L&L Hawaiian Barbecue — Restaurant in Annandale

After trying L&L Hawaiian Barbecue twice (once during soft opening and after the grand opening) I can now leave an honest review. I've been to Hawaii and eaten some amazing authentic food. I host a lot of events and one of the things that I look for is good food places with a great atmosphere. When I saw this restaurant open I definitely was excited to check it out. I always like to try places twice especially if I have a not so good 1st experience. You just never know if someone is having a bad day. In this case it was their soft opening and the line was extremely long.

Atmosphere: great location, friendly staff. In the boarder of Annandale and Alexandria. Ample of parking, great outdoor and indoor space. Open bar area. The bar is big, kitchen is small, and a small corner where Tiger Boba is located at. Great space for hosting events. The location itself doesn't open until noon. Overall the establishment is clean and has good music.

Start to End Time: Wayyyy too long! Even if I wanted to host an event there I couldn't because I do not think the business can push food out fast enough for a large group. It took 2 seconds to get a drink but 1 hour to order and another 1.5 hours to get food. The 2nd time around it took 30 mins to order, the guy at the check out told me it was only going to take me 30 mins to get my food. It was over 2 hours. I came in at 6:30 and left at 9pm for a to-go order. I drank 3 boba tea while waiting. Definitely not a place I would go to for a quick bite or lunch break.

Food: Food was better the 2nd time around. Both times I ordered the Chicken BBQ. The 1st time the rice was soggy but the Mac salad was on point and the chicken was marinated perfectly but didn't really get the BBQ that I was looking for. The 2nd time rice was good, Mac salad was missing a little salt but chicken was on point and flavorful.

Price/ Menu: Prices are on the higher side. Especially for a typical to-go container. The menu looks confusing. They had 4 TV screens up with the full menu but some items said "Stay tuned". They don't have menus where you can hold or look at and the font was small. So I looked up the menu online. Online pictures does not have pricing so you would have to look back at the menu. There is no online ordering and you cannot call ahead to order.

Improvement: They need to make the kitchen bigger. I honestly think the corner kitchen is not allowing them to cook multiple orders at a time. They should have used the bar area and have the bar where the kitchen is. This is probably why it's taking so long for orders to come out. The bar itself is huge with one POS system to ring everyone up. I only saw 3 people sit at the bar but it felt weird sitting at the bar when people were lined up next to it to order. So maybe having the POS out of the way so that it doesn't block traffic flow. The other thing is coming up with a better way to notify customers that their food is ready. Either a text message system, pagers, or a digital screen that tells the customers what ticket number they are working on. The last thing I want to do is keep asking what number they are on or create an online ordering system. Make your menu simple and bigger for...

Hawaiian food is a rarity in this area. My party and I went in with an open mind and high expectations, but we were sorely disappointed with what we found. The first thing we noticed was how odd the floor plan of the restaurant was. The tiger sugar bubble tea shop is right in the front and would totally obscure the flow of people trying to enter the restaurant if the line was long. The restaurant area itself where you order and pick up food is dominated by the bar. Menus were only provided in small laminated versions that were scattered across the countertops.

It pains me to say this, but the food is absolutely not worth the price we paid. This is not to say that the food itself was bad, but the loco moco I had looked very homemade and obviously used low quality ingredients, reminding me of cafeteria food, down to the steamed vegetables and odd blisters on the hamburger patty. I know that loco moco is kind of a low cost dish, but for a small bowl that costs $12, and especially for a restaurant, I was expecting something of much higher and homemade quality. The Kahlua pork seems to be the big draw on the menu, but when I saw it brought out it looked very overcooked and dry. Another dish that my party got was the fish, which also looked made from frozen materials and charged a premium for.

Another odd thing we noticed is that a large number of the staff were either at the bar working or just sitting at the bar having conversations with each other. Only one staff member was going around delivering food to customers. The atmosphere seemed too laid back and there was a lot of noise in the background, which also made ordering very difficult.

I may be willing to give this place another chance, but my first impression was genuinely not good. I am sad to be writing my review in such a manner. I know that this is a new business, but if they want to stay afloat, they need to seriously up their game and standards, especially when there are so many other already fantastic Asian restaurants...

We grew up eating L&L. We've eaten at L&L in CA (where we grew up) Southern VA (we often go for work) and Tokyo, Japan (where we lived for over 5 years). Unfortunately, this location is the only one that misses the mark for us. The servers are friendly, but we waited for our food for over 45 minutes. When we got there, there was no line. We had to follow up twice since people who arrived minutes after us were almost done with their meals. Supposedly the kitchen was backed up which could be the case, but we watched people who ordered similar items that got their food faster than we did. Maybe the truth is that they missed our order? I would rather them tell us that was the case and apologize rather than their kitchen was backed up. We've always known L&L to be quite quick to serve.

This location doesn't have any mini plates. They just have bowls. Did L&L get rid of mini plates?! We were just in another L&L location and they still had mini plates. This was so disappointing.

The bbq short ribs was tasty but the chicken katsu was not. There was no flavor. The prices are much more expensive in this location, but I get it. We’re in Nova.

The atmosphere was okay but it was so cold. It was so hot outside but when you come in, its freezing. Maybe we sat below or near an AC vent… I don't know… but I had to get a jacket in the car to wear to be comfortable with the indoor temperature.

We might give them another chance to see if operations and food quality gets better. We will update this review...