i-naba Honolulu — Restaurant in Honolulu

Best soba in Honolulu! If you’re searching around for soba restaurants, do yourself a favour and just go here. This was my second favourite meal during our entire honeymoon trip in Hawaii and we came back on the last day. I got the Tempura Soba Set A (Zaru style) and added Mentaiko. The soba is handmade so it’s fresh and bouncy and the tempura is fried perfectly. We also highly recommend getting the Miso Gindara- it was so buttery and flavorful!

At the end of the meal, they will give you a pot of water that they used to boil the soba noodles. Pour a bit of it in your leftover soba dipping sauce and drink it for a soothing and clean tasting drink to end the meal.

This place is popular so if you’re going during dinner, there will probably be a line up. Just write your name down on the board at the entrance and they will call you when your table is ready. There are two seats inside at the waiting area and a few seats outside the restaurant for you to sit while waiting.

Highly recommend this place. Food is great and the ladies are so cute!

Don’t forget, it’s BYOB. They just charge $1...

I went here thinking I was going for a sushi bar, but I ended up with an Omakase experience. The fish was extremely fresh, I found out Thursday as “fresh fish Thursday“ when they get all of their shipments in, but when I came into this place I thought it was going to be busy because of the reviews, but I was the third person there.

The sushi chef was one year in the US coming from Japan, so knew very little English, but I just rolled with it. Turned out. I had a wonderful experience with some delicious sushi. I’ve had Uni in the past and I thought it tasted like the bottom of the ocean, but the Uni they had here was straight from Japan and it was very sweet … and I can now understand why they consider it a delicacy.

Had a couple glasses of sake, along with the Omakase experience. All in it was about $160 … but it was unbelievably delicious. I would highly...

Truly one of the best soba restaurants around. This place convinced my soba-ambivalent friends to become soba fans. I highly recommend going with cold soba dishes over hot, since the heat will disintegrate the noodles quickly.

True soba is made with 100% buckwheat, and you can really taste the difference vs store-bought soba which is a mix of buckwheat and wheat. My favorite is the hana soba which contains tons of ikura, yam, and uni. Its texture might be off-putting to those who aren’t familiar with grated yam, but the dish is so refreshing. You really can’t go wrong with any of the dishes here.

Tempura is also done exceptionally well here! I ordered the half eel (anago) tempura and really loved it.

Make sure to call in for a reservation! I made a res for my large group of 8 one...