Homestyle Hawaiian — Restaurant in Chula Vista

Update: The owner, Ansel did reach out to me via text and banned my family & I from their restaurants, which is unfortunate but no big deal since we no longer wish to patronage a business that treats customers this way. Out of curiosity, I scrolled down below to read their other customer reviews, especially the catering related ones & noticed that I wasn’t the only one who had bad catering experiences w/ them. They also had issues w/ Aimee too. Had I been aware of their catering service shortcomings, I would’ve never hired them in the first place, let alone twice.

So besides being banned, Ansel had the audacity to blame me for not confirming our order. Instead of accountability, he shifted blame. Wow! My 1st “confirmation” was made when the order was placed & deposit was paid. My 2nd “confirmation” was made 1 month prior to our event when the balance was paid in full. At that point, I fulfilled the end of the agreement. Then it was on them to fulfill their end by delivering our catering order on the date & time agreed upon.

Our DJ, photographer & photo booth crew all promptly showed up as expected on the day of the event as agreed upon…except for Homestyle Hawaiian. Such a BIG disappointment! While they did show up w/ food 2 hours later, our order was incomplete. While they gave us extra food, which we didn’t need/want, we preferred those missing items from our order. And while I did get some money back, it didn’t account for the additional money & time we spent to go out & buy food to hold our guests over until our dinner & appetizers arrived. Nor does it take away the stress & humiliation of that day. I don’t wish that on anyone, which is my main purpose for my review.

• While I've enjoyed their food & the service I've received over the years at their various locations, I HATE their catering service. They've disappointed me twice; the 1st time was for our wedding reception 3 yrs ago & recently for my mom's 80th b'day party. They were almost 2 hrs late for our reception. In spite of this, I wanted to give them a chance & use them again for the b'day party bc we like their food.

When placing our order for the b'day party w/ Aimee, I suggested an earlier delivery time but she guaranteed they'd arrive a 1/2 hr before our party started...but that never happened. Aimee never responded to any of my attempts to contact her that day. In fact, it was her husband, Ansel who reached out after I tried calling for Aimee at the store. Ansel said that he couldn't find our order even though I provided him w/ my paid invoice number. He was very apologetic, said he would see what he could do & kept me posted. In the meantime, we rushed out & spent almost $300 for appetizers to feed our guests.

Our food was delivered over 2 1/2 hrs late! They never set-up the food like we paid for bc it was so late already & we brought everything inside ourselves. We were missing certain items & received extra quantities of food we didn't need. We were more interested in feeding our guests than worrying about any of that for now.

I waited a few days to calm down before I reached out to Ansel again. I express my dissatisfaction with how things went down & my disappointment w/ Aimee for never returning my calls, following-up or owning up to anything. Ansel apologized & proposed a refund amount, which we felt was inadequate but we reluctantly accepted since it appeared to be his best/final offer & we wanted to move on. It was almost a month before we received our refund bc Aimee forgot to mail our check. No surprise there - late as usual & no apologies from Aimee!

I'll still go back to Homestyle Hawaiian for in-store dining...eventually. But never again will I ever hire them for catering after being burned twice. And as nice as Aimee was over the phone, she failed to deliver as promised, hid & left her husband, Ansel to deal with the fiasco. Thanks Ansel! Shame on you, Aimee! And shame on me for...

I'm not from around this area and I googled food near me and homestyle Hawaiian came up. Hawaiian sounded good I didn't even really know what Hawaiian food was. Anytime I think of Hawaiian food I think of a luau and a pig with an apple in its mouth. Its kind of in a weird location. It's between a dentist office and a Valvoline oil changing place. There's one lady that got out of her car and went inside and come back out right as I walked in. There was a lady sitting down and eating, a couple off to the side waiting for their food and a man asking how long it was going to take cuz he needed to run across the street real quick. Is really warm in there like they didn't have air conditioning on at all but they did have fans going but it was still really warm in there The doors were open It wasn't hot but it wasn't comfortable either Like I didn't stay and eat which I wanted to but I didn't because it was too warm inside. The couple's food was ready and they cashier handed them their food and then didn't say anything to me like hi how are you, Do you need help, What do you want, do you have any questions... he didn't say anything. He was young though not that's an excuse he needs to learn customer service, but he was super nice once I ordered. The menu has different types of food chicken beef I don't remember what else I do remember they had katsu chicken and lava chicken and the description of them is exactly the same One says it has HH sauce I'm assuming the HH is home styles Hawaiian The katsu chicken has it on the side and the lava chicken has a drizzled over the top. I thought it was strange that they had this item on there twice and it's the same exact thing when they could just say Do you want it on the top or on the side. The sauce is like a sweet BBQ sauce, but not too sweet it still had a barbecue kick in it. I'm not a fan but I don't really like barbecue sauce. I believe it's their signature sauce, I'm guessing, it's probably pretty good I'm just not a fan of barbecue sauces. I ordered the katsu chicken meal which came with white rice and it said on the menu macaroni salad or green salad, but he didn't ask me which one I wanted, just gave me macaroni salad which is what I wanted so I was okay with that. And I ordered a strawberry lemonade which is just a lemonade that they add strawberry flavoring and I couldn't really taste the strawberry. They only had two cups left so thank goodness to me I got a cup. I probably waited maybe 5 minutes for my food. I was there 10 minutes from when I parked to when I left the parking lot. The food was hot, macaroni salad was cold. I just don't think I was a big fan of the chicken with the batter or whatever the katsu crunchy part on the outside of the chicken is. I probably won't return. For people who like Hawaiian or who like katsu chicken it's a good place if you're...

Hello, before eating here, please take a moment from your day to read:

We just visited this place recently (on Tuesday before watching Venom) and was extremely dissatisfied and with our visit.

First of all the staff wasn't friendly. It seemed like the two cooks were on their lunch break and were disappointed when we walked in (giving us dirty looks.)

And the main guy seemed like he was having a rough day when taking our order, repeatedly saying , "anything else"..

I ordered the Korean Chicken with their Ponzu sauce and a side order of salad. (Attached a pic.) The salad barely had any dressing (which was good because I'm cutting but still)

The main thing I received after coming here was hardcore diarrhea and vomiting before watching our movie. I was on a 15 hour fast before eating here so I know this place was the cause. I was reading some reviews and some people got food poisoning from this place as well from ordering the chicken..

Beware of ordering any chicken from this place.. would have much rather went to L&Ns, El Pollo Loco or my moms house than eating here.

I am definitely not coming back here ever again, and if I can help prevent at least one customer from food poisoning, then I truly believe that this was a successful google review.

Thanks for reading.

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