Waioli Grill & Cafe – Kapahulu, HI

When I first saw posts and pictures of Waioli Grill & Cafe, I got super excited! Their menu looked pretty good and I was excited to try a brand new restaurant, Hawaiian sounding name but it’s actually a Japanese owned (I think?) restaurant. I got super excited to try the Bone Marrow Bi Bim Bap…how was it? Well…

US Prime Boneless Short Rib (3.5 oz) | $14.00

Hey guys, this was $14.00. Why don’t I just go to Yummy’s Korean BBQ and get like triple the amount of food. Not worth it. This dish also took the longest to come out (like a ridiculous amount of time). What took so long? Who knows? The meat is sliced so thin, it couldn’t have been the cooking time.

Bone Marrow Bibimbap | $18.00

This dish came out first and it was a bit of a bubble pop. Would have been great to get a picture of it before it was mixed but the waiter just went for it before I could take a picture. You can check out their Yelp page for the pictures of it before. Looks pretty good with the big bone full of marrow. How did this taste? Well, once they mix the bone marrow into the rice, it just looks like fried rice. You can’t really taste the marrow so it was a bit deflating for me. Sorry…

Yuzu Sorbet | $4.00 (was free for us)

The wait for our boneless short rib was so long that they brought us free dessert. Thought it would cool down our madness but it didn’t. Although, if you like yuzu, you would love this sorbet. Very strong and fresh taste of yuzu, would recommend if you like yuzu and wanna pay $4.00 for a scoop of it.

In the end, I felt like this restaurant was more of a trendy hipsterish restaurant. The food was just okay but was not worth the prices. They share their very small parking lot with a laundromat and a pizza place so parking was not great. We lucked out that someone was leaving just as we arrived! I don’t plan on coming back anytime soon.

2 responses to “Waioli Grill & Cafe – Kapahulu, HI

  1. vickinags

    LOL, my boss loves this place! I took my family there and a co-worker did too, based on his raves. Food was okay, but the prices!
    Yup, parking sucks. Someone had double parked behind me running into the convenience store so I just sat in my car and blasted my horn the whole time. There were people in that car but did they move the car??? NO!!!
    DF! (don’t ask me to spell it out 🙂 )

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