Hula's Island Grill — Restaurant in Santa Cruz

My husband and I stopped by for a mid-afternoon late lunch on Sunday, April 17th while traveling through the area. We travel full-time, so we're always looking for fun, local, independent places to try. We had our pup with us so we decided to order take out to eat in our RV. We were able to find good street parking nearby and my husband picked up our order with no issues. He had ordered their fish sandwich and felt it was just so-so. Not bad, just not anything special. I ordered from the fish market section of their menu and opted for barramundi with chimichurri. While the chimichurri was very flavorful, the barramundi had been terribly overcooked. I love seafood, I eat it out often and also prepare it myself frequently, and barramundi is a fish that's super easy to work with and really hard to screw up. It's like they literally forgot it and left it in a pan while it just got harder and tougher. I think it's actually really difficult to overcook a white, flaky fish to this degree. On top of that, the rice was tasty, but ice cold, almost like it had come out of the refrigerator. The fries were beyond cold and limp. My husband said they were literally bringing our order out of the kitchen when he walked up, so I know it hadn't been sitting there, it came out of the kitchen this way. Based on the flavor of the chimichurri and rice, I think someone working there actually understands flavor and recipe creation, but whomever was working in the kitchen this day wasn't able to execute the dishes. My husband did say the decor and ambiance was nice, so perhaps that's the main draw, I was just really looking forward to a nice seafood meal and this did not hit the mark at all. I understand prices have increased everywhere, but our bill was far too much for a less than...

I was in Santa Cruz with my friends and we were looking for some place to eat with food and drinks. HULA ranked on the top list with excellent recommendations from google and yelp so we decided to give it a try. Oh girl, I was absolutely impressed; this Hawaiian Island themed restaurant serves a variety of high quality vegan/vegetarian, gluten free appetizers, entree and their cocktails. Some of the best food we have ever had! Since I am vegetarian and most of the time I struggle with good food but this place surpassed my expectations and tasted like heaven.

This place has good indoor ambiance. unfortunately we could not get experience it! We saw one beautiful Hawaiian themed room next to their bar section with mind blowing decor and so asked host if they could accommodate us inside but they couldn’t. I still wonder why would not they want to serve us there :( Anyways, our host sat our table in their outdoor dining area.The drinks and food came out quickly and tasted so great. I am sucker of good cocktails and every single one of them were delicious and well balanced with right mixology and the best of presentation. The service was also excellent . Server was sweet and friendly, she suggested everything to my taste bud .

This place stand out if you looking for some top notch hand crafted cocktails with very best vegetarian bites. A great place to hangout with your families and friends if you in Santa Cruz .The entire crew is friendly. They could have made our dining experience more enjoyable if they had served us inside the themed dining room.

Parking is convenient to get since there is one paid parking spot across the street and also parking is available...

We had a really good time here yesterday for fourth of July.. We came out to Santa Cruz to check out the beach and boardwalk for the first time. We parked (paid $40 🙄) and went on a quest for food. I wish I had found this place first and parked because they have a lot right across the street and I'm sure we wouldn't have had to pay nearly as much. According to another patron, the parking would have been free due to the holiday if we didn't make that rookie mistake🤯. Anyway, I actually joined the wait-list on our walk over there. It was about a 15 minute walk from the beach area where we were. We arrived and still had to wait about 30 minutes to be seated, but it was worth it. My mom and husband had the zombie drink. They really enjoyed it!! She had the jerk chicken plate. As someone from Jamaica she was actually impressed. It wasn't as good a something you'd find in her native island but she said it was pretty close. He had the fish sandwich, chicken wings, Johnny Cake and some other fish appetizer, all of which he enjoyed. I had the Thai chicken bowl. The first time it came out, it was ❄️. I asked the server if they could reheat it and they offered to make a new one. It was delicious when it came back out. The plantains were ripened and cooked to perfection. The Johnny cake to me tasted more like banana bread, not the Johnny cake you'd get in Jamaica... Maybe Hawaii. But it was still pretty good. We definitely will be back the next time we're...