Ray’s Hawaiian BBQ

Favorite Hawaiian food in the area. Better than L&L by at least 10x. Close by to college of San Mateo and hillsdale shopping center. Place is easy access off of 92 and great lunch or dinner location. Sometimes parking can be hard at peak hours due to the shopping strip mall location.
I order the bbq combo usually with some spam
Musubi. Meat is flavorful and the macaroni salad is always good. Price is so so and seems to have gone up in the past years. Whenever I want Hawaiian food. This is my go to place.

I stumbled upon this place via Google «Hawaiian food near San Mateo». I am no stranger to the joys of Local eats having lived on Maui for 12 years. I found myself transported by the atmosphere and service to a place and time I miss very very much. Prices are much lower than you’d expect for the area and selection is awesome.
To cut to the chase, I ordered kim chee, musubi, mini chicken katsu, and the Loco Moco. Kim chee was good, but I’m hardly an expert, musubi was good (but to be fair all musubi is being judged against Quik-​stop heat lamp musubi and not many can compete), Katsu was better than LnL by a significant margin (I do prefer LnL style sauce over their Ketchup based sauce, but it was the best of that style I’ve had).
The Loco Moco was better than Tasty Crust in Wailuku. I cannot fathom that I just wrote that, it was more likely that I give up bacon and shave my beard (Jesus I swear I’m not a hipster). Three well seasoned patties, perfectly cooked eggs, rice (I almost can’t resist hyperbole about the rice), mac salad that ranks at least an 8, and gravy, holy christmas the gravy.
I’m officially a fanboy after a single meal…

Placed and paid for order, waited 20 min. s, watch 6 groups place there order and receive there order, still waiting… Left, keep the money, so disorganized!!!

Not to bad of a place, staff is super friendly. Prices are fair and the portions are respectable.

This is the best cheap food around. That’s not a compliment, it’s just sad. This area needs more options. If you live or work nearby, need to grab a quick bite and don’t have time to go downtown, you’ll get a better meal here than at the fast food place next door and pay roughly the same price. But again, that’s not much of a compliment.

Great local spot to get some cheap Hawaiian food! I usually get the BBQ chicken plate — it’s very filling and only about $ 8 for the regular size. The chicken is a little on the sweet side, but it balances out with the Mac salad and rice! The last time I was here I got the Loco Moco (mini plate), which was pretty filling! However, the meat they used is a little questionable — not sure how much I liked the texture. All in all, it’s a cute Hawaiian restaurant (with very few staff) where you can grab some quick cheap eats!

My friend ordered the Kaluha Pork and it came out dry, stringy, no smoke flavor, with barely any salt/​seasoning.
He sent it back and ordered something else instead. He had to wait HALF AN HOUR for a redo order. At least twenty people got their togo orders and my friend still hadn’t gotten his meal. It was almost like the chef was purposely punishing us for sending back his tasteless pork.
My Katsu was okay and the udon was plain but okay.
We won’t be returning.

Pretty much a local L&L Barbecue. I got the Katsu (surprise surprise). The macaroni salad was pretty good and the sauce for the katsu. Omg. It was amazing.
Would come back if I am in the area.

The food was ok. The guy tried charging me for the large without even asking me so I didn’t like this place from that already. Then I got food poisoning from their food. Never returning

Excellent food for a decent price. Wait times differ throughout the day and the line can get packed around peak lunch hours. Based on my experience, I have not run into any servicing issues with the establishment. I have noticed that the quality of Spam Musubi that they serve has become more plain. It used to be flavorful and juicy. Now it just tastes of spam and rice with minimal sauce. Nevertheless it does everything it’s supposed to and rarely makes mistakes in the process of ordering. and food preparation.

Ok let me start out by saying I have been coming here since 2006. and back then up until 2009 it was great! Large portions great taste good price! And now over the last 6 years or so I have been coming every now and then and each time it gets worse! Less food poor taste and bad customer service. I don’t know why this change but I’m very disappointed. Now I’m forced to go to L&L’s which blows this place out of the water now but it didn’t use to.

Local place with very reasonable prices and decent portions. We’ve been going to Ray’s Hawaiian over the years. The food is alright and it’s an easy place near home to get a quick meal. It’s a small restaurant with booth and table seating for up to about 40 – 45 capacity. You order and pick up at the counter whether you eat in or take out. The combo meals and come with two scoops of rice and macaroni salad. The meat on the BBQ chicken was tender and tasty even though there weren’t any BBQ char marks that I could really see. They have chicken and pork cutlets which are good. The hamburgers are alright. The food is ok and we come here mainly because of location, quick service, predictable food and the price. It’s a mom & pop runned and the shop could use a small facelift in décor. Overall, it is casual and easy.

