Senia
CITY GUIDES | THE WEST
Honolulu’s Best Restaurants, From Omakase Counters to Island Staples
By Mei Chen | Feb. 13, 2026
AUTHOR BIO: Mei Chen has worked for nearly a dozen start-ups in as many years, taking her to several West Coast cities. While she’s sure her current day job is permanent, she also has her eye on Carmel.
I used to work for a venture-capital big deal from Hawai‘i, the kind of guy who would turn a beach day into an all-hands Zoom meeting. He would fly me out regularly, not only to the Big Island, where he had a home, but to every island over the years, collecting sunsets like proof of productivity. While he obsessed over the latest spreadsheet, I did what I always do when I land somewhere beautiful with limited free time: I started eating.
Somewhere between airport rentals and hotel lobbies, I built a running list of places that felt like the real story: restaurants with ambition, restaurants with history, restaurants that could feed a person well without treating it like a special event.
I update it every time I go back, because Honolulu does not sit still, and neither do I. Here is my list of the best restaurants right now in Honolulu.
Aburiya Ibushi
$$$$$ | MAP | WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM
Chef-owner Toru Ibushi runs Aburiya Ibushi as a Kapahulu izakaya that feels lived-in and busy, with a specials-driven, order-a-bunch-and-share rhythm. The menu is built around charcoal and comfort: think oxtail soup, stingray fin, and grilled skewers of meat and veg that make the place smell like the most wonderful campfire.
Best for: A lively izakaya night anchored by charcoal and smoke
Bar Leather Apron
$$$$$ | MAP | WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM
Bar Leather Apron is a downtown cocktail bar founded by Justin Park and Tom Park, and it won the 2023 James Beard Award for Outstanding Bar, which is about as clean a credential as a bar can earn. The signatures tell you what kind of place it is—BLA Old Fashioned, Matcha Old Fashioned, and the E Ho’o Pau Mai Tai (Justin Park’s 2015 “World’s Best Mai Tai”), smoked with kiawe wood—plus a tight food list that reads like it was designed for the second drink: Breadshop brioche with rayu butter, hamachi crudo, and creamed luau with smoked trout roe and chips.
Best for: Serious cocktails with equally serious snacks
Cafe Miro Kaimuki
$$$$$ | MAP | WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM
Chef Chris Kajioka recently rebooted his tasting-menu-only concept, now offering a more neighborhood-friendly a la carte menu. There’s still the $135 prix fixe with optional $65 wine pairing, but there’s also options to order dishes separately. The menu changes regularly, but expect things like ahi brioche with avocado, tare, and chives, chive madeleines served warm with Hudson Valley foie gras mousse, and roasted garlic bone marrow topped with beef cheek marmalade and served with shokupan toast. Plus there’s desserts like Strauss soft serve topped with salted miso caramel or olive oil.
Best for: A creative, choose-your-own-adventure night
Da Seafood Cartel
$$$$$ | MAP | WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM
This order-at-the-counter spot in ‘Aiea is the kind of Haw-Mex seafood place that understands the joy of messy abundance: tostadas, ceviche, aguachile, and tacos that land like beach food with ambition. Go straight at the orale poke nachos—spicy ahi over chips with blue crab, tobiko crab spread, guacamole, jalapeños, unagi sauce, and chipotle aioli—or commit to the poke bowl version and call it dinner.
Best for: Loud Haw-Mex flavors and fresh seafood
Fête
$$$$$ | MAP | WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM
Chef-owner Robynne Maii, a James Beard Award winner, runs Fête as a Chinatown brasserie that gets all the fundamentals right. Start with the steak tartare (cornichon, crispy shallots, béarnaise aioli, Fête toast, anchovy butter) and the spreads (babaganoush, mac-nut tapenade, ricotta). Head next to the rigatoni with local pork ragu or the Chaz Burger: an eight-ounce grass-fed patty with caramelized onions, cheddar, tomatoes, local greens, and roasted garlic aioli. If I make it that far, I’m ending the night with the chocolatey rum raisin cake with salted caramel ganache and Kulolo ice cream.
