Sale Pepe Pizzeria e Cucina — Restaurant in Maui

If you’re in a hurry, here it is: this is the best restaurant on Maui and it’s not even close. Any bad reviews you read don’t understand Italian cooking or Italian preparations of certain foods.

On my our last night in Maui, my wife and I wanted to have a decent low key meal. We made a reservation the night previous for Sale Pepe and went in with high expectations and eager stomachs from what we’d read.

We were absolutely blown away by the authenticity and freshness of the food we had. We began our meal with a margherita pizza. I consider myself to be a pizza snob (similar to beer snobs, wine snobs, etc.). I judge a place serving pizza by its margherita pizza (a true and simple test in my book). Outside of the Neapolitan-style pizza I had when I was in Rome, this pizza was by far the best. The crust had bite and texture while being chewy. The sauce was the perfect mix of bitter and sweet. The cheese was slight creamy with some form to it. Finally, the basil was fragrant and fresh.

I’ve always wanted to try squid ink spaghetti and I finally had my chance. The noodles were a perfectly cooked al dente and, during the evening in question, they were served with mussels in what tasted like a lemon caper beurre blanc with garlic. I nearly asked for some of the housemade foccacio bread to sop up the remaining sauce.

My wife had the house ravioli which were stuffed with ricotta and sausage in a black truffle sauce. She thankfully let me try one and, I was blown away at how light a dish with those ingredients could be.

Our server was very kind and knew the menu well. His suggestions were great.

When in Maui, do yourself a favor and grab dinner...

i was craving pizza while vacationing in maui and sale pepe often came up as the best italian on the island. they serve artisan neapolitan-inspired pizza. we arrived early bc we weren’t sure about the parking situation. the parking lot where the restaurant was located was packed so we found parking elsewhere around front street. the restaurant was very busy and there was a wait at 8pm but we had reservations and we were sat 10 min after. we ordered 2 pizzas - the margherita (tomato, bufala mozzarella, basil) and the Bianca (fior di latte, local Kurobuta Malama Farms ground sausage, mushrooms, roasted garlic, arugula). i was really looking forward to this meal but the pizzas were a let down. the margherita was tasteless. the tomato sauce lacked that umami quality and the cheese was very bland. the Bianca pizza was much better but they packed too much toppings on the pizza. it kept falling off and i think a neapolitan style pizza shouldn’t need to be overfilled with toppings. it’s the simplicity and freshness of the ingredients that really make this style of pizza. the crust was good though. it was crispy yet chewy and was dotted with charred dough goodness. i asked for chili oil to dip my crust in and the server happily obliged. we also ordered 2 glasses of white wine (Donnafugata ‘Lighea’ Zibbibo) and it was superb! light, crisp and very aromatic. we didn’t try any of the pastas or desserts so i can’t comment on those dishes. i would come back to try something else but i would not recommend...

I hate writing bad reviews, but honestly this experience was so uncomfortable. I brought my parents here for their anniversary a couple nights ago, but I have to say our waiter was very snarky and inattentive. He only checked on our table twice throughout our night, once to take our order and once for our bill. It took about 15 minutes to be greeted and for water to be brought, and we put our main course in at the same time. I did notice that the other larger parties of his were getting excellent service, but as for us and the couple next to us, he was hardly there. The energy was just off, and he was very rude towards us, which may have been because we were underdressed, but still not a reason to treat us that way. He also made a snarky comment about my mother's weight, and after that we just asked for the check and left. We were still nice and just wanted to get out of there as quick as possible. Took so long to get service and was a very unwelcoming environment because of this, so we kind of just wanted to get out of there asap. Although, the waitress that was also on the patio was very kind to her tables, and the hostess was so sweet! Food was also incredible! Just not the best experience with our server and I hope he doesn't make anyone else feel that way, which is why I'm writing this. But overall still a very beautiful...