Appetito Craft Pizza & Wine Bar — Restaurant in Honolulu

What can I say, we should have learned our lesson the first time. We visited Oahu a quite a few years ago, and visited Appetito at that time. That visit left us feeling the food was amazing, but the service horrible. We wanted to give it another shot, as it has been years, and maybe it was a fluke.

We were feeling great when we walked up and were greeted by a wonderful host. He asked if we had a preference of seating, and we said inside, but by the windows if possible. He enlisted some help and immediately cleaned up a table that was a perfect match for us. We were seated and a waiter came over in a timely manner to see what we would like...

That is when the greatness stopped...

Our waiter became non-existent, and seemed to prefer other customers over us. A different waiter asked if they could bring us water, which we still hadn't received. Our waiter seemed to see this and came over to get our drink order. We ordered our drinks, along with two pizzas. We finished our first round of drinks that took a long time to receive, and couldn't find our waiter anywhere. He finally returned we had to pretty much beg to get two more drinks ordered. He took the order, and off he went. At least 10 minutes passed (they were not very busy) and not drinks, and no food after at least a half hour at this point. He showed up with the drinks, saying they only have one bartender so drinks are taking a long time. I cannot imagine it takes a lot of time for a beer and a glass of wine. We didn't order mixed drinks that take time. Now that we have waited forever for two pizzas, he came and told us they burned our pizzas, and they have to remake them. Over the next 20-25 minutes at least, we see pizzas coming out of the kitchen like crazy to customers who showed up after we were told our original pizzas were burnt. We had empty drinks again, so when our waiter finally showed up with our pizzas, we asked him to bring us two of each drink, since it takes so long. The second round of pizzas came out, and we ordered one more at that time, as the product is great...

We are enjoying conversation with a customer next to us who visits their establishment once a week, and he couldn't believe the experience we were having. More people came in, ordered their pizzas, and started receiving them. Once again, the pizza we ordered before they even showed up was still not at our table. We are easily at a half hour since we ordered, so I walked up to the manager to chat. From out of nowhere, our waiter zips over to be involved in the conversation. I explained the situation about how we were rarely checked on, the first pizzas were burnt, the second ones took forever, the third still hadn't arrived, and our waiter was non-existent (as he stood and gave me a dirty look). She said she would check on things and come talk at our table. She said our pizza would be made and out soon (why wasn't it made 30 minutes earlier?) and she wouldn't charge us for that one. Then she started talking about how there is something wrong with their pizza oven, and they have to adjust and figure out how to work it correctly. It really made us feel like we did everything wrong, and they didn't take much responsibility for anything. I told her if the waiter would have simply said they are having problems with he oven in the beginning, we would have simply gone somewhere else, or at least known it was going to take extra time.

Maybe the only way is to get pizza to go here, but we will not be going back when we visit...

Hawaii is by no means a place to be concerning yourself with good pizza or pizza at all. You really might want to not even worry about pizza while you're visiting Oahu if you are just a casual pizza person. If you are a severe pizza person and would check out as many pizza places anywhere you will go, then I will tell you this - wether your situation is the latter or former:

Consider that this may very well be one of your best choices to make if you want to have Italian style pizza on Oahu. You honestly do not have a lot of choices, let alone good ones. So, you really insist - this is probably your best bet. Take it from me as someone who basically tried every place, several times and has a discernment around pizza as critical, inexhaustible and incomparable as I do thanks to information spending time in New York, the East Coast and Italy gave me at a young age.

Pizza appreciators will understand. If I am wrong, don't be mad at me. I told you, Hawaii is not even somewhere to be concerning yourself with pizza, so if you persist past me saying this yet again - Appetito Craft Pizza is one of your best bets. You will not be satisfied and I repeat you will not be satisfied by this if you come from a part of the World that has good pizza and you know that already.

Do not order delivery from here unless you like your pizza Ice Cold. It needs to be eaten as soon as it comes out of the oven. The Door Dash and Grub Hub delivery drivers brought this to me cold as an igloo. It is unfortunate because it is very good pizza.

Why I say all this is because I had this Ice Cold and basically every other place on the Island piping hot and this was better quality and craft-wise than the rest and it was noticeable. This is a respectable and real pizza place where as a lot of the ones on the Island will have you understanding why your culinary leanings are best suited in other areas on Oahu if you want to understand the old Pidgin proverb “Broke da...

(Last visited 12/9/2022.) On vacation in Hawaii while still exploring downtown Waikiki, we decided to check out Appetito Craft Pizza & Wine Bar! Yelp gave this place great reviews so we checked it out!

Atmosphere/Appearance: This place is pretty chill and laid back. It's a split-level restaurant so the bar area is the lower level and the main dining room is elevated toward the back. The lights are low and dimly lit, the walls are like neat wooden panels and the floors are a smooth concrete. I'm assuming for humidity purposes, but it didn't take anything away from the aura.

Service: Carly took care of us and she was really sweet. She was patient and we had everything that we needed.

Food: We started off with the Sun Kissed cocktail. It was pretty weak to be honest and was like, warm even though it had ice in it. That means it wasn't shake up very well or was rushed to be put together. Our first appetizer were the Grilled Shishito Peppers. They were AMAZING and simply the best I've ever had. They were garlicky, savory and had a decent cheese balance. For our entree we went with the Italian Salami pizza (Italian salami, mozzarella and, cremini mushrooms and basil all on their house-made tomato sauce). It was good, not $22.00 good, but good. Saltiness of the salami took the place of the lack of cheese that was on it, but solid. Small portion and was left hungry.

Value: Menu prices are wrong. Limoncello was listed at $14.00, but rang up at $15.00. We didn’t bother with confrontation because they were closing at 9:30pm. I already mentioned the price of the pizza. This place was cool, but I may go elsewhere next time. There's just so much to see in Hawaii that I can't double-back on a restaurant! Lol. Check this place out if you're...