Brown's Beach House — Restaurant in Hawaii

All stars go to the atmosphere and sunset view at our 5:30pm reservation. All the servers work hard and are very friendly. The menu items all sound delicious. Unfortunately, there just seems to be a bit of a comedy of errors in both delivery and execution.

The first food to arrive were the rolls, with a butter & likely honey dish to be added, if desired. Yes, please. Honestly, this was the absolute best part of the whole meal, hands down. Warm, rich in flavor, and little pieces of ube baked in.

Next were salads. I had the watermelon salad, hubby had the roasted & pickled red beets salad. You can spy the ingredients on my menu photo. I got 3 squares of watermelon. I'm appreciative that they used Kamuela tomatoes and Hawai'i Island Goat Dairy Feta Cheese. It was good...but check the plate presentation in my photo...um...hubby says it's all about negative space on a plate. I'm more about food on the plate. Ah well. His beet salad was good, and the Big Island Creamery Mac Nut Cheese really made it. We also ordered the Kona Prawns as an appetizer, and after receiving our salads, hubby said "thank goodness we also ordered the prawns" in respect to the amount of salad portions. The prawns were good and had a nice sauce, dipped up by a teeny little piece of ciabatta.

Main course: hubby asked if the prime ribeye was from the Island (I mean, Waimea...paniolos...) but no. The meat was okay...slightly overdone...the chimichurri sauce was salty and over oily...just really should have been better for $89. The twice baked bone marrow potatoes were not very flavorful. Maybe he should have thrown the chimichurri sauce over the potatoes! :-) I had the special swordfish. It was fine...not a lot of flavor in the preparation. It came with some parmesan discs surrounds potato...I think...and they were way too rich to finish.

We had panna cotta with yuzu foam and lemon-ginger cookie and crème brûlée which I think had lilikoi for desserts. They were just okay.

Finally, the service was attentive in the beginning, but as the night wore on, became less so. I had a cocktail that I didn't drink and not once did anyone ask if I liked it and would like another instead. We waited and waited and waited for the waiter to come back to the table after dessert to get the check but he never did. Truly - never. Hubby went to the front to give the hostess our credit card so she could find our waiter. Hubby came back to the table and we waited and waited. Our waiter went to the large table next to us but we still couldn't get his attention...so we left the table to go to the hostess stand and he said to them "oh - they paid" and then another guy had hubby's card to give back and said "oh - they paid" and yet no, we didn't pay. So we explained that and then the waiter said "oh - I got confused - I thought you were at the big table and another guy paid." They're lucky we're so honest. It was something that can happen...but normally not at a dinner that cost almost $400 for 2 people.

We had to walk out repeating to ourselves...they're human...it's beautiful here...we saw the sunset... But we definitely...

This is a review for anyone considering Brown's as a proposal idea. I proposed to my now fiancé at Brown's and would like to provide my input to anyone considering doing the same. First off our waitress Cristy was very polite and helpful and I'd highly recommend her.

During the planning stage Dennis or Ashley would likely be your point of contact. Have them note any requests you make into the notes for your reservation otherwise the staff may not be notified.

Booking the POINTE table is a MUST. The other tables don't quite have the same view. Also note that the ground around the table is fine pebbles and not sand which is nice. Just don't have your lady wearing heels. Also I would highly recommend asking if any other proposals are on the same day. I had to reschedule mine once I found out another was occurring.

I HIGHLY recommend paying someone or having a family member arrive early and decorate your table as I did otherwise they give a very bare-bones table and chairs. As an example I had to bring my own table-cloth because they do not provide. I also added some flowers and fabrics to the table to make it more appealing.

I would also suggest to request the square table as it is much nicer than the circle table.

For the proposal I convinced my fiance that we were going to see the onsite Lu'au show so that she would be dressed up. Once we arrived I surprised her with the proposal and notified the restaurant that I would be back in an hour after photos. You have the table until 9:30pm so it should be plenty of time.

My photographer Carena Leigh (Highly recommend) had us arrive an hour before sunset so that the sun was in it's golden hour.

For the food we requested the 4-course meal which was very filling. And if you have any dietary restrictions Ashley and the chef's are very accommodating if you notify them prior to the reservation.

Ultimately Brown's was an amazing experience and a great place to propose. I couldn't have asked for a more...

The setting and the ambience here are about the best anywhere.

I provided a generous gratuity so we could have a table with a sunset view. An assistant maître d’ tried to take us to a different table and I had to insist we get the table we asked for. He again had to go ask the head maître d’ if that was OK.

We waited for at least 10 minutes before our waitress came to take our order. Hard to understand because we were the second customers of the night and the restaurant was still relatively empty.

The waitress was very friendly and helped us with our order and was knowledgeable about the food. Our drink order arrived after several minutes and we gave the waitress our food order.

After about 20 minutes I asked the waitress when our salad would be coming. It was several more minutes before she brought our salad. The Caesar salad was very good.

We finished the salad and waited for another 20 minutes before asking the waitress when our entrée would be coming. I also had to ask when my glass of wine would arrive. It was several minutes before she brought the glass of red wine.

Our entrées arrived at one hour and 10 minutes after we had sat down. That was too long. The steaks were cooked expertly, but for $65 I did expect a thicker ribeye steak. My wife’s filet mignon was also cooked expertly and she enjoyed it.

We would have ordered two more $26 glasses of red wine but the waitress never came to check. During this pandemic I try to take into account that restaurant servers are overwhelmed. But in this case it wasn’t that. Our waitress spent 90% of her time with her back to us talking to an older German lady who apparently was a regular customer.

At $300 for two dinners I don’t expect to have to ask the server three times to bring us our food. There was no acknowledgement of our anniversary we had informed them of. We left feeling ignored and...