Margotto Hawaii — Restaurant in Honolulu

We celebrated my 70th birthday at Margotto Hawaii, across the street from Ala Moana Center at the corner of Piikoi and Hopaka. It’s in an unassuming dark colored building with very tiny signage and a door with a subtle handle.

The first thing you notice are the artfully folded napkins that look like a shawl collared dinner jacket with a gold bowtie pasta as the tie. The menu is simple … It’s a 10-course tasting menu and it lists the ingredients to be used but not their preparation along with optional items like prosciutto, A5 Wagyu, lamb and caviar. Your main decision is the amount of truffles you want and which type. You are required to purchase at least 5 grams of white truffles at $12/gram and the chef recommends 15 grams per guest. (IMO, that's too much of a good thing.) The chef also recommends 5 – 10 grams of black truffles. We opted for 10 grams of both types to be shared between us.

We started with a bottle of 2018 Corton Grand Cru Burgundy from Domaine Pierre Giullemont. I thought it was reasonably priced at $225 as it’s about $150 in a store and it was served in beautiful crystal shaped for pinot noir.

The first course was a cold chawanmushi with pieces of abalone and Matsutake mushroom and shavings of white truffle. The aroma of white truffle is intoxicating! I am not a fan of chawanmushi and this was my first experience with one served cold but I found it refreshing and truffles and custard always pair well. Two bite-sized canapes accompanied the chawanmushi; one was ahi, the other featured cheese. These were miniature pieces of art for the eyes.

The next course featured mushrooms … Imagine a blini piled with duxelles mixture topped with a small mountain of white truffle. This was created on our table and served on a slice of a tree trunk. Wow, the intense perfume of the truffles and mushrooms made me think of miniature slices of beef Wellington. This was fantastic!

A fish course followed; on the menu it was listed as Hapu’upu’u; it’s Sea Bass. You get a petite piece of fish atop some type of green vegetable, a fan of radish, dill, micro-greens and some type of sauce. This dish was beautiful but it wasn’t really special.

Next up, a pancake with a Waimanalo TKG egg atop and generous shavings of white truffle. This was a lusciously rich dish … I used pieces of the pancake to sop up all of the egg yolk.

The highlight of the evening was a bowl of spaghetti in olive oil, smothered with shaved truffles. So simple, yet this dish was simply sublime. This single dish made the evening for us.

The meat course was next; my tablemate had the ribeye while I opted for the lamb. Each was served with pieces of mushroom, charred Brussels sprouts, cottage potatoes and what we think were heirloom carrots. A generous portion of black truffle made for another decadent dish. The lamb was good but probably not worth the $30 upgrade.

The next course was Akitakomachi, a Japanese rice. It was served two ways, with a raw egg or with furikake. We chose one of each. Can anything beat a raw egg over hot rice? Yes, add sliced truffles! A simple, yet luxurious dish.

Two dessert courses followed … A deconstructed tiramisu made with a round of mascarpone cheese and a quenelle of ice cream, topped by a white chocolate round and drizzles of lilikoi sauce. The only thing I missed was the flavor of coffee.

Finally, a box of chocolate rocks with two black truffles containing some type of white cream (or marshmallow?) finished the meal. The rocks were edible and I liked them more than the truffle.

I would characterize Margotto Hawaii as a truffle restaurant … Truffles are the star and the other ingredients play a supporting role. If you love truffles, you will love Margotto. I would use it on less dishes; 6 of the courses used truffles … I would reduce that to 4, perhaps five. The price for the food is very reasonable; the cost for truffles varies but you can easily spend more on truffles than on the food. One note: they add a 20% service charge so read your bill before adding your tip. Highly recommended for lovers...

The food was fair in taste, mediocre in execution and poor compared to the price point.

The staff and owner made many mistakes, our original server, Lee I believe, got our order wrong. The scale for measuring the truffles was broken, and he “eyed” what he believed was 2 grams of truffle shavings. Who knows if it was correct, but we paid 2 grams for it.

We ordered one of their special egg toast— we got brought out two. I thought they were comping us the second one, so my husband and I would have a nice experience. No— turns out, Lee just got the order incorrect. We ate it and paid for it. Worth it? No— brioche was harrrrd, and the little roll was DENSE. Again, not well executed.

Cacio Pepe was extremely, extremely liquidy. Either the Noodles were too wet, and not strained properly, or they did not utilize enough butter.

