Highway Inn Kaka'ako — Restaurant in Honolulu

We drove all the way from Aulani Hotel to have a very good experience of trying an authentic Hawaiian food. We did not know where to go so we asked one of the valet staff from Aulani if they can recommend a popular local Hawaiian Restaurant. The young gentleman mentioned to go to this restaurant but he said to go to “Highway Inn, at the Waipahu location. We end up going by the Ala Moana location because it was near the area where we we driving around. Upon arriving at the restaurant around 2 pm dated October 23, 2023, we were greeted by an older lady wearing a beautiful Hawaiian dress with a flower on her ear. She asked if our group were complete. While we were waiting, we saw her fixed the table at the corner, few steps from the waiting area and then she went back to us and got our group to be seated. Apparently, while we were walking towards the table, 2 persons in our group were in front walking ahead of the restaurant “greeter” staff and reprimanded them. The lady said to them sarcastically with a loud voice, “Don’t go ahead of me, you don’t even know where you are going!” The 2 people in our group responded to her and apologized and let her go in front us and followed her. While we were looking at the menu, we heard the greeter staff and 2 other female staff working at the bar area laughing out loud at their conversation. Their conversation was very “down grading”. They were discussing how the “greeter staff” treated the 2 people in our group and made her very proud that she did her job correctly and was able to embarrass her customers in front of the crowd. The other female staff at the bar even said that it was “the laugh of the day” while laughing out loud. While 7 of us were seating at the table, we listened to their whole conversation while we pretended looking at the menu. We all heard their loud conversation laughing and enjoying how they ridiculed us. Without them knowing, we are 7 in our group with 3 that have disabilities, 1 has lung cancer, 1 has a brain tumor & 1 with physical disability who want to have a wonderful time in Hawaii. To end the my story, we decided to just leave the restaurant because we had the impression & felt that we are not welcome to eat at this restaurant.

Asian group from San Francisco & Los Angeles...

If you’re looking for a restaurant that serves solid, good authentic Hawaiian food, Highway inn is the place. Feels like an old hawaiian style diner when you come here with the hawaiian music playing in the background and the wooden tables and chairs. Highway Inn has a relaxing appeal, everything’s renovated and looks modernish. There’s AC so its plantation style dining has a relaxing feel as well, which is a major plus especially in Hawaii.

If it’s your first time, try something small and get the Highway Inn tasting plate sampler, comes with everything Hawaiian food from the Kalua Pig, Lau Lau, Squid Luau, lomi salmon, Poi, Haupia, chicken long rice and the Okinawa sweet potatoes. Although the chicken long rice and sweet potatoes aren’t exactly Hawaiian but they’re both local staples and are a good addition. When I say something small, you can try the different dishes and see which one you like or share it amongst your friends and see if they like it.

I had to get 2 scoops rice with the Highway inn tasting plate. It’s a lot of food, and I had leftovers. $34 includes the sampler and rice. But Not bad for Hawaii prices.

Now to describe:

The squid luau was delicious, not too sweet and not too creamy. No worries tourists, it’s not exactly SQUID, it’s octopus. Chopped up octopus and cooked like a stew with luau leaves. So creamy so so so so good with rice. Trust me, it’s good. If you don’t like it, then well, we can’t be friends.

The Kalua pig was good too, not too salty and very moist.

The pork lau lau was very good too, just a lot of pork and fat and the luau leaf was so soft and tender.

Chicken long rice was tasty, it’s good when it’s cold outside and or if you’re sick.

The Poi wasn’t sour as I expected which was good as well as the Lomi Salmon, it wasn’t as fishy as I expected, so both were good. Now the Poi is something I’ll never eat it all because it’s very starchy and sour. Poi is an acquired taste. But it’s good baby food let me tell you from experience.

The haupia is a coconut dessert

Their Pulehu ribs was delicious as well. Cooked right and charred right.

They had something new called the laulau egg rolls. That was dynamite, served with the chili sauce, Ho brah,...

We tried the àla carte stew and pork lau Lau. The food flavor and quality was good (I would give 3.5 to 4 stars of isolated on that alone), but I was very disappointed in the quantity of meat in the $15 lau Lau.

At first I thought, wow this is a huge lau Lau, no wonder it's $15 ala carte. But when I cut into it, I realized it was probably 85% taro leaves! Plus the little bit of meat inside was a good portion fat which I picked out, but that's to be expected with good moist lau Lau. But when there's THAT little filling in the taro leaves, there ended up being virtually no meat after removing the fat content!

Ironically, I normally absolutely love the taro leaves part of lau Lau and often wish there was more - the way it integrated with the moist succulent meat/fat runoff to make a tender veggie accompaniment... Yum! But in this case, I tried and did eat a lot of it, but so much leaves, and aside from the ones that were close to the small meat area, most of it was fibrous and on the dry side. For the first time ever, I actually left more than half the leaves over because it just wasn't enjoyable. 😭

I also had to eat again when I got home because the little bit of meat wasn't enough to be a substantial protein for a meal.

And if you're wondering, I did show the waitress plus ask another passing employee if this is normal. I showed her the pic I found of the lau lau from the Waipahu location containing much more meat

She offered to take it back and remove from my bill. But the problem was I really wanted to try their lau lau. I asked, instead of taking it back and removing, can you swap it for another? Maybe I got an unlucky one and a different one will be meatier? She said it depends on who's making it in a given day. That said, I figured today had the stingy meat guy making it, so decided not to waste time swapping, instead, writing this review to vent a little. Lol

As an aside, I've been striving to find the best pork lau lau. As for food quality alone, I would say Highway Inn is roughly on par with Helena's, only a lot more meat ratio to leaves for the money at Helena's.

The best lau Lau I ever had was Super J's on the big island, if you ever in the Captain...