Kona Brewing Co. — Restaurant in Hawaii

Heads up!!! New menu alert. Started last night 1/22/2025. And the changes are abysmal. 2 beers, pizza roll app, 2 10” pizzas with tip = $101.00. Everything they brought out, I was like is there a hidden camera watching our faces and reactions?

We’ve been coming here since 2007. As soon as we land, this is (was) first stop. We visited during our stay. On the way out we grabbed a pizza and flew it back with us.

Let’s pick on the change to the pizza rolls. I found an old pic with big round doughy cheesy rolls overflowing with Roni’s! Look at what they are serving now. We dissected a few and there wasn’t even 1 full pepperoni in the roll. Even the server walked by and was like wow they put those through the roll shrinking machine. Needless to say she was apologizing and saying there is no one here to complain to. Her first night seeing the changes too.

Pizza. We used to love their pizzas, go look up older pics. 10” and 14”. What made them great beside quality toppings and cheesy, was they took spent grains from the beer making and used that in the dough. If you tour the new brewhouse, they will show you the pressing machine which compresses everything to extract max liquid and leaves it like cardboard. You ain’t gettin spent grains in this pizza anymore. They have 4 pizzas left on menu, only 10” and they are $25-$30 each now. Look, if you don’t want to be in the high margin pizza biz, take them off the menu altogether, vs insulting people and being like if you want pizza from us, fine, deal with these. Are the other locations like this now too? From looking at their online menus, it does appear they are suffering from the changes too. Waikiki at least still shows the 14” but what is that $50 now?

Normally on our return trips during the stay we’d try the other stuff on menu, but at this rate our run from 2007 is now RIP 2025. Hopefully some other people who knew this place for taste, great food and quality can comment on the new menu changes. Congrats mgmt, promote whoever made these changes today the C suite, they are going to save you tons of money while chasing off your fans. This is just a beer joint to me now not...

When some positive elements to this restaurant, my overall experience left a lot to be desired. The food, despite some positive reviews I read on google was not up to par, particularly considering the high prices in comparison to other restaurants on the island.

The standouts, in terms of food, were the Poke appetizer. The edamame soy sauce was also quite good. The Poke was fresh, succulent and some of the best you can get o. This side of the island, distinguishing itself from much of the frozen alternatives available at the “high end” restaurants along the water.

However, things took a downturn when it came to the main courses. The fish sandwich was overcooked and lacked flavor maybe switched the type of fish served here would be beneficial to the taste and the accompanying sides were not up to the mark, especially for the price. The side sauce for the sandwich was not served in a big enough portion for the sandwich. The pizza, which seemed to be a popular choice among others however it was a letdown for our entire table. Despite being advertised as "wood-fired" and being talked about online it seemed undercooked and was lacking in sauce. We tried the Margherita and Captain varieties.

When it came to the service, it was, unfortunately, quite disappointing. We understand that service levels can vary but the lack of attention was notable. We were not offered any refills on our drinks, including water with our tables water being empty for over half the meals, and our server did not check on us throughout our meal.

The ambiance, on the other hand, was pleasant, with a tropical landscape theme and an appealing outdoor seating area. However, the LED lights used for table lighting at night were harsh on the eyes, and seemed to contradict the tropical theme. A warmer tone of lighting would have been more fitting.

In conclusion, unless you're in the immediate vicinity and looking for a good quality beerbeer, I wouldn't necessarily recommend going out of your way to visit. While the beer was decent, the food and service left much to be desired. Maybe just stop in...

We’ve been to Kona Brewing on O’ahu many times and have always enjoyed it, which is why we were so disappointed at our lunch here.

Pros: Good, solid beers. Not stellar, but for Hawaii it’s good. Their Koko Brown ale is good. So is their lemongrass IPA. Their best may be the Gold Cliff though. Very good.

Cute patio with trees and huge umbrellas.

Nice enough service.

Cons: (This applies only to the Kailua-Kona store) The food just isn’t good here. Our lunch today was the nachos. We ordered the large size with no protein. It was $36 so we expected a huge plate. It was tiny! At our favorite restaurant I often get the half nachos. This plate today was smaller than that! Plus, they advertise them as being a combination of three different types of chips. We counted, literally now, THREE chips that weren’t grocery store tortilla chips. They advertised mozzarella and other things too. It was a small plate with pretty much just some beer cheese poured over the top for which they charge $36. Ugh…

We asked our server if this was really the large, thinking that she accidentally gave us the small ($18). She got a little embarrassed and said that no, that was the large. She later gave us a discount (she did that all on her own. We didn’t ask for it and we were very nice about the whole thing) which brought them down to $30 and she mentioned that others think it’s a ridiculous size too.

It was doubly odd because their beer prices are in line with what you’d expect to pay. But their food prices are far above average, even for the Kailua-Kona area. A 10” pizza is $28, and the ones we saw didn’t look good (but to be fair we didn’t have one).

Good beer, reasonably priced. Substandard food, exorbitantly priced. Weird.

One 12 oz beer, one pint, and one ‘large’ nacho, plus tip: $60 (this is the full price without the discount on the nachos that she gave us)

This is a 100%...