Japanese Grandma's Cafe — Restaurant in Kauai

We were so excited to try this place as my coworkers raves about it. We came on a Sunday night at 5:30pm. The hostess was avoidant as there was a long line and you could tell she didn't want to deal with each customer. We were told the wait was 30 min. Easy. We had 6 people in our party. We walked around and came back to check on our table since it had been 30 min. The same hostess was so hard to get ahold of and when I finally did she said she would check on a table for us but then never came back to update me. I'm okay with waiting but I wish she communicated with me. We got seated and I asked for a high chair. The same hostess said she would check on it and never came back with one. So I had to ask someone else and they brought it over. We ordered our food right away and our waitress was so sweet and attentive (tall blonde gal). We were all surprised at all tiny the portions were. It advertises family style but each dish is really for 1-2 people to share. We ordered the mixed tempura, karaage chicken with teriyaki sauce, Hanapepe roll, California roll with salmon on top, white rice and seared ahi Tonkatsu. We ended up having to order another order of mixed tempura. The food still wasn't enough for 6 people. The whole process to eat there took so long and was slow so we didn't bother to order more food. The bill came out to be $130 tip included. Food was actually tasty and wasn’t bad but it wasn’t good for the price that we paid…but then that evening-morning 4 out of the 6 people in our party got food poisoning, spent all evening and day vomiting and diarrhea. Triple whammy. Poor experience at the restaurant and then getting sick from the food. We also noticed a huge spider in a water pitcher inside the kitchen area as we were shopping in their store front. I thought that was pretty disgusting. Unfortunately, will not be...

Trying to be as objective as possible here so please consider this when deciding to eat here or not:

Food was pretty good. Nothing mind-blowing or super delicious, but still pretty good.

Regarding the dinner menu: Very overpriced with very small portions. Nothing came with any rice, which is so far removed from traditional Japanese food.

What was frustrating was that several dinner menu items were also available on their lunch menu BUT the lunch versions came with rice and a salad AND we're significantly cheaper. Just add rice to the dinner meals! A big scoop of rice would literally cost the restaurant maybe 50¢ and would actually make it feel like a meal. So if you do go, go for lunch so you actually get a decent amount of food without paying way too much.

Service felt pretty mediocre. I've had far better service at far cheaper restaurants. Denny's has better staff. This could have been an isolated instance so your experience could be different. The waiter delivering our food kept delivering our dishes to the two other tables right next to ours, then got confused and took it back to the kitchen before even checking if it was for our table. Several of us got our food cold because of this. Then when we were about done with our food, our waitress asked if we had 'gotten most of our orders yet?" If we hadn't, that's something that should have been checked on a lot earlier.

Only restaurant we got eaten alive by mosquitos at. They had some big spray up at the front so I'm sure it's a common problem, but all the spray was empty.

Summary: Overpriced and small portions for stupid and avoidable reasons. Felt like they were trying to make it feel more expensive than it actually deserved to be and staff experience did not match the price. If you go, go for lunch. And just...

This was a cute little restaurant/shop. The decor and ambiance were great! This place is clearly popular as there were many reservations. We didn’t get notified of our table being ready— we only were seated after we inquired how much longer the wait was, almost 30 minutes after our reservation time. We sat down and the table still had soy sauce spills on the table. However, we overlooked most of this as we love supporting small local businesses. Unfortunately, the food, specifically the sushi, was underwhelming as the fish quality was close to grocery store sushi that we ate earlier in the day from Costco (except the rice was better than Costco’s sushi rice). The salmon nigiri had lots of sinew (difficult to eat in more than one bite), and the other nigiri pieces were thinly sliced or falling apart. We were hoping that maybe this was an off night and maybe they were running low? The soft shell crab salad is the size of a side salad with a topping of soft shell crab and not dinner size appropriate. None of the fried tempura or the soft shelled crab were hot out of the fryer. The ikura came with one toppled over, which was fine, but indicative of the attention to detail— though I appreciate the waiter not trying to fix this on the way to the table. The staff were all friendly and they had live music, which created a nice ambience. The main reason this is getting a 2 star, unfortunately, is because the food quality to price ratio was ridiculous— our meal was over $100 and we left disappointed and hungry...