Ola Tap room — Restaurant in Hawaii

Superb overall. We came by twice, the food was very good, the service was generally fast and friendly. If you need generous serving sizes of fresh, well prepared food this is a good spot. Had the double smash burger, very tasty, cooked exactly right with a good bun. Also a big plate of the roasted Brussels sprouts which were seasoned and cooked to perfection, delicious. The shrimp bao was a very good smaller bite. All the food we had was very good, a welcome surprise for Hawai’i if you’re coming from a serious food town like Philly, NYC or San Francisco.

The porter is good stuff, and we - being into ciders - especially liked the tropical hard juice selection. Get the flight, taste a bunch. Our favorites were the “sunrise” mix, (OLG and dragonfruit lemonade), OLG by itself (orange, lilikoy/passionfruit, Guava) and the tangelo but they were all tasty. The $5 half pint serving is good for trying several different ones. A 4 pour flight (maybe 4 ounces each?) is $15.

Wish we had found this place earlier in our trip, will definitely come back,...

We’re from the Seattle area where craft beer is religion. The craft beer scene in Hawaii is certainly growing and we’ve seen a lot of improvement both on O’ahu and the Big Island over the past 30 years. You can now reliably find solid beer in several places.

Ola Taproom in Hilo is one example. Their beers are well crafted and solid. Nice flavors, good mouth-feel (not thin), well-done. They may be trying too many variations though and might be better off offering a smaller selection of their own beers so they can completely focus on those, and then bring in other guest beers.

We tried their Lilikoi Lime Milkshake IPA (sounds god-awful but he gave me a sample and I ended ordering a 1/2 pint). Very nice. My wife had a flight and thought everything she had was fine but agrees that have too many variations.

The food on both visits was very good. We’ve had a few things and all were solid. More gourmet than standard pub grub. Not all were hits but at least they are trying to rise above the expected fare.

Nice service. Very helpful...

Today, being National Hamburger Day, I was triggered through media and intellectual marketing techniques to seek out a burger!

But not just any hamburger would do!

I found myself at Ola Brew’s Taproom in Hilo, with the sparkly golden eyed Kendal as my enthusiastic n professional server! I told her the burger was better than perfect, the fries were perfect, perfect crispy-ness/salty balance and the Stratta Pilsner was crisp, not bitter, fresh n easily drinkable!

What I didn’t tell Kendal was her service was perfect, too!

Glad I chose...