Merriman’s Gourmet Pizza & Burgers

Food was good. Waited almost an hour to get our food.
Super busy. Nothing really stood out at this restaurant.

Merriman Poipu’s cheaper downstairs sibling
We visited about two years ago shortly after Merriman’s opened the downstairs restaurant and it was just awful. A few days ago we saw it had been renamed and decided to give it another shot. It was like night and day — the food, drinks, and service were all simply fabulous.
Two of us ordered the burger and it was one of the best I’ve tasted in a long time. The meat was flavorful and cooked perfectly with a good char on the outside and a warm red on the inside. Fresh garden island greens, tomatoes, and onions didn’t hurt. The lobster roll, Kalua pork tacos, and garlic truffle fries were not far behind — all were really, really tasty. A step behind them were the beet & blue cheese salad and Margherita pizza which were merely good. Unfortunately the normal fries were a severe disappointment — the advertised sea salt was sadly lacking, there was no salt or pepper on the table, and the ‘homemade’ ketchup was too sweet and lacked bite.
Back on the positive side of things my wife and mother LOVED their Waterslide and Merriman’s Mai Tai. Both were not too sweet with a good mix of flavors and a reasonable punch. My son’s ginger beer had a good kick and my daughter’s Lilkoi Pop — a homemade soda of lilkoi, mint, and lime — was surprisingly tasty for ‘soda’. But best of all (at least in the opinion of me and my dad) was the presence of Lagunitas IPA on tap.
But first in our hearts though last on our tastebuds were the Hawaiian chocolate pot de crème and the lilkoi mousse. The pot de crème was staggeringly delicious — second only to Balthazar’s beloved concoction in our experience. And the lilkoi was it’s lighter Hawaiian sister — concentrated tropical magic on a spoon.

I had the fish sandwich which was excellent. And their Bloody Merri with bacon was very tasty. However, service was a bit slow despite it being a slow sunday late afternoon with only a few tables. Guess they run on island time. Try to sit outside if its a nice day, the breeze while having lunch is quintessential hawaiian.

I was quite excited to see the vegan Pizza on the menu and even more so when I saw the glutenfree option — so my friend and I decided to share. Our excitement vanished rather quickly though when the dish arrived, which looked more like a flatbread appetizer than a pizza, tiny and with a thin layer of dough. For $ 17! It was very tasty but absolutely overpriced for the quantity. And even for a single person that would have never been filling. I don’t mind paying extra for the gf option but I also expect to get a similar quality and quantity then which wasn’t the case. Quite disappointing. Overall a nice hangout place for locals after the market. Unfortunately even sitting at the bar the service is pretty slow unless you’re a male drinking regular.

From the outside, Merriman’s looks like it’s going to be pretty fance. Once inside, it feels like you’re at a Wahoo’s Fish Tacos.
Cocktails are $ 13, but I suggest you go for a beer. Lilikoi Mojito and Coco Loco — despite the exoticness of their descriptions, I found them to be more like non-​alcoholic drinks you get at pool bars.
Server was very nice. He was super responsive when asked for something, but didn’t seem to have the intuition you need as a server. Food service was torturously slow. We ordered a few burgers and sandwiches and waited about half an hour for our orders. I noticed a few tables sitting waiting for a while as well. After our burgers arrived, our fries were missing. It wasn’t until the server realized he hadn’t brought them, then he went back to the kitchen and brought out our orders.
The fries were quite crispy, not a bad thing. Burgers were okay. Despite having grassfed beef, I didn’t find them to be particularly fresh or tasty. The island fish sandwich won. I enjoyed the mahimahi and pickled cucumber combo a lot.
Because of Merriman’s location, I’m sure they’ll stay poppin’.

We had a great experience! Great service for a large group and great food! I had the pork tacos and they were the best I had on the island (and that’s nearly all I eat). It’s a low key sort of place with a bar as well, and thankfully they had all the right sport channels on so we could watch. A great place for a bite and a drink!