Honestly, I’ve been to better Hawaiian BBQ’s. I wanted to give 3 stars until I bit into a hard chewy gunk of rice. You know the old dried up rice? Yeah that. Was both in the spam masubi and the loco moco.
3 people total working from what I saw. A man who didn’t know the menu/​what food was what & doesn’t know who ordered what. A lady in the kitchen (who packed old rice, boo.) and a man stocking napkins, sauces, and more who knew where the bandaids were when the cashier told me they didn’t have any.
I’m going to assume the cashier who was an older man was recently hired because he made the other customers frustrated when he didn’t know what plate was what or who ordered what. Mind you there were only like 4 different parties of one or two people in the store.
The food isn’t satisfying like other places but it did the job, for now at least.

3.5 stars.
Huge Portions. Cheap Prices. Hawaiian Comfort Food.
Came here for the first time recently to get takeout. Decided to get the Regular Loco Moco, double Mac & 1 rice scoop.
Food: Pretty good, but so heavy & rich. I feel like they could of done less fat/​mayo/​butter in the Mac salad & gravy. I of course still ate it because it’s delicious fat but not going to lie my tummy was a little upset after! Next time I’ll do Mini Loco Moco, the regular was too much for my appetite.
Service: Just OK. 1 cook & 1 cashier on a Friday night? Surprising considering how it was pretty busy. Took a while to get our order because of this. (20 minutes or so). We wanted to order ahead, but they had no menu online, hence why I took photos & put them online! Guy behind counter was nice, felt really bad because he had to deal with everything in front on his own.
I’m excited to come back and try other options, but I’ll definitely be adjusting my order & calling ahead!

I love Hawaiian food, so I was happy to find this place while doing a grocery run in the shopping center. Sadly, I wasn’t impressed.
When I arrived just around noon, there was no one at the register. In the back, I could see a man working at the grill and a woman working with a large plastic bin full of brown rice. She was moving it around with her (gloved) hands the entire time I was in the café. The man asked me to shout my order to him. I was not sure how these two were going to handle a lunch rush with this inefficient system, and I considered myself lucky to have arrived early.
I ordered a mini plate of BBQ chicken, with one scoop of brown rice and one scoop of mac salad. I love it when restaurants serve brown rice. The price was decent, but the meal was not great. The chicken could have used more marinating time and/​or sauce. It was dry and lacked flavor.
I highly recommend driving into San Mateo and visiting Takahashi Market if you’re looking for an excellent plate lunch in the area.

We got the beef bbq, spamusubi, & wonton soup. We went here cause it’s the closest and simply cause L&L was far.
Food here is simply, meh. Bbq beef were big and chewy. Macaroni was nothing special, nor did it have any special stuff in it. Simply mayo and & mac. The wonton soup tasted like they took the seasoning off a Top Ramen & added wontons in it then called it Wonton Soup. Okay? Did not taste like wonton. The only thing that was actually good was the musubi. But you can’t go wrong with spam, seaweed, sauce & rice right?
Hate to write bad reviews, but I didn’t expect much with these Unilocal reviews speaking for themselves.

I absolutely love this place. Big portions, flavorful dishes, and down to earth atmosphere. Much prefer this mom and pop shop over other chain Hawaiian restaurants like L&L. The owners are two old and sweet couple who works really hard to keep the place running.
Please don’t expect to be seated or anything. This is a mom and pop shop after all. Just walk in and tell them what you like to have, and they will make it for you.

I usually go to L&L for hawaiian BBQ but last night decided for Rays.
Since I’m sick with a bad cough, I decided against chicken katsu which is what I normally get. and I got the kalua pork. I got the mini one and it filled me up for dinner and I had some for lunch today. I also got a spam musubi and although it’s not something that’s very hard to make I still thought it was good. The taste and quality here in comparison to l&l i think is better. And even though I ordered a mini instead of regular size, the portions were big enough to fill me up for two meals (but i have a sick person diet right now). I will come back here if i’m in the mood for hawaiian bbq!

Ok the portions are still small but damn if they don’t make the best musubi. My advice is don’t set yourself up for disappointment and avoid the bad and enjoy the good.
The good
–Mac salad
–musubi (spam)
— all the seafood (except scallops)
–the bbq meat
The borderline
–bbq chicken musubi
–hamburger
–katsu
The awful
–all of the soup
— loco moco (yes don’t do it)

I suppose my standards for chicken katsu is a bit higher having tried out Hawaiian BBQ in San Francisco /​L&L…
very similar to the two restaurants listed above…
The chicken katsu was subpar in my opinion… it was okay. Portion for the mini plate was definitely very miniature.
The macaroni salad just was not my taste… I almost want to say it came from Safeway, but that’s a bit harsh.
The katsu sauce was a bit odd — again, not my taste. It tasted like barbecue sauce from next door at McDonald’s.
Harsh review, but service is good here. Unsure if I will come back!
Definitely a «meh»