Hawaii was formed by a string of lava flows from a group of volcanoes in the ocean. Some of these volcanoes are still active today including Mauna Loa which still forms land on the Island of Hawaii in Hawaii (otherwise known as the big island). The living history of Hawaii has been captured and turned into a small museum in the Hawaii volcanoes national park which is a world heritage site. It doesn’t really need much protecting though as anything built onto it would probably be melted down in the future!

Throughout Hawaii’s history, towns have literally been burned down by molten lava. In recent history the Kīlauea volcano took out Kaimū and Kalapana in 1990. These days, the main activity comes from Puʻu ʻŌʻō which has been flowing out into the ocean until very recently.

The federal run Hawaii volcanoes national park is good value but only requires a day visit unless a week long ascent to the top of Mauna Loa is on the cards. There is not that much to see any more as the lava activity is the main selling point of any volcanic attraction and there is none happening at the park. I still think it’s worth a visit before driving down to the end of route 130 to catch any lava flowing into the ocean which may happen again in 2011 onwards.

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Kwai’s Dish
Fish and Chips

Yiki’s Dish
8oz Burger and chips

Exterior
Located next to a supermarket but with it’s own parking

Interior
It’s a traditional looking american bar

Service
Service was friendly but they changed server 3 times during our stay.

Toilets
Toilets were downright disgusting. They were not maintained at all.

Review
Pakini Grill was one of the best food experiences I had in Hawaii. Fish & Chips is very different in Hawaii to what I am used to in England. The good news for Pakini Grill is that theirs was superior. The beer battered fish was incredible and very memorable. The chips were also outstanding and well seasoned. My wife was happy with her burger but Huli Sue’s burger across the street is better. The place itself wasn’t the best place to dine out but the fish & chips was well worht the visit.

Score
10/20

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Kwai’s Dish
Mega Mango

Yiki’s Dish
Peach Perfection

Exterior
Located in the same car park as Ross

Interior
Looks like a typical juice or coffee bar

Service
Fast and friendly service

Toilets
Toilets were communal for the precinct. Clean.

Review
This is very much like Boost Juice in that you can get ‘healthy’ shots for your fresh juice drinks. Our drinks were pretty good and tasted better than any juice bar in the UK. The ones in Sydney were far superior though. They serve food but no one was eating from there so I’m guessing it’s not great.

Score
14/20

Kwai’s Dish
Rack of ribs with a side of rice. Root Beer

Yiki’s Dish
Prawn Garlic Sandwich with a side of salad

Exterior
Really hard to find and in a random industrial estate. Parking is full to the brim. We had to park far away and walk back. I kept getting bitten by mosquitoes whilst waiting outside. There’s also a Kona Brewing Cafe souvenir shop near the entrance.

Interior
It’s a bar with a few tables outside. There are little things to bite you all over the place! Not the cleanest place to dine. Open kitchen from the bar.

Service
Service was well stretched. We had to wait for 10 minutes to get seated, another 10 minutes to give our drinks order, another 5 minutes to give our food order and another 20 minutes for the food. Only 1 waitress for the entire indoor section of the restaurant.

Toilets
Toilets were filthy. They looked like they hadn’t been cleaned for a few days.

Review
This place has rave reviews about it on internet review sites and I’m really not sure why. It’s certainly very popular which meant that we had to park far away in another car park to try this place out. The service was really slow and the place was generally dirty. I wouldn’t even bother going to visit the toilets! I enjoyed my root beer and the wife enjoyed her fruit punch which came in gigantic glasses but unfortunately that was the only highlight of the visit. They could have sped up service if they had taken the souvenir staff to serve customers with food instead. Their menu talks the talk but their food seems to want to walk. I ordered the rack of ribs which were supposed to be really good but they were really crap! They just slopped on a cold can of tomatoes on top of the lukewarm ribs. They didn’t bother with simple things like seasoning or even salt! The wife’s meal was also appalling. This was a disappointing experience of epidemic proportions. We saw the souvenir shop on the way out and I just felt disgusted that they cared more about selling non food items than anything else. with so many other choices in Kona, the Brewing Company is one to miss.