Overall this restaurant was just ok. The menu didn’t really have many pizza or burger combos for a restaurant with burger and pizza in its name. It seemed like more of a bar with a few food selections. The service was good but the food had a little more to be desired. If you are looking for pizza and burgers you may wanna look for another spot on the island.

Hmmmm, can’t rate the food but won’t ever come here again… Unilocal says 47 minutes to close, yet the kitchen is closed when we attempted to get some food. Bad business practices.

This place is cute enough with nice outdoor seating, but very overpriced. I couldn’t eat one more burger on this trip and I’m not a huge fan of mahi which was the fresh fish for the day. I decided to check out the salads, $ 12 for a Caesar salad. To add shrimp it’s $ 9. I decided to bite the bullet and get the salad with some protein. $ 9 gets you three overcooked shrimp. The salad itself was a medium size, not really an entrée size. $ 21…absolutely not even close to being worth it. And the caesar dressing really lacked flavor. My husband had a pizza which he said was ok, but nothing too special. The service was also pretty good, pretty fast and we got sufficient drink refills.

My time at Merriman’s would likely be titled a tale of two dinners. The first time, on Christmas Eve, was excellent. Our waiter was attentive, and eager to help in any way possible. The food was also good with the fish tacos and the salads far exceeding our expectations. I was so satisfied with the quality of our meal that we decided to return the next night.
Our experience the next night when we returned could not have been more different. The service was poor and slow with our waiter failing at the most basic of tasks. The food, however, was what caused the meal to truly be miserable. My fathers order of fish tacos included a special surprise — a hair! Even worse, The waiter cleared our plates and tried to get us to pay for our hairy tacos. A poor effort all around from Merriman’s the second time.

hmm, leider zu viel erwartet…
die pizzen sind eher klein (oh welch ein wunder, sonst alles über gross) aber das ist nicht mal das problem. leider ist der boden halt wie typisch amerikanisch, komplett fettig! ich denke der wurde zuerst gebacken und danach ins öl getunkt. knusprig, aber triefend
der cheeseburger schmeckte gut, nicht aber überwältigend, einfach ok
speziell sind die trüffel knoblauch pommes. die waren lecker .
zum ambiente… viele screens, wie eine sportbar, sah auch aus als würden sich die locals nach feierabend hier ein bier gönnen und ein burger to go genehmigen, was ja auch nichts dagegen spricht –völlig ok, aber nicht für ein gemütliches abendessen zu zweit.
service war feundlich und aufmerksam!
wer genuss liebt ist hier falsch

Nice place! The quesadillas were amazing. Everything we got here was really good – the tacos, the burger – can’t really go wrong.

Winner of the worst Fish Tacos ever! Crispy corn tortilla with tasteless fish covered what tasted like canned tomato sauce — Yuk! Ok — my mistake. I came from Southern California where we have great family owned Mexican food restaurants. I should never had ordered Fish Tacos in Hawaii. Tomato sauce on Fish Tacos?
Then the wine. Fifty dollars for a $ 10 bottle of Pinot Noir! Really? Even though I love wine, I stuck with the $ 8 overpriced beer.
A give a very generous three stars as the service was good, another person in our party liked the fish tacos (!), and the others ordered the pizza which was excellent.

Finally a great meal on this island!
I had the fish tacos and my husband had the lamb burger. We both had two Mai Tai’s. He had the Merriman’s special Mai tai and I had the local rum Kauai mai tai. Both were very good, but my husband’s was topped with a local non-​dairy honey crema that was very good.
The fish tacos had a chili sauce and an avocado crema that were excellent and made the dish. Just excellent. Will come again.