Best for: A brasserie that still feels like Honolulu
La Mer
$$$$$ | MAP | WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM
Halekulani Hotel’s grand French statement is the city’s most ambitious, big-swing, Michelin-style restaurant. Chef Alexandre Trancher’s menu leans hard into classic luxury: foie gras shows up as a ballotine spun with “barbe a papa,” and the later courses move toward black garlic mousseline and a formal Black Forest-style finish, with the option of a cheese cart if restraint is not on the agenda. There is an a la carte menu, but most people are here for the tasting menu, which begins at $255 per person and includes lots of upgrade options. There’s an enforced dress code, as well as no kids under 8 years old, which says a lot about how seriously they’re taking things at La Mer.
Best for: The most formal special-occasion meal in town
MĀZE
$$$$$ | MAP | WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM
Chef Ki Chung and bartender Justin Kawailani Park run this tasting-menu spot as a collision of Hawaiian ingredients with high-end technique, with drinks built to match. The room is a trim blond-wood box with an open kitchen, a handful of tables, and counter seats, and the menu moves through dishes like A5 wagyu “musubi” laid over crisped nori and rice, an oyster topped with a granita made from white-kimchi pickling liquid and Korean pear, and a crab jook that eats like luxury porridge. This is offered as a $125 tasting or a $200 all-in version with pairings, alcoholic or nonalcoholic; if you’re here, spring for the drinks, because that’s all part of the show, one of the most interesting culinary experience on the islands.
Best for: A boundary-bending tasting menu where drinks are integral
Mud Hen Water
$$$$$ | MAP | WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM
Chef Ed Kenney’s Kaimukī’s Mud Hen Water is where Hawai‘i ingredients and global influences collide in original ways. Regulars chase dishes like Kualoa shrimp a la plancha with Portuguese bean salad and pimenton vinaigrette, which tastes like the restaurant’s thesis: taking local staples and pushing them forward without turning them into museum pieces.
Best for: A modern fine-dining experience that still tastes Hawaiian
MW Restaurant
$$$$$ | MAP | WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM
Chef Wade Ueoka and pastry chef Michelle Karr-Ueoka teamed up to create a restaurant where local flavors get treated with fine-dining discipline. The mochi-crusted kampachi is the calling card, the braised short ribs have become a house classic, and dessert is not a victory lap but a second act, including a strawberry pavlova finished with shiso.
Best for: A chef-driven dinner that ends with a serious dessert course
Senia
$$$$$ | MAP | WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM
Senia is the chef-driven Chinatown restaurant from Katherine Nomura and chef Anthony Rush, a place that can move between à la carte sharing and a structured tasting menu without feeling like it has an identity crisis. The dish that keeps getting named is the charred cabbage—served with shio kombu, green goddess, and buttermilk—because it manages to be both technical and weirdly craveable.
Best for: A night that can swing from casual to tasting-menu seriousness
Sushi Gyoshin
$$$$$ | MAP | WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM
Chef Hiroshi Tsuji runs a tightly run seven-seat sushi counter where the format is fixed, the pacing is deliberate, and BYOB is part of the model. The omakase runs as a multi-course progression—appetizers through sushi and miso—which makes it one of the clearest “special meal” values in Honolulu’s high-end sushi world.
Best for: A focused omakase counter without the usual markup games
The Pig and the Lady
$$$$$ | MAP | WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM
The Pig and the Lady is chef Andrew Le’s Vietnamese-inflected restaurant that has become a modern Honolulu institution by building a menu around the signature Le Fried Chicken Wings. They come twice fried, finished with makrut lime leaves, peanuts, pickles, and that sweet-sour-spicy “money sauce.” But the menu also has range, including a mushroom en croûte that takes the kitchen’s French technique seriously.
Best for: A high-flavor dinner built around memorable fried chicken
The Best Belize Restaurants for Fry Jacks, Pibil, and Beachfront Seafood
A road trip across Belize—from Guatemala’s western border to sandy islands—led to these restaurants worth planning around.
