Cafe il Mondo — Restaurant in Hawaii

A gas fired brick oven and nice decor does not an authentic Italian restaurant (or pizzeria) make. Brownies and icecream for desert? No zambuca or grappa or lemon cello (but every other non-Italian libation under the sun). No beer on tap, but $6 for a 12-oz bottle of local swill (and no Italian offerings). An "anti pasti" plate made of shredded carrots, tossed greens, and crumbled blue cheese with a few kalmatas and cups of pesto and vinaigrette? (More like an untossed salad.). I ordered caprese, but they were out of mozzarella. (An Italian joint out of mozzarella!) The individual-sized veggie pizza ($16) was okay, but not as good as the ones done in a brick oven at the Kalapana night market for $7. Salmon and shrimp, both imported and likely frozen, were overcooked and served over factory-made pasta out of a box. The chicken wings ($12 for 7) were mediocre (honestly, Safeway and Pizza Hut have better...and more reasonably priced.) The piped in Latin music was a bit out of place. You are definitely paying for the decor here (our bill for 5 persons was $250 and one person only ordered salad). If you have traveled in Italy, or are simply accustomed to authentic Italian establishments elsewhere, you are likely to be disappointed...

We arrived yesterday for lunch and were seated at the bar by a very nice server. The lady behind the bar, however, would not even look at us for several minutes. The nice server, Aiza, came behind the bar, took our drink order and then had to go tell the other lady to make our drinks. Meanwhile, another server comes to help and goes straight to the back and isnt helping Aiza at all. We felt bad for Aiza since the restaurant was filling up and she was the only one wanting to work and was running circles around the other lady who only seemed to want to sit and roll silverware. My husband ordered a salad which was good and I ordered a wood fired pizza which was also very good. Aiza rocked, but we were very disappointed that we were blatantly ignored by the first lady. Not even a greeting whatsoever. We probably would have had more beverages if we could have gotten service from the lady behind the bar. We come to Island of Hawaii often but probably will not return to...

My friends and I went today to Waipio valley hike, it was a rainy day and a very hard hike to the opposite side of the valley, thru Z-line and beyond, after the hike we stopped at this restaurant and that was such a treat! Nice new building, high ceiling, decor, super service and most importantly -delicious food. Some of us were looking like wet puppies, but we we greeted so nicely and felt welcome. There was life music, music was beautiful; the owner of the restaurant was playing the guitar and singing himself, with saxophone accompaniment. It was not overly loud, so we still could talk. The restaurant was full of happy people and some of them were dancing. Wonderful ending of our trip. We spent more than two hours there and did not want to leave but we had to drive home to Kona. I'll definitely...