The Rim — Restaurant in Hawaii

My husband and I ate here on vacation tonight and it was honestly disappointing. We heard lots of good things so we were looking forward to a nice relaxing, good quality meal, and atmosphere. The food was okay. I had the volcano house pasta with chicken, it didn’t have much flavor and could have used some more salt. My husband had the stuffed chicken and it was okay, pretty bland for all of the ingredients added to it, including veggies and mashed potatoes. We also had the bone marrow as an appetizer. The bread was the best part. Our service was the worst part.

Our waiter came over and said hi, listed off the specials and started to walk away, we caught him to ask a couple of questions. After each question he started to walk away. It was like he didn’t want to talk to us, and it wasn’t busy at this time. He had maybe 3 tables including ours. We asked if we could put in an order of the bone marrow and he said he wasn’t sure if they had any left and he would check and let us know. 10-15 minutes later he still hadn’t come over to let us know or take a drink order, but he did walk up to two new tables that had come in, and we even saw him take one of their dinner orders. We asked the bus lady if we could change waiters and right as we were asking the bone marrow came out. She said she could change our waiter but she’d have to move us to a different section, so we stayed there and made it work. Our waiter never asked us if we wanted anything other than water to drink. We tried to ask for coffee and tea but he was in such a hurry every time he came up to our table we didn’t have a chance until he was standing next to our table entering in someone else’s order on the computer. To put it simply, he just was not attentive or friendly.

There was a musician tonight and he played beautiful music. Unfortunately it was hard to enjoy with the family dining close by us. One of their kids was playing a loud iPad the entire time, and one of the adults was scrolling reels or tiktoks, playing distracting music/sounds every minute or two. It seemed to me that they should have been seated in the restaurant next door, which looked more casual.

Luckily when we went hiking the other day we got to enjoy the view. Tonight it was rainy and very foggy. Of course not their fault and uncontrollable. If you’d like a cup of coffee and a great view, I’d say that’s about all this place is worth a visit for. It was pretty disappointing all around, between the service, food, and atmosphere. The Google listing should also be updated to $50-$100 per person, it’s definitely not...

Our experience here was comically bad (so thankfully it’ll make for funny stories later.) First, it was probably the slowest service I have ever experienced. It took 15 minutes to be seated when the restaurant was mostly empty and we had a reservation (and I know reservations aren’t a guarantee that you’ll be seated at an exact time, so at this point I was still understanding and patient.) It was less understandable when my 9 year old wasn’t provided a kids menu and we needed to wait an additional 10 minutes or more for the server to provide one. Then even less understandable when we sat at the table for more than 30 minutes no longer touching our food, waiting for the server to check in and offer dessert. Which never happened. He just provided a box and our check; which was disappointing because despite my boredom and agitation with the wait, I really was interested in dessert. I had seen online to anticipate a 90 minute dining experience. I assumed this was due to the upscale nature of the restaurant, but unfortunately it was just incredibly slow. When my crab legs were brought out there were no utensils with the dish to crack the legs. After looking around to see if someone was coming with them and not seeing anyone, my husband and I set to work on them by hand. After we got through almost third of them, the server came over with the utensils. In addition to all of that, bread wasn’t delivered to our table until midway through our meal (so maybe 45 minutes to an hour after we were seated?)

The restaurant website boasts that you have a view of the crater anywhere in the restaurant. I suppose that’s true. If I leaned back to see around the table of 6 in front of the window I could see parts of the crater, as long as the children from that table didn’t stand up in front of the windows. Not that there was much to see (not the restaurant’s fault. They don’t control the lava.)

The food itself was overpriced for what it was. It wasn’t bad but it wasn’t what I would expect for the prices. The kid’s dishes were well priced, and very well portioned though.

All in all, I wouldn’t really recommend The Rim at Volcano House if someone asked me about it. I personally wish we had used our time to continue driving the crater rim and exploring then hit up the McDonald’s back in Hilo; but we at least got to see some lava (but not from our table. We had to step...

Make sure you put in a reservation for dinner, as they do not accept walk-in. We enjoyed a dinner here while we were visiting Volcano.

The restaurant has a great view of the Volcano Caldera and while we were dining, the vents had a very nice orange glow, but unfortunately there was no active eruptions or lava flow that particular evening. The decor is tasteful, with pleasant colors and the space appears to be well maintained. They had a musician playing live music when we arrived.

We had a reservation but when we arrived they told us it would be another 30 minutes until our table would be ready which seemed odd since there were multiple tables that were empty. We only waited about 12 minutes before we were sat. We were placed at a table right by the windows which was nice.

Our server was not very friendly and she did not check up on us very often. We had to flag down another server to get our drinks refilled at one point in the evening. There were 2 other servers handling the tables on either side of ours, and they seemed to do a better job and were much friendlier to their guests.

The meal was okay, but for the price paid, it was disappointing. We wanted to get an appetizer but they were out of 4 items (they offer 6 different items). Since my husband is allergic to shellfish, that left us with no options. In addition, there were multiple items on the menu that they were out of including the stuffed chicken and the fresh catch which are what we had originally planned to order. Instead, for our entree' we had the rib eye steak and the five cheese stuffed ravioli. The rib eye was cooked properly, and was lightly seasoned. The five cheese stuffed ravioli had good flavor, but was cold when it was delivered to the table. The included sides for each meal were good enough, but were not overly impressive. We wanted to order dessert, but once again they were out of the two items we were interested in.

Overall, the meal was alright and the atmosphere was great. The view from The Rim was spectacular. But the service was lacking, and the restaurant being out of nearly half of the menu was quite disappointing.

I'd still recommend having a meal here when you're visiting just for the view alone. Also it's one of the few full-service restaurants in the...