Side Street Inn On Da Strip — Restaurant in Honolulu

So I've always heard of this place but never got around to it as a local. Me and the fam attended to the one in kapahulu near the end of waikiki and on the stripe heading towards the freeway. The time we went was on a weekday dinner night. If you want to come here i recommend to call in a day ahead for reservation, but if you want to do the day of for reservations, you want to be there before 6pm because the weekdays won't be as busy but busy enough to not having enough seats. Every day there will be at least a birthday celebration or some kind of big party happening. What I recommend trying if you want to come here but have a nice party size of four or five is the CHEF COLIN'S CLASSICS Prix Fixe Menu Served Family Style.

It comes with Edamame with Alae Salt and Farmer's Salad Spring Mixed Greens, Grape Tomatoes, Avocado, Maui Onion, Capers & Bay_Shrimp with Red Wine Vinaigrette Dressing & Okinawan Potato Curls.

Next, they will serve there Side Street's Signature Fried Rice Combined with Bacon, Portuguese Sausage, Char Siu, Green Onions, Peas & Carrots and Oyster Sauce (it will Contain Shellfish Products).

Then the Garlic Chicken Special Marinated Boneless Fried Chicken Dipped in a Sweet Shoyu Garlic Sauce and the Pan-Fried Pork

This one is my favorite which is the Sizzling Boneless Kalbi Charbroiled Korean-Style Short Ribs served with Kim Chee Kim Chee (It does Contain Shellfish products)

Overall the price for this is roughly $155 (4-5 Guests) $305 (8-10 Guests)

For desserts we got two of Mom's Sweet Bread Pudding; it comes with Hawaiian Sweet Bread Topped with Anglaise & Chocolate. Served Warm With Roselani's Vanilla Cream for $12

Now, for the actual review, I really like the Boneless kalbi that they served because the actual plate comes in piping hot, and the meat itself was marinated nicely. It came with the kimchi in it. I was not a fan of the kimchi with it because, on my biased opinion, kimchi shouldn't be hot. The chicken came out very crispy and juicy on the inside. The farmer salad spring mixed greens wasn't too bad. The sweet potatoes on top of it weren't my favorite only because it didn't seem to match well with the salad. Don't get me wrong, it was good, but the fact is a hard piece of air fried sweet potatoes just gave me cuts in my upper mouth. The Edamame we had was so unexpected fresh, it tasted very nice but there was not enough salt added on to the mix. What everyone in my party agreed to like was the fried rice. It had a nice burnt texture to it like chips but tasting very well balanced of flavors. It's has a good touch on local style fried rice, and it could match well with a loco moco. I also recommended the mai tai there, how they make it is unique like a shave ice drink. The dessert we got was also nice because Bread Pudding is a very common dessert in hawaii, and the way they made it was smoothed in texture. The ice cream that came with it was also cremy. If you were to get these plate items, try your best to portion yourself for room for desserts.

The overall price for the plates is fair. In a sense, two plates can feed two to three people for $55. So, keeping that in mind, the portion sizes could fill you up nicely

The overall experience of the place is nice and it has a good atmosphere that portrays a nice local style restaurant. If you have been to liliha Bakery or zippys, it's the mixture...

