Five Leeward Plates Worth the Drive

Tell someone in town you’re driving out west just for dinner and watch the face they make. Let them keep making it — more parking for us. Our side of the island feeds itself just fine — farm lunches in Lualualei, mofongo in Waianae, sari sari in Kapolei — and most of it sits right along Farrington Highway, no reservations-app gymnastics required.

Here are five plates we’d send anybody down the coast for. Every one of these spots lives in our directory, and if you’re turning lunch into a full day out this way, check the this-weekend widget on our homepage or the events page to see which markets line up with your food run.

Kahumana Organic Farm & Cafe — Waianae

Tucked back in Lualualei Valley on Lualualei Homestead Road, Kahumana is the kind of place that reminds you why people romanticize farm-to-table in the first place — except here it’s literal. The cafe sits on a working organic farm run by a nonprofit that has been part of the Waianae community since the 1970s, and the produce on your plate was grown steps from the kitchen. They do lunch Tuesday through Friday, plus Saturday brunch and dinner, so a Saturday morning at the beach followed by brunch in the valley is one of the easiest great days our coast offers. Eating here also puts money back into an organization that has served our community for around five decades. That’s a plate that does double duty.

Find it: 86-660 Lualualei Homestead Rd, Waianae

Coquito’s Latin Cuisine — Waianae

Chef-owner Stevina Kiyabu cooks Puerto Rican comfort food — mofongo, pernil, empanadas — out of a converted old house right on Farrington Highway, and there’s genuinely almost nowhere else on Oahu to get true Caribbean flavors like this. Honolulu Magazine literally ran a feature calling it worth the drive to Waianae, and for once the town folks got it right. The old-house setting is half the charm: it feels less like going to a restaurant and more like being fed at somebody’s tutu’s place, if tutu happened to make a life-changing pernil. If you’ve never had mofongo, this is where you fix that.

Find it: 85-773 Farrington Hwy, Waianae

Countryside Cafe — Maili

Every coast needs its breakfast institution, and ours is near Maili Point. Countryside Cafe is famous for two things you won’t find imitated well anywhere else: upside-down waffles and Bananas Foster french toast. It’s open mornings daily until early afternoon, which makes it the natural first stop before a beach day anywhere between Maili and Makaha — or the reward after a dawn patrol session. Come hungry; this is not a dainty-brunch kind of place, and we mean that as the highest compliment.

Find it: 87-070 Farrington Hwy, Ste 104, Waianae 96792 (Maili Point)

Julie’z Restaurant — Kapolei

Family-run Filipino food in Kapolei Marketplace, and the kind of spot that quietly feeds half the neighborhood from early morning through dinner. The sari sari and lechon kawali are the headliners, but the real move at Julie’z is a combination plate — they’re generous, they let you try more of the menu, and they solve the eternal problem of everyone at the table wanting something different. If your only Kapolei meals happen at the big chains near the mall, Julie’z is your reminder that the family-run places out here can cook circles around them.

Find it: 590 Farrington Hwy, Unit 532, Kapolei (Kapolei Marketplace)

Monkeypod Kitchen by Merriman — Ko Olina

Yes, it’s in the resort area, and yes, it’s still worth it. Monkeypod is part of Peter Merriman’s Hawaii-based restaurant group — not a mainland chain — and the focus on Hawaii-sourced ingredients is the real thing. The wood-fired pizzas and handcrafted cocktails carry the menu, but the famous order is the mai tai with lilikoi foam, which has earned its reputation. For west-siders, this is the special-occasion spot that doesn’t require driving to town: anniversaries, visiting family, or any Friday you feel like watching the sun drop from Ko Olina Station with something cold in hand.

Find it: 92-1048 Olani St, Kapolei 96707 (Ko Olina Station)

Bonus round: one more for the early risers

If you’re up early on the Waianae coast, longtime local diner Hannara Restaurant mixes Korean, Hawaiian, and American plates — the loco moco and kalbi are the standbys, but the oversized coconut pancakes are the thing people talk about. It’s open early for breakfast most days.

Make a day of it

The beauty of eating on our coast is that nothing is a destination in isolation. A Saturday could run: Countryside Cafe for breakfast, a beach morning, Kahumana for a late Saturday brunch, and a Waianae market stop on the way home — most weeks there’s a farmers market somewhere between Ewa Beach and Waianae, and the this-weekend widget on our homepage will tell you exactly which ones are running. And when you find your own spot that deserves a place on this list, tell us — the directory grows one recommendation at a time, and nobody knows this coast like the people who live on it.

Sources

Kahumana Organic Farm & Cafe — https://www.kahumana.org/cafe
Coquito’s Latin Cuisine — https://www.yelp.com/biz/coquitos-latin-cuisine-restaurant-waianae; Honolulu Magazine feature: https://www.honolulumagazine.com/worth-the-drive-to-waianae-coquitos-latin-cuisine/
Countryside Cafe — https://www.countrysidecafe808.net/
Julie’z Restaurant — https://www.juliezrestaurant.com/
Monkeypod Kitchen by Merriman — https://monkeypodkitchen.com/; Ko Olina Center listing: https://koolinashops.com/dining/monkeypod-kitchen-by-merriman
Hannara Restaurant — https://www.yelp.com/biz/hannara-restaurant-waianae