Ala Hawaii Kitchen

What a find so close to my house. Ala Kitchen is literally a kitchen that makes bentos for grocery stores and other secondary vendors but the awesome part is that they also take walk ins. There is no place to sit down so it’s picks up and go only. There is a wide selection of choices and sizes. We got there at about 845am and the bentos were still warm and they were still bring more out. We ate ours at the airport about 90 min later and my fish katsu was still crunchy. My wife got the saba and the fish was perfectly broiled and salted. The open early which is perfect for picking up something for a little trip and the prices are cheaper than most other places.

umm. Unilocal.can u hear me or wat? ala hawaii bentos gon make u lose weight. how u say? like da kine when u don’t eat that much either way, they get something in here that somehow make u not hungry for less than $ 6. hmmm. this place distriube to foodland and times all ova local style… promise. follow meh?

I would rate it a 3.5 stars. Basically, you walk into a packing station for their bentos. Workers are saran-​wrapping and pricing in this tiny area.
Prices are reasonable and the gal gave me a 10% discount, I think off the retail price. So, don’t quote me, but it may be cheaper to buy here instead of in the super market? Staff was pretty friendly. Food is just okay and more local-​style flavor vs. authentic Japanese. At 10 a.m. there was a lot to choose from as they were just loading up to make their deliveries.

It was field trip day for my daughter so I wanted to get some bentos for us to take along. I’m familiar with Ala Hawaii’s bentos since they supply Foodland but sometimes the variety is limited. So I decided to go straight to the source.
When I got there around 7:30, the ladies in there were busy filling bento boxes and I found a huge variety of all kinds of yummy goodness. They had chicken, fish, shrimp, kabocha, various vegetables and even fresh andagi. There are no price stickers since they are mostly a supplier, not so much a retailer. But they will gladly help you find what you want. It can be overwhelming since almost every flat surface is covered in stacks of freshly packed bentos.
I would recommend going here if you’re in the area and want a fresh bento for on the go. But go early before they make their deliveries for best selection.

This place is actually just mostly a kitchen, and not really a place to buy food, and definitely not a restaurant. They make great tasting bentos that get distributed to Times Super Market, and various other super markets. So, they don’t have any price stickers, organized servicing, and most of the time, if you don’t get there early in the morning, they run out of certain bentos or they simply just do not have anything.
Having said that though, if you go early in the morning, this place has awesome bentos. I’ve been to this place several times; I’ve come back empty handed twice when I went during the afternoon, or late afternoon; I’ve come back with a feast three times when I went in the morning.
My wife’s favorite is the nishime bento. She says that every single item in the bento is very well prepared, and I agree, not because I am whipped, but because I really think the food is very well prepared. The nishime and marinated fried tofu has a very nice flavorful taste. The hijiki rice is also very nice touch in that it is not just plain rice like most bentos. She also likes the tsukemono and takuan (pickles) that comes with the bento. Like I said, she loves this bento from corner to corner. (see picture.)
I like the garlic chicken bento. The garlic chicken is very nice, but I really like the fact that they put furikake on the rice that comes with it. It may not seem like much, but it’s these little things that make a difference. (see picture.)
They also have other bentos, tempura, fried chicken, musubis, fried noodles, pumpkin, okara, etc. I tried the fried noodles and the pumpkin, and they were OK. The okara was very good. (see picture for pumpkin and okara.)
So, today, I got the nishime bento, garlic chicken bento, pumpkin, and okara, and it came out to $ 17 and change. That’s enough food for 2 with leftovers. I would rather eat the bentos here than eat at some overpriced, over-​hyped restaurant in Waikiki and pay over double the price for food that’s not as good. My recommendation would be to buy the bentos here, drive down to Ala Moana or Waikiki, and enjoy your meal with an ocean view.
I plan on coming back and trying most of their bentos and menu items. The trick is to catch them when they actually have it.

So the office decided to do a lunch order for today and we decided to give this place a try. We had an older version of the menu and the options sounded pretty good. I decided to give them a call yesterday because I rather order from an updated menu with current prices — she faxes the menu to me… the first time, we get about 4 separate faxes — all blank pages. I call her back and tell her, I got all blank pages, please fax it again. She does. Another 4 blank pages.
This time, I tell my coworker to call them back. She tells them… flip it over and fax it. Tada… it works. We ask them, if we place an order for 12:00, what’s the earliest we need to let you folks know. Silence. Would 11:00 be okay to call in? Yeah okay she says.
So our orders are ready to be placed and I call them at 10 am, I start placing the order one after another she says — we don’t carry that anymore. I get a bit frustrated and ask her to fax me a new menu so I can redo the orders. She faxes the EXACT same menu as the day before — I call her and say, that’s the same exact menu, I thought you had a new one. She starts mumbling in Filipino to her coworker… and I say, is this all you have? She says yes, this is all we have.
So I hang up and just try to make it work… call back with new orders. Ask for a mochiko chicken bento — can’t get it because it will be bland. Chicken needs to be marinated overnight to have good flavor. Okay… so I just ended the conversation with a shortened order.
I get there at about 11:50 and tell them I was there to pick-​up. They take the order form… and the ladies there start talking to each other in Filipino all excited and worried and I knew something was wrong. One of them come over and say, I’m sorry we don’t have the Garlic Chicken Bentos ready (we had 3) — can you wait longer. 15, 20, 30 minutes? OH boy, I was pretty hopping mad by then. I said, I can wait 15 minutes and they said okay and would make it now. Their excuse was that the lady who took down the order didn’t let the cook know — pretty poor considering the other orders being all done.
So I come back and the food is all ready and it comes to paying the bill. They ring it up and it’s more money than I had added up (of course) — and we ask what is going on. Apparently the menu they faxed us had old prices too — we complained that they had just faxed it to us and that is what we went on. They call someone on the phone and let us know that we have to pay the higher price. At this point, my coworker decides not to take her bento so they have to recalculate. They recalculate wrong so I have to stand there with my phone trying to calculate… another worker tries to calculate it and gets it right. Finally.
We pay and leave. It was a horrible experience and what was worst was… they had an updated menu taped to their fridge. I’m not even going to bother asking about that. This place is pretty run down and grimed down — it isn’t really a store front. Really more of a kitchen area that they put extra bentos out in and you get whatever they’ve got out. It seems like they cater to some pretty major grocery stores so I’m not sure why our order was so mixed up.
Food — The Tic Tac Toe bento looks gorgeous. The taste of the food is all right, nothing great but not bad. I only got to try the garlic chicken roll since they didn’t have my initial choice. We do not plan to return.

Ala Hawaii Kitchen is located in the shopping center in Moiliili right in the middle of Sweet Home Café and Kozo Sushi. One would never know its there and you wouldn’t think it was a bento place. They have all kinds of bentos but you have to go there early otherwise you’ll be limited on options. I think they ship out bentos to some grocery stores like Times Supermarket.
I go there for the mochiko fish, miso butterfish, and tempura bentos. They also have oyako donburi, salmon, saba, curry and katsu bentos just to name a few. It’s decently priced at about $ 5-​$ 7. I usually like to go in the morning before work since they open at 730am. It’s also the perfect place to go for your child, niece, or nephew when they go on field trips.
It’s not really a restaurant. It’s more like a kitchen/​store with the bentos laid out in the front. There are no labels on the bentos so you won’t know the price or description of the bento. You can just ask one of the many lady cooks that are in there.
****CASH ONLY ****