Big Island dining - Kohala Coast
 

Hello all,

We are spending five nights at the Hapuna Beach Prince hotel in January and want to figure out some dining options. it seems like we are limited to dining in the hotels along the kohala coast -- are there any other restaurants along this stretch? we will have a rental car so we could drive for dinner but i think more than 20-25 mins. would be pushing it.

For our "splurge" dinner we are thinking of the fancy restaurant in the Four Seasons (Puahi'a ). Other possibilities are the Canoe House or the fancy restaurant at the fairmont orchid.

What are suggestions for more moderate dining? we are thinking Roy's at the WAikaloa shops. Are the restaurants in the Hapuna any good?

Thanks in advance.

Lisa

Just a short drive to Kamuela and Merriman's - many think it's the best restaurant on the BI - we tend to agree.

Was on the Big Island this summer. We
really enjoyed the Coast Grill at the Hapuna. Great food and view. Didn't think too much of the Canoe House. Fab
view - but food was just ok. Best place
we found was Brown's at the Orchid. Went there twice. Excellent food, nice
service and you are IN the view. Almost
on the water/beach. Make the reservation for sunset time. Also did a couple of places at the shops. Both were good.
Have fun.

jacolis - you will really enjoy the hapuna beach prince resort. we stayed in october for 5 nights. i recommend merriman's. the food was very good. roy's and canoe house were also quite good. we did the saturday night clam bake at the mauna kea (hapuna's sister property) which was basically all the seafood you could eat...i.e. lobster, shrimp, fish, scallops. suprisingly, neither of us enjoyed this meal too much. we also hung out in our room one evening and room service on the lanai...not bad.

enjoy your trip.

The Kamuela Provision Company restaurant at the Hilton was the best place we ate in that area. Make a reservation for outside, request a sunset view and you won't regret it. There is a Merrimans Cafe in the Kings Village shopping, they had VERY reasonable prices and the food we had was very good. There is another Merrimans in either Waikola or Waimea that is supposed to be very good as well, but a little pricier. Did not go to the Canoe House, they didn't have steak on the menu and one of us isn't a seafood eater. Have fun.

We spent 6 nights on the Kohala coast in October on our honeymoon and dined at Merrimans (in Waimea, not the Merrimans Cafe in the King's Shops), CanoeHouse, Coast Grille (in the Hapuna), and Kamuela Provisoning Company (at the HWV). Here is my assessment.

Food: Merrimans was the best. CanoeHouse and Coast Grille were excellent. KPC was a distant fourth. Not that it was bad or anything, just not in the same league as the others.

Service: Merriman's again #1. CanoeHouse and KPC excellent. Coast Grille terrible...will not return there next time we are back on the Big Island because of the poor service.

Sunset views: KPC #1, CanoeHouse #2, Coast Grille #3, Merrimans...no view.

The prices at all four of these restaurants are very similar. Merrimans was our overall favorite and Mrs. MileKing claims it is the finest meal she has ever had anywhere.

Although we did not dine at Roys, we did drop by to check the menu and prices. Maybe $2-4 per entree less expensive than the other four restaurants. Clearly not in the "moderate" range of prices you are looking for.

Two restaurants close by but not at resort properties: Bamboo in the charming little town of Hawi, closer to the northern tip of the island and incredible scenery; and Cafe Pesto which is in north Kohala near a boat harbor (I am blanking on the name of the town). There is another Cafe Pesto in Hilo. Both locations are very good and a nice break from the rather overpriced food at the big resorts.

We stayed at the Mauna Lani for eight nights and ate at a variety of places. The food at the Mauna Lani was consistently good, although we never made it to the top-of-the-line Canoe House so I can't evaluate that. We really enjoyed an outdoor lunch at Brown's at the Orchid next door.

The Cafe Pesto mentioned in the previous post is a find. The restaurant is much cheaper than the food at the Mauna Lani and similar resorts and is very tasty. The menu is mostly gourmet pizzas and the like. You can get orders to take out as well.

Merriman's is wonderful, but the menu is very red meat oriented. I'm more of a fish/chicken/pasta type and didn't find much to choose from. As I recall there is also a highly regarded European restaurant up in this area (Swiss? German?) but I don't remember the name.

If you are staying at the Hapuna Prince, there is the shuttle that runs every few minutes to the Mauna Kea resort. We just came back from a week at the Hapuna and found the Pavillion
Restaurant at the Mauna Kea to be the best of all available in those 2 hotels.
Sitting outside on the terrace in the fresh evening air is delightful. You might need a light sweater, but we didn't this week. The Batik restaurant is over air conditioned, indoors and freezing as is the Japanese restaurant at Hapuna. Watch out for the evil air conitioners in Hawaii. You don't need it as the fresh air is gorgeous! By the way, the long drives between distant resorts can be dangerous as drunk drivers have caused severe wrecks on the main road. Stick close to your gorgeous resort!
Enjoy!

Thanks all for your helpful replies.

Just wondering if anyone went to the clambake at the mauna kea and if it is worth the $$$ (the saturday night all you can eat seafood clambake thing).

thanks.

We dined at Roy's Waikoloa, Daniel Thiebault in Waimea, and Oodles of Noodles in Kona. Our best meal in terms of food was at Roy's with Daniel Thiebault being second. We enjoyed the atmosphere at Daniel Thiebault in Waimea, quite different than down on the coast and a nice change of scenery. I think it's worth a drive up there for dinner one evening. Oodles was also good but is much more of a casual eatery (it has a strip mall parking lot view) and was the least expensive of the restaurants we tried.

In addition to the above 3 restaurants which I can recommend, we tried several other restaurants in the Kings Shops complex which were all pretty mediocre. The one problem we found with moderately priced dining on the Kohala coast was that it often translated into mediocre dining. I think it's worth it to either spend a little more or dine elsewhere on the island. We thought Roy's was the best overall value as it's less expensive than most of the hotel restaurants but the food quality is very high.

Just a quick suggestion--in addition to the Canoe House, the Mauna Lani also has the Gallery, which is a very nice restaurant up on their golf course. You will find a more varied menu (pasta, meats) in addition to seafood, it's usually less crowded, and the sunset is surprisingly even more beautiful and vivid viewed from the golf course than the beach. We actually enjoyed our dinner here more than our dinner at the Canoe House.

That said, the Canoe House was a very enjoyable experience. I found the menu to lean toward a lighter Asian preparation of seafood (lots of jasmine and ginger), so keep that in mind if you are in the mood for something a bit more robust. I think the menu changes daily though--I could be wrong!

Have to disagree with Miranda's assessment of Merrimans as being "very red meat oriented". Both Mrs. MileKing and I had fish. We had ono and opakapaka, both excellent choices. I believe the menu also had a few other local fish selections and salmon. From our view, the seafood selection here was as good as or better than most other places we dined on both the Big Island and Oahu.

Take a short drive to Kona and check out Huggo's. Beautiful view at sunset and casual dining atmoshpere made this one of our favorite places. Also the Orchid was a great choice for more upscale. Roy's at Kohala, great choice.