Got served a $85 dish featuring rice, raw egg and caviar— opp— there was no cavier. I politely asked “is the cavier on the bottom?” Of course I knew it wasn’t on the bottom. I just couldn’t believe this dish had passed through at least 2 hands and no one caught that the cavier dish had no cavier. There was a complete lack of attention to detail. They comped us the original and then got us a correct one.

They came out to sell us on their mochi— 3-4 ways with different sauces. At the end, it came in a to go box? The manager/waiter, Andrew? Was extremely frantic— speaking of how they didn’t have any more dishes for the sauces? I was so confused— we just told him to put the sauce on top. And he indeed, put the sauce on top of the Mochi in the togo box. Everyone around us had their dessert plated, but ours was in a box?

Not that this matters— but we work in the restaurant industry, making gastronomic French desserts. I just cannot believe the dessert was such an after thought— and brought out in a generic, to go box, that we did not ask for.

After this, Andrew ignored our table for a good 5-10 mins as he serviced people around us, and did not return with the check. My husband had to go and ask to speak with the owner. Of course, they said it was our fault, cause we asked for the dessert to go. 😂 We didn’t, why would we pay $400 for a meal, and then ask for our dessert to go? Make it make sense.

The owner didn’t come out till the very very end, to apologize. Like—we were walking out of the door. Sir— that is not what you do if you want to run a high class, French/Italian/Japanese dining experience. The owner should have been out, as soon as the chef messed up on the cavier dish and after the dessert in the to go box incident, the meal should have been comped. I am extremely disappointed and have second hand embarrassment for this establishment.

Overall, sloppy execution on all parts of this dining experience. Sloppy execution on food, sloppy service, half hearted resolutions. If you want to do upscale French and Japanese dining, you will need to train your staff better, take better care in your food execution, and learn to take accountability. Andrew blamed the kitchen team, Robert the owner blamed his team, but no one just said “it is my fault. This is unacceptable. How can we make it right?”

P.S. My husband also left a review, but it has seemed to disappeared? It was most likely reported and deleted by the establishment but what a shame— because people deserve to know what to expect from...

It's rare for me to leave a negative review, but our experience at Margotto Hawaii was disappointing, and we left feeling pretty let down. I made our reservation 3.5 months in advance, mentioning it was my partner's birthday and hoping for something special. We went with the 11-course chef's tasting menu.

Things started off with us waiting for a while an empty room before a server came over to ask about water and menu preferences. There were no cocktail or wine options offered. Since Margotto advertises itself as a Krug ambassador, and I work in the wine industry, I was interested in a wine pairing with our tasting menu. When I asked about it, our server admitted they didn't know much about wine but said they'd send the sommelier over. Unfortunately, they never showed up and food started coming out as soon as we confirmed the truffle up-charge. By the third course, I had to ask for a glass of champagne and again to see the wine list. At that point, a pairing wasn't even possible, and two of the four Champagnes by the glass were crossed off.

By the fourth course, we'd asked for the sommelier three times and still hadn't seen them. Meanwhile, we noticed them stopping by every other table. Eventually, the owner came over to take our wine order, but before I could even open the list, they told me, "We don't offer American wines," which came across as unnecessarily dismissive. Over the whole meal, the sommelier only came by once--to drop off wines we'd ordered before the course prior. We also noticed that while other tables were served wine in gorgeous glassware, we were given short, thick-stemmed Riedel glasses, which made us feel like we somehow weren't trusted with the nice ones.

Later in the meal, I ordered different wines for myself and my partner, but the server brought the wrong ones--twice. When I pointed out that the bottle wasn't even from the right region, they finally brought the correct glasses on the third try.

The pacing of the food was also weird. The egg and rice course came out in the middle of our main courses and was just left on the table. It wasn't the end of the world, but for a $900 dinner, it felt clumsy. By the time I got to the egg, it had overcooked.

After dessert, we were offered espresso, but what arrived was a big cup of bad coffee--for $9. Despite my note about celebrating my partner's birthday, nothing was done until right before the bill came when they brought out a plastic pig on a plate with "Happy Birthday" written in chocolate sauce. It felt underwhelming and didn't match the level of thoughtfulness I'd expected.

There was also leftover truffle that never made it onto the dessert or was offered for takeaway, which was frustrating. We ended up going to a bar afterward, laughing over a cheap beer and ironically getting better service than we had all night.

On a positive note, the food itself was good--the Wagyu main course was delicious. That said, it felt like a shame to smother quite so much of the great cooking with the "recommended"...