Leong’s Market and Grill — Restaurant in Kauai

Update: The owner emailed me and said it is entirely the server’s fault and they are firing him. What?! I don’t want to get anyone fired. He was a nice person. If an item is market GF on a menu, you shouldn’t have to request it be GF. It should be GF. Train him and train the kitchen! I told them not to fire him. They are making the situation worse and making me feel bad for an honest review.

We made reservations, but when we got there the six of us were seated back by the kitchen at a fold out table covered in plastic. There was enough room to put us at a nicer table. It was not busy. Not a great start, but we joked we were put at the kids table and ordered our drinks hoping to relax and have a good meal. The drinks took at least 15 minutes to come out. We ordered 2 pina coladas and the rest sodas... We repeatedly told the server we were gluten free (except one in our party) when ordering and ordered only things marked GF on the menu, but despite this, they brought us caesar salads with tiny croutons we almost ate despite the salad being marked as GF on their menu. We again asked the server if the salads were indeed GF and they rushed them back to the kitchen and brought us new ones. The “seared ahi” added to the chopped romaine and dressing was fully cooked leftover poke cubes, not “seared ahi” and there wasn’t much of the tiny fully cooked cubes. It was honestly one of the worst salads I’ve ever had for $23. My daughter’s friend ordered a side of fries and it was half a child’s handful on a tiny plate. It was like the kitchen couldn’t be bothered to cook some more fries and gave her the leftovers. I wish I was kidding. Then I started sneezing repeatedly (into my elbow). The server asked worriedly if I was alright, like he knew they’d messed up. I told my husband I was having an allergic reaction. Now I’m sure my teen children (one of which is celiac) were glutened along with myself, as I sit here at 2:14 am with a raging allergy headache writing...

We arrived around 7pm, the restaurant was half seated. The food was good, but here are a couple of things to be aware of.

Extremely slow service. We waited literally 45 minutes for our food and when they arrived, we didn’t have any utensils. It took another 5 minutes for utensils to arrive?! You’d think the food is freshly made and hot but out of the 6+ things we ordered (kalbi, spicy chicken, chicken long rice, Hawaiian pork plate, and beef stew, along with other sides like rice and fries), most of them were cold, not even warm, with the exception of kalbi. So what happened? Premade food but took forever to deliver? Or food was made but not enough staff to deliver? Either way food shouldn’t be cold when you serve them. Lack of services. I blame this one on managements. There were only 3-4 people working; they simply don’t have enough staff to deliver quality services. It wasn’t just my table, several other tables experienced the same thing such as no utensils, extremely long wait, and no water refills.

Overall I’d recommend coming maybe when it’s not during meal time as the food was pretty tasty (prob taste better when not cold). The views were good and the breeze was comfy. Just don’t torture yourself and your family during busy hours, it’ll ruin the vacation...

Husband and I stopped in for something to eat during the culinary market so we could listen to the beautiful live music and enjoy the gorgeous ambiance of the restaurant’s lanai. Our server was friendly so no complaints there at all. Our issue was that my husband ordered the stir fry with tofu, and it came with not a single piece of tofu (I ordered the kalua pig nachos topped w/ lomilomi salmon which was real good). Husband mentioned this to our server who assured us that there was, indeed, tofu, however, she didn’t so much as glance at the plate to confirm this - much less check with the kitchen - for, if she had, she could have easily determined that there was no protein at all (we searched). At this point he was frustrated, but I kept telling him not to say anything more because I didn’t want to be that annoying, complaining, entitled tourist (born and raised on O’ahu - I know how it can be). So we paid the bill and left, but he was still pretty frustrated that the server didn’t believe him about lack of protein. I understand that this is a newer restaurant and a larger version of a very successful brand. Hopefully servers will learn to trust customers’ word and give them the benefit of the doubt in the future. All said, I do wish your restaurant success...