Score
2/20

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Kwai’s Dish
Fillet Mignon Taco. Passionfruit Iced Tea. Carrot Cake

Yiki’s Dish
Island Fish with Passionfruit sauce, tomato salad and rice. Fresh Pineapple Juice. coconut Creme Brulet with Macadamia nut shortbread.

Exterior
Easy to find off the main road with ample parking. Some shops and other services are nearby as are other restaurants.

Interior
It was a late lunch time on a weekday and we had to wait for over 10 minutes for a table. We wouldn’t normally have to wait for lunch so this is a very busy place. This is a tablecloth and nice modern interior type of place with decent cutlery. You can see the open kitchen from most seating positions to wet the appetite. They play some Hawaiian music for your background pleasure.

Service
There is no one at the door to welcome you or tell you how long you will have to wait for. Instead you have to hover around and jump about a bit to get attention from one of the waitresses. Once you do then you get pretty good ‘tip chasing’ service. The waitress thought that absolutely everything on the menu was the best which didn’t help in choosing what to order. Service was speedy though.

Toilets
Very clean toilets and well maintained. I would happily take a crap in the Merriman’s restroom.

Review
Like most places we went to on the big Island, Merriman’s serves food with ingredients sourced locally. So let’s start with the criticisms… well my Passionfruit Iced tea was bland and flavourless. We had to wait ages for a table and had to flag down a waitress to get seated…. Anything else? Nope! Everything else was simply fantastic. My Taco dish was one of the food highlights of the Hawaii holiday and I was very impressed at the high quality of everything on the plate. My wife rated Merriman’s over our Wedding dinner at Canoehouse and was her second favourite restaurant in Hawaii. The place is very welcoming and the service is excellent once it gets going. We only stayed for dessert in restaurants we really liked which equated to 3 places whilst in Hawaii (Canoehouse, Merrimans’s and Huggo’s) and we weren’t disappointed with ours at Merriman’s. I would highly recommend a visit and prebook as it will make your life easier!

Score
14/20

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Kwai’s Dish
Garlic Fries and Bay Blue Burger

Yiki’s Dish
Mushroom Lasagne with a side of bread and salad.

Exterior
Shares the same car park as Walmart, so there are no views of anything apart from cars.

Interior
Nicely decorated and modern interior which looks great

Service
Service was not the best. It was friendly but there didn’t seem as if there were enough staff to keep everyone happy.

Toilets
Toilets were clean.

Review
All the reviews we saw before coming here were great, the location was easy to find (just look for Walmart and you’re there), the place looked modern and funky, the service was friendly although our waitress couldn’t recommend a signature dish. At a push she told me to go for the Bay Blue Burger which I did. This was a big mistake! The burger was terrible! The blue cheese should have given it some flavour but it was too late to rescue. The patty itself was just bland. I met the chef later who looked on arrogantly as if he was God’s gift to cooking, but he was nowhere close! This was a lazily cooked dish with no seasoning. When I was about to complain about the crap food the chef and waitresses all disappeared as if they could see it coming! My wife was equally disappointed with her mushroom lasagne. The lasagne was also bland, lacking seasoning and what was with the sides it came with? A massive slice of dry bread bigger than the lasagne itself which looked like a cheese topped pie! There was also a Taco shell resting on the salad which was also inexplicable. I was reading some of the reviews posted up on the wall on the way to the restroom with reviews praising the clever european cooking, but I think they must have been on another planet! Hilo Bay Cafe was easily the biggest anticlimax to our dining experience in Hawaii. I regularly make authentic Italian Lasagne and Angus burgers at home which were spectacularly better tasting than what the award winning chef could produce. It could be argued that it was an off day for them but I just think that the Chef’s ego has got the better of his own tastebuds! Avoid Hilo Bay Cafe or be very disappointed!

