Honolulu for foodies

Best restaurants

Honolulu eats the way a port city eats: on a plate that has been passed between islands, empires, and plantation shifts for longer than the state has existed. The dozen rooms below are not a best-of. They are the working spine of a downtown-to-Ala-Moana eating stretch: a ramen bar on South Beretania, a dim sum room on North Beretania, a tasting-menu Hawaiian kitchen on Kapiolani Boulevard, a saimin counter out on Nimitz Highway, and a cluster of small owner-run kitchens threaded through the Keeaumoku and Auahi blocks. Cuisines cross the map (Japanese, Chinese, Italian, Peruvian, Cajun, Middle Eastern, Hawaiian) because that is what Honolulu's dining room looks like on a Tuesday night, not what a visitor guide flattens it into. They are chosen for the reader who has three or four dinners in town and wants each one to do a different job: a bowl of noodles at the counter, a lacquered pork platter, a considered kitchen with a wine list, a beach-day breakfast. Every address, phone number, and service hour below is drawn from the mapped record; the opinions between them are ours.