California Pizza Kitchen at Kailua Town Center — Restaurant in Oʻahu

I placed an online order for takeout at 5:42pm, with a (default) pickup time of 6:05, and paid online. I arrived at 6:12pm as I understand orders can generally take longer. At the takeout counter, I was told the kitchen was running behind but my order was next up (I was my ticket was the second).

At 6:35, after seeing three other orders go (one was the one before mine), I asked about how much longer it would be before my order was ready. I was told they were short staffed but someone went to check. It turned out my order was ready, sitting in a stack of boxes, and apparently had been for some time as my salad was warm and the pizza was only slightly warm. I was given three pieces of bread with the order. When I asked if that was all, I was told it was all the bread they had. The previous customer had asked if there was enough bread for five in his bag, and the server apologized and gave him an additional significant portion.

Also, I ordered a full size Thai crunch salad and received less than half a portion cup of dressing. I don't use a lot of dressing, but even so I ran out with 1/3 of the salad remaining (and I remember the days I could get both the Thai dressing and the cilantro dressing with one salad!). I admit I haven't ordered this salad in a few years, but it seemed really lacking in ingredients and definitely didn't match the photo on the web site. The salad was mostly Napa cabbage, and very light on edamame and chicken (perhaps 3 tablespoons) and maybe a tablespoon of cucumber. There was no red cabbage, carrot, green onion, or cilantro, and hardly any peanuts. For $18.99, I could buy all those ingredients and a bottle of dressing, and make 4 salads that were far better.

I spent $57.55 for this meal (two pizzas and one salad) as a special treat for my children, and while the pizzas were decent and my kids enjoyed them (when they finally got to have dinner) the experience was absolutely not worth standing at the counter for 23 minutes waiting for an order that was 30 minutes late yet already prepared and receiving smaller portions of items. I did not get an apology or a replacement for the missing bread, or even a coupon. The server literally didn't care that I waited so long and didn't even receive a standard serving of bread. Next time I'll just wait for the frozen pizzas at the grocery store to go on sale and stock up.

Edit: just checked on the cheese pizza. My youngest said it was ok at first, then told me the cheese on his 5 cheese pizza wasn't gooey. I looked and it had hardened into an almost fiberglass like mass that he referred to as...

Over the last 6 months, I have had dinner here 5 times and lunch once. Of course, the food is phenomenal and I encourage anyone to try CPK at least once in their life.

This location, however, requires attention in the customer service dinner department; more specifically in the waiting staff. In my most recent experience, my family and I, which consisted of my pregnant wife and sister visiting from the main land, were seated and enjoyed an alarming 10-15 minute wait, after the hostess seated us before drinks were ordered. It took a member of the waiting staff to notice I was rapping my utensil package on the table to ask his fellow waiting staff what sounded like, "How long have the people at that table been sitting there." He had a different color shirt on, gray, so I am not sure if this means he was new or the head waiter; he nevertheless made it his personal mission to ensure we were taken care of and it seemed as if he was doing the most work out of all the wait staff overall with the other tables as well. Note, at the time he noticed us, 3 of the wait staff were "helping" bag nachos, 2 were enjoying a humorous conversation with the bartender, 2 others were lingering at the computer he was at, and all the while there were the were at least 5 vacant tables inside so by no means was this the busiest time of the night.

If you go here, definitely order everything in your first order; whether it be drinks, appetizers, and the main course - get it all done at once or else you will be here for well over an hour, maybe even two. As soon as the main course gets served, ask for the check or dessert menu. There have been times in the past where the previous scenario happened with me and I've waited upwards of 20 minutes past finishing my meal before I was asked if I was done.

I will say this though, their Moscow Mules are exceptional...will...

TL;DR: None of our food was hot: barely above room temperature.

My wife and I ordered takeout from here on Friday 1/8/21. First time ever ordering food from this particular CPK location. Ordered online at about 5pm for pickup at 6pm. Upon arrival, this place was packed! All the tables were full up, and there were a significant amount of people waiting to be seated. You could barely even tell there's a global pandemic going on with the amount of people this close together.

Brought our food back home, which keep in mind is only a 4 minute drive. We ordered the spinach artichoke dip, avocado spring rolls, Caesar salad with blackened salmon, a wild mushroom pizza and we received complimentary bread with olive oil as a dip. EVERYTHING was barely above room temperature. Only the spinach artichoke dip, which was probably the best thing we ordered, had some heat left to it. Seemed like they cooked our food when we placed the online order, rather than making it close to when we were going to pick it up.

The complimentary bread was absolutely awful. It was so cold and hard that it was difficult to even chew; my jaw was sore after only one small piece. The salmon in the Caesar was severely overcooked and dry. The avocado spring rolls had nice flavor and crunch, but were oily. Lastly, the wild mushroom pizza was tasty but the temperature issues made the crust on the outside hard to chew.

Flavors were overall good, but the temperature of our meal made our experience truly disappointing. Maybe things would be better if we dined in rather than takeout, but with those kind of crowds during a pandemic, I'll...