My son and his fiance had their rehearsal dinner there. They had reserved for 25 people. We were the 1st ones there in the group and were led to the back semi-private room, where a long table of 16 seats and another shorter one with 7 seats were reserved for us. The shorter table was situated very close to another. The back of a diner sitting at the small table of 4 next to it was barely touching the edge of our smaller table. I, having a habit of counting, noticed we didn't have enough seats and space to fit comfortably. I brought it to the attention of the hostess who reassured me that she was going to talk to the appropriate person about it and address it. She didn't come back. Anticipating they would need to add the vacant table of 4 to the end of the long table to accommodate our needs, I stopped the other hostess who was about to seat a couple there, and explained why. The place was loud w/ chatter, music, and a TV right above the vacant table, so I had to raise my voice to speak over the noise. Apparently, the 2nd hostess went back to the 1st hostess and said I was yelling at her. Not so. Family members present can attest to it. This 1st hostess who forgot to address our initial issue comes back and proceeds to scold me for "yelling" at her staff and explains to me that they could've just added more chairs to (the already crowded) shorter table, and that they could've just had the other party of 3 next to it move down a bit as to make more space. The party of 3 that had already been halfway through their dinner amd enjoying themselves? "In the middle of their dinner, you are going to ask them to stop eating, get up, stand and wait for you to move the tables and chairs?" I asked hostess #1. Pause. She had to think about that for a moment. Then she proceeds to say, "well that's what we usually do, so next time...." I then reassure her that there won't be a next time. I pointed out that they didn't make the necessary accommodations requested PRIOR to our arrival, nor did she return in time to avoid the situation once it had been pointed out to her. I explained that I was merely trying to be proactive to avoid a bigger mess.

Let's back up a bit to BEFORE our arrival. So I call the restaurant around an hour beforehand and ask if we can bring in a cake. I was reassured we could. I ask if it can be an ice cream cake as it would need to be put in their freezer. Again, I'm reassured that we are able to. Upon arrival, I hand the cake to the hostess, hostess #1, who anticipated it. She only then informs me of a $10 fee to put the cake in the freezer. I mention to her that she should've told me that BEFORE when I called. No response. She just proceeded to lead us to our tables.

The food.....well..... it's the usual kind of local food. It took a while for us to order and then receive our food. We were hungry! I've had better fried rice, garlic chicken, and pork chops. The Kalbi steak tastes the same as everywhere else. I gotta say I enjoyed their salad the most among everything that was ordered!

On the plus side, we loved our server who was very pleasant, endearing, and attentive. She totally made up for what had happened earlier, and she was nice enough to provide us with small paper plates and some utensils to enjoy our ice...

TL;DR: Disappointing food, and certain parties get larger portions of food than others.

I've heard non stop amazing things about Side Street Inn for years, so decided to finally give this place a shot for my birthday dinner. Everyone raves about the food, but I found it to be very disappointing in my experience.

Made a reservation on the website for my wife and I a couple days before I wanted to go. When we got there, parking was no issue since it's valet only, which I believe was $8. Took the elevator up to the restaurant where we were quickly seated because we had a reservation. Walk-ins and large parties have significant wait times, though. For a sports bar, it's very nice on the inside. You almost forget it's a sports bar till you notice the large screen TVs playing only sports all over the walls.

The staff and our waiter were all incredibly friendly, and if it wasn't for the amazing service, I would've actually scored this place even lower.

Now for the food: we ordered the fried chicken gizzards, fried rice, boneless garlic chicken and a small side of Mac salad. I was disappointed with everything we ordered. The fried rice was very mediocre, absolutely nothing special about it. The garlic chicken tasted like it was under a warmer all day; its one of their most popular sellers, so it probably is made in large amounts and left to sit. The Mac salad has WAY too much mayonnaise; so much mayo that's its almost inedible. The chicken gizzards was probably the best thing we had, but even that didn't taste like it was freshly fried, it was almost room temp. Nothing tasted bad, but it wasn't great either.

Also worth mentioning: it seems the more people in your party, the more food they give you, yet you pay the same price for a single dish. We saw plates of garlic chicken and fried rice with 1.2-1.5x the amount of food we were given going to tables with 4 people vs my 2. Everyone should be getting the same amount because we're all paying the same price. I found that to be really unfair.

This place isn't bad by any means, but it doesn't live up to it's hype at all. I absolutely hate when my food doesn't taste freshly made, and everything we ordered tasted like it was under heat lamps for an hour. Maybe I'll try Side Street Inn again sometime and hopefully have a better experience. People always talk about how amazing the food here is; maybe I was unlucky during my visit, or maybe people have...