It’s a pretty pricey place but food was good.
We got the POG juice and lolokie soda. They were decent. It also wasn’t free refills.
For dinner we got the sea salt fries, kalua pork and pineapple pizza, and the turkey burger. It was all decent. Fries were awesome actually.
They don’t serve ranch here FYI.
Pizzas are personal pizzas but if you get something else to share it could be for two people. U

We ate there for dinner tonight and was not impressed. Our service was slow, beer warm, and food average. Seems like more of an overpriced pizza and burger joint that feels they can charge more due to their expensive upstairs dining. The margarita pizza was extremely bland and could have been fixed with just some EVOO added as a finishing touch before it came to the table. The server brought us a check for $ 65 and upon looking it over we realized it was short two drinks. We figured maybe she had brought us a round due to the slow service. When she ran the credit card it was rang up with $ 80 total. The missing drinks had been added on and she didn’t say a word about the correction. It would have been nice of her to make it clear that we were paying a different amount than originally billed.
On a side note — the garlic truffle fries were the best part of the dinner. Highly recommended.

Came here for date night with hubs. Got a regular burger and he got the kimchi burger. My burger was amazing and my husband really liked his kimchi burger. Doesn’t come with fries so you have to order that a la carte. Decent beer and wine selection.
Our complaints are that you can’t order happy hour appetizers after their happy hour ends. Also our server was so absentminded and kept forgetting our food and drinks. The kitchen messed up our order and our food was a little cold.
Delicious burgers, poor service. Wouldn’t come back.

Alan and I had dinner here tonight. We shared a beet and blue cheese salad, a huge portion that came unsplit, so we requested serving spoons to assist us in splitting it. The salad was delicious, w/​organic mixed greens, roasted red beets, blue cheese, Kauai orange segments, red onion and vine ripened tomatoes in a citrus balsamic vinaigrette. Alan ordered a coconut porter and I ordered a glass of Quattro Mani Montepulciano d’Abruzzo.
I ordered a roasted hamakua mushroom pizza and Alan ordered a sweet shrimp and garlic pizza, intending to share them. The pizzas are individual size plus, each w/​six pieces. Both had white sauce and fontina cheese. The mushroom had truffle oil, tarragon, thyme and parsley. They were very tasty, the mushroom pizza thickly layered w/​sliced mushrooms, the shrimp and garlic more sparsely topped. The shrimp are local, from West Kauai. The mushrooms are from the Big Island. Our waiter told us that both upstairs and downstairs take pride in serving locally sourced food. We finished all but two pieces of the pizzas. Alan liked the shrimp fractionally better. I liked them both. Alan enjoyed his beer and I enjoyed my wine. It was a good simple dinner. We sat outside. Inside sounded much noisier and higher energy. Service was young, friendly and capable. We’d come back.

For a casual place, I am ok giving them 4 stars…
We shared a cheeseburger and pizza, since these are their «thing». We also had the truffle fries, which we didn’t eat, as they lacked any flavour of truffle at all. That being said, they did take it off our bill.
Our sever Kaila was friendly, and helpful.
The Lilikoi Mojito and the Extended Vacation (might have been a mocktail as my partner sometimes skips alcohol and goes just for what sounds good) were great drinks!
We got out the door for $ 53 (before tip), which in Hawaii is hard to do for dinner.

The fish tacos are so overpriced at $ 18 for 2 small tacos, each with about ½ a Mrs Paul fish stick sized amount of fish in them (or a small fraction of the amount of the filling that a fellow Unilocaler posted as a photo — I guess they used to come with more (?)) that I truly felt swindled.
The sweet shrimp and garlic pizza with fontina cheese, somewhat pricey and spartanly topped, was at least pretty good, and the saving grace of the meal.
Service was fine in a sports bar kind of way. Blowing $ 50 for two on such food, you begin to realize an upscale memorable meal isn’t that much more of a leap, so consider the tradeoff.
A happy hour type of place where non happy hours are unhappy hours.

Nice happy hour. A good spot.
Drinks are good, pizza is good. Truffle fries were great, hot and fresh.
Limited menu, however they seem to do a good job of making the food and drinks.
It was ok… I’d rather come here for happy hour prices than full menu/​dinner prices.
Overall, good.