in Hawaii without stopping Hawaii's 7-Elevens are not what you know from home. There's hot spam musubi at the counter, tons of fresh sushi rolls, local drinks and snacks everywhere you look. I always grab a tuna cucumber roll to eat in the car. It sounds like a little bit of a joke. This is not a joke Speaking of the car, if you're heading up to the North Shore, that tuna cucumber roll is gonna come in handy because there's a lot of ground to cover. I plan North Shore days almost entirely around food, and there are four stops that are basically non-negotiable for me. The first is Kahuku Farms, and I mean it when I say I build a whole day around this one. Their cafe is farm-to-table. I've never had anything bad there, and their acai bowls are made from berries grown right on the farm. But don't just eat and leave. Go through the farm store. I always come home with the lilikoi balsamic salad dressing and the passion fruit syrup, and I'm always immediately wishing I had brought more. All my favorite Hawaii finds live at hawaiitravelwithkids.com under Hawaii Resources, and you can see what else I recommend. Then there's the shrimp truck decision, which is a whole other thing up on the North Shore. We like Fumi's and Romy's. I did the Kahuku location of Fumi's for years and years before they shifted to Haleiwa, and that's where we go now. My completely honest method for choosing between Fumi's and Romy's on any given day is I go to whichever one has a shorter line. Both are good. I always get garlic butter. Just know it can take a while, so build it into your timeline and don't arrive with no patience left after the drive. A few years back, we were mid-North Shore day, and my oldest was getting seriously hangry. We hadn't planned well, so we pulled into Seven Brothers in Kahuku, and he came back to life immediately. He's a burger person through and through, and he will tell you that Seven Brothers is his top burger spot in Hawaii. They have the Kahuku location and one in Haleiwa too. This is also the move for whoever in your group is not feeling that shrimp truck situation Sunrise Cafe rounds out my North Shore food stops. They have a couple of pretty locations up north, but there's also one in Waikiki if you don't make it up there. My son always wants to stop here for the acai bowls, and I'm there for the coffee. Their lattes are really good, and it's a nice easy place to land before or after a beach stop. For plate lunch, there is nowhere on Oahu I'd rather go than Rainbow Drive-In. It's fast casual. You order at the counter and eat at outdoor tables or in your car, and it's just far enough outside of Waikiki that I'd recommend driving or Ubering rather than walking. My kids always go straight for the slushies, no negotiation. I get the beef stew or loco moco. It doesn't try to be anything more than a great plate lunch, and it pulls it off every single time. So most of our eating on Oahu is exactly that, casual, on the go, on a lanai, but there are three restaurants I come back to when it's actually time to sit down. House Without a Key is my favorite Waikiki restaurant, full stop. Reservations are required, so don't show up hoping to wing it, and if you're staying in Waikiki, you can walk, which is what we do. The food has real Hawaiian-inspired flavor. The purple mashed potatoes are the best I've ever had anywhere, and the kalua pork is the kind of thing I describe as upscale plate lunch, which is my ideal Hawaii dinner. But what makes this place is the whole experience: live Hawaiian music and hula dancing every night. The hula here is not a tourist-facing performance. It's the real thing, and I notice that every time. One of my favorite memories here is from a solo trip I took with my oldest when he was about eight. Most of the trip was takeout and kid-friendly spots, but one night I took him to House Without a Key, and he sat there with his iPad eating his burger, totally happy, while I got my purple mashed potatoes and my kalua pork and a mai tai, and I just sat in the beautiful open-air space listening to live music. As a mom who spends most of the trip making sure everyone else is taken care of, that one hour was everything Merriman's is my date night restaurant in Hawaii, and what I love about it is that it travels. They have locations on all four main islands, and my husband and I have eaten at every single one of them. It's consistently beautiful food and really good drinks. Their mai tai has a honey lilikoi foam on top, and I think about that more than I should. I usually order the fish of the day, and I've never once been disappointed. If you're celebrating something or you just want a really nice dinner with a really good cocktail, Merriman's is always the right answer. And then there's Deck at the Queen Kapiolani Hotel. I would not normally recommend a hotel restaurant, but this one keeps earning it. It's an open-air rooftop on the third floor with a straight-on view of Diamond Head, genuinely one of the better views in Waikiki, and the food is better than you'd expect. I always get the mahi-mahi fish tacos. Parking in the area is a real challenge, so either walk from Waikiki, which is easy, or park at the Honolulu Zoo right across the street, which is only a dollar an hour. All right, that's my Oahu eating list. Not the best, not the most hidden, just the places I keep going back to and the ones I find myself recommending when clients ask where to eat. If you're building out your Oahu itinerary and want someone to look at your actual plan, I do offer $50 itinerary audits at hawaiitravelwithkids.com under Hawaii Itinerary Review. You send me your itinerary, I go through it and leave my feedback in line, and it's back to you within two business days. A lot of people find it catches the things they didn't know to ask about. All my favorite Hawaii resources, guides, discounts, everything I recommend are at hawaiitravelwithkids.com under the Hawaii Resources tab. Episode 90 is the full Oahu trip, and episode 115 is the itinerary episode. Both are good companion listens to this one. Thanks so much for being here. I'll see you next week. Aloha.