Ashley Moran and Brandon Slowey started making honey slushies with local fruit, like liliko‘i and pineapple, as a complement to Slowey’s beekeeping. Along the way, they also picked up a passion for sourdough, and now their cheerful North Shore cafe, tucked away in Waialua, also serves sourdough pita sandwiches, pizza, and fantastic liege waffles that often sell out by noon.

This is one of the few Hawaiian restaurants (see here for a definition of what Hawaiian food actually is) owned by native Hawaiians. Charlene and Calvin Hoe bought an actual poi factory in 1971, using it primarily as an art gallery, then began serving food in 2009. Today, it’s also one of the few places that serves fresh pa‘i‘ai, cooked taro pounded with a lava rock pestle on a long wooden board to a mochi-like consistency. You’ll have to call in advance to reserve some, and if you’re lucky, you might catch the Hoes’ son, Liko, pounding it near the outdoor tables. Try the kanaka nui plate, a combination of pretty much everything on the menu, add a side of ho‘io (fiddlehead fern) salad, and finish with the Sweet Lady of Waiahole, warm kulolo (a taro and coconut dessert) topped with a scoop of haupia (coconut) ice cream.

Before brunch hot spots popped up all over O‘ahu, Kailua was the go-to neighborhood for pancakes. Even now that you can get brunch pretty much anywhere, the neighborhood’s Over Easy remains one of the best places to start your day. You’ll find perfect pancakes, custardy French toast, and a comforting bowl of Portuguese sausage and rice topped off with bacon-cabbage broth. A few years ago, owners Nik and Jennifer Lodendahn opened Easy ‘Que, a barbecue restaurant a few blocks away that serves lunch, dinner, and weekend brunch.

Helena’s, which opened in 1946 and won a James Beard America’s Classics award in 2000, continues to draw locals and visitors for its traditional Hawaiian food. Menu D offers the greatest variety, with kālua pig, lomi salmon, pipikaula (the version at Helena’s consists of short ribs dried and then fried), and squid lū‘au (a stew of octopus and taro leaves in coconut milk), along with poi or rice.

Saimin, an only-in-Hawai‘i mashup of Chinese-style noodles in a Japanese-style dashi broth, is at its best at Palace Saimin. Here, the menu consists only of saimin, wonton min, udon, and teri beef sticks. The interior, as simple and satisfying as the menu, has hardly changed since the place opened in 1946. If you’re taking out, make sure to get the soup packaged separately from the noodles so they don’t get soggy.

Ethel’s Grill has been serving truck drivers, politicians, chefs, and tourists near the docks for decades. Ryoko Ishii bought the restaurant in 1978 and never bothered to change the name. Today, her daughter and son-in-law serve comfort food that reflects their mixed heritage of Japanese, Okinawan, Mexican, and local culture. The seared ahi sashimi topped with soy-marinated garlic chips is a longtime classic, while the Okinawa-inspired taco rice — composed of layers of rice, ground beef, lettuce, and shredded cheese topped with a fried taco shell — is a more recent addition to the menu. Given its tiny dining room, Ethel’s continues to only offer takeout, which you can take to picnic at the nearby Kaka‘ako Waterfront Park.

One of Honolulu’s most exciting new restaurants, Nami Kaze serves freewheeling brunch during the day and izakaya-style small plates at night. Daytime dishes include teishoku (Japanese set breakfast), honey walnut shrimp waffles, and omelets that are really silky chawanmushi with toppings like mentaiko cream or maitake mushrooms in mornay sauce. After a decade helping other chefs open restaurants, chef/owner Jason Peel is really letting loose. At dinner that means Kona baby abalone done oysters Rockefeller style and ulu (breadfruit) tots with barbecue sauce. Mix and match; it’s all good fun.

The Pig and the Lady is a must-visit spot for its modern Vietnamese flavors. Its famous pho French dip is offered at lunch, while even more playful dishes are on the frequently updated dinner menu, which recently included escargot baked in green curry sauce and scallops over seaweed porridge with dollops of dried aku XO sauce. You can also find the Pig and the Lady’s more traditional noodle soups, rice bowls, and sandwiches at its farmers market stalls.

On a hip corner of Chinatown, restaurateurs Danny Kaaialii and Jonny Vasquez set up the Daley, Encore Saloon, and Pizza Mamo, serving hyper-focused, platonic ideals of smash burgers, tacos, and pizza, respectively. Pizza Mamo is the newest of the trifecta, where Kaaialii and Vasquez teamed up with pizzaiolo Matthew Resich to create thin-crust Brooklyn-style pies and thick, crispy cheese-crowned Detroit pizzas that are some of the best you’ll find on or off the island.

Since Morning Glass opened in 2011, plenty of other cafes have sprung up with interiors and menus seemingly designed for the ’gram. Morning Glass has retained its rustic, no-frills look, focusing instead on its coffee and solid baked goods, including a liliko‘i honey biscuit and savory breakfast sandwiches.

Hawaiian-Chinese food is almost a regional cuisine of its own. At this divey karaoke and sports bar (also a genre of its own in Honolulu), you’ll find fine examples like crunchy gau gee (fried dumplings) and cake noodles (noodles pressed together and pan-fried). The menu also includes 8 Fat Fat 8’s own specialties, including salt-and-pepper fried pork chops and the crisp-skinned Fat Fat Chicken.

Find Hawai‘i Korean comfort food here in the form of meat jun, sizzling kalbi, and sashimi platters. Kyung’s is also home to some of the best poke on the island, including the Mama’s Special, in which cubes of fish are coated in masago for a salty, sweet, crunchy bite. The spicy ‘ahi is more like a paste; fold it into nori and rice, or if you’re getting takeout, use it as an excellent dip for shrimp chips.

One of Honolulu’s most popular breweries, in Kaka‘ako’s brewery corridor, Hana Koa offers an ever-changing tap list, from the