Score
3/20

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Kwai’s Dish
Combination special (Tempura, Sesame Chicken, Katsu Don, Tuna Sashimi), Miso Soup, Green Tea

Yiki’s Dish
Vegetable and Tofu Udon noodle bowl. Miso Soup, Green Tea

Exterior
Located at the back of some high rise housing estates. It was quite hard to find! There is some easy parking outside the restaurant which is not very obvious from outside. It’s located on the first floor (2nd if you’re American).

Interior
Noisy atmosphere with live music playing from a one man with guitar gig. Old style wood throughout. not the cleanest of places but there were mosquito nets at the windows.

Service
Service was not the typical efficient and friendly from a Japanese establishment that I would expect. A non japanese lady took my order and couldn’t pronounce the items properly which was disappointing. She did not seem very clued up with the menu either.

Toilets
Toilets were located outside. A key was required which came on a long and bulky key fob which was disgustingly dirty and unhygenic. The toilets were horrendously filthy.

Review
Miyo’s Japanese Restaurant was a very mixed experience. I was excited because Japanese food back in London is typically very expensive whereas the menu at Miyo’s in Hawaii was relatively very cheap. The place was hard to find in the dark and they were already taking last orders at 8pm which is early by what I am used to in late night London. When we finally did find it, service was very rushed in an effort to get us back out of the door as quickly as possible so that they could have an early finish for the evening. The live music was a nice addition which reminded us that we were in Hawaii and not in a dirty little Japanese restaurant. Unfortunately we were in a dirty little Japanese restaurant! Luckily we were also in Hawaii which meant that the sashimi ordered was fresh. The tempura was pretty good as was the Kara Age copy which they called Sesame Chicken on their menu. The wife was a lot less impressed with her dose of soupy noodles. She liked it to start off with but quickly got bored of the flavour combinations. The toilets matched the lack of service, they were covered in faeces and urine which prompted me to get back in my rented Jeep as soon as I possibly could so that I could wash my hands in alcohol gel! so to summarise, the seafood was good, the non seafood was average, the price was low and everything else was pretty shoddy. I would eat at this place again but I would take away the food and find my own restroom!

Score
7/20

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I didn’t get a chance to go close up because a tropical storm came in literally seconds after I stopped filming. We drove away as fast as we could to save our dear lives. We hit a tree that fell onto the road that very same day!

To find out more about Akaka Falls, read the Wikipedia entry here

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Laupahoehoe Point in Hawaii is a random stop off between Waimea and Hilo on the Big Island of Hawaii. I would not exactly call it the highlight of the trip but I stopped there looking for a toilet to use. There is one a little further up the road towards Hilo at the train museum and they don’t make you pay to use the run down restrooms. I wouldn’t really call it a museum myself, more like a little house on the prairie with a truckload of random train pictures all over the place. Anyway, for more info on Laupahoehoe see the following links which contain a lot more than this blog post!

Wikipedia
Hawaii Blog
Big Island website

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There is also a KFC based in Hilo:
111 E Puainako St
Hilo
HI 96720
(808) 959-1886

Kwai’s Dish
Chicken meal for 2, crispy coating, 2 biscuits, 2 mash and gravy, 5 pieces of chicken with sides of buttery spread & honey sauce.

Yiki’s Dish
Shared Kwai’s dishes

Exterior
Located at the Lanihau Center on a corner. Plenty of easy parking spaces. Across the road is the Kona coast shopping Center. There is no seating outside.

Interior
Interior was geared to have plenty of standing room with only a few tables available for dining in. The area was well kept and very clean which surpassed my expectations of a fast food establishment.

Service
Counter service was friendly and the staff tried their best to help explain what all the things (that we don’t have in the UK) were.

Toilets
Did not inspect

Review
This kfc meal was far better in general than any kfc I’ve had in the uk. For a start I was astonished at the absence of french fries in the meal deals. The menu was geared towards feeding the family or large parties and they also did not offer many other types of dishes apart from normal chicken pieces in original or crispy coating. There were only 3 pictures of burgers on the display wall menu. The biscuit is not what I would think of a biscuit in the UK. Instead it was very much like an english scone except it was salty instead of slightly sweet. Also unlike most scones in the UK, the biscuit was served warm. The crispy coating was very thick and reminded me of the UK spicy wings coating except it was much thicker. The mash was served very creamy with a ring of gravy laid on top. Biting through the chicken some grease came through which is similar to the UK version. One notable difference at the end of our meal was the lack of a wet wipe which is a standard and expected feature of buying a KFC in the UK. A tip would be to take your own wet wipes or take it home. Although standard was higher than expected, it wasn’t mind blowing gourmet cuisine.

Score
6/20

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Kwai’s Dish
1lb Rib eye steak with a loaded 1lb potato (sour cream, bacon, cheese)

Yiki’s Dish
40 USD sunday special 1lb Rib eye steak with a loaded 1lb potato (sour cream, bacon, cheese)

Exterior
Located at the Mauna Lani shopping mall on the 1st floor (2nd floor for our US friends)

Interior
Layout was Chicago gangster style tables and booths with super large tables with clean thick white cloth on top.

Service
Served by one waitress, female mid 40s. Service was friendly and food was transported on a luxury looking cart.

Toilets
Toilets were very clean and well maintained.

Review
First thing’s first – everything here is big! The layout is big, the space between tables is big, the doorways are big, the tables are big, the seats are big, the waitresses are, um…. Anyway the place is comfortable and the mood is very warm with nicely polished hardwood everywhere. It’s like all those old American gangster films where the bad guy orders the hit! So on to the food. We chose the cheapest thing on the menu which on the day was the Sunday special. It comes out on a gigantic plate on a gigantic trolley with a side of a gigantic 1lb baked potato with an enormous portion of random toppings like fake bacon bits. The steak is not cooked on the large flat side like most places or at home, instead it’s cooked until burnt on the outside of the steak. To accomplish this the steak is very thick cut. One advantage is that you can see when the middle is cooked to the preferred done state. One massive disadvantage is the seasoning, the middle tasted of nothing. The experience was texture only, it was so bland in the middle I almost cried. On the outside where it was burnt it was pretty inedible but the parts I could chew, I felt an explosion of salt. In between the burnt crust and the bland middle was a great steak, but the middle and crust took up too much of the steak.

If you are bold enough to call yourself a steakhouse then make sure your steak is great! Big does not equal great, it’s all about the quality! The execution from the kitchen did not meet the expectation of the atmosphere or the service. Overall I was sadly disappointed, it’s like going to a great looking new cinema only to watch the movie on a 12 inch black and white TV.

Score
8/20

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Click here for a tour of the Mauna Lani Spa, gym and tennis courts
Click here for a view of the Mauna Lani resort & Ocean from one of the Hotel’s corridors.
Click here for a review of the Mauna Lani Breakfast Restaurant, The Bay Terrace
Click here for a review of Ruth Chris Steak House @ The Mauna Lani Mall
Click here for a view of the Ocean from One of Mauna Lani’s Ocean Front facing Deluxe rooms
Click here for a tour of a Mauna Lani Deluxe Ocean Front Facing room

The future Mrs Chi was driving on the wrong side of the road (or the right side if you’re American or from continental Europe) for the first time in her life on Hawaii island on route 270. We were looking for Radioshack in Waimea and we had the address so we input the zip code and the first 2 digits of the 6 digit house number. This was our fundamental mistake. In England we are used to addresses with a number (usually 1 to 3 digits long) followed by the street name, city, county then most importantly the post code which accurate to a part or all of a street. The USA system of Zip code is quite different though with a zip code covering a much larger area (see the wiki on zip codes here). There is the additional 4 digits for more accuracy in big cities but we did not have that for Radioshack in Hawaii Island.

Fundamentally we took a right turn instead of a left at the junction of route 270 and ended up seeing another wonderful scenic area of the Big island. It’s not all bad in paradise I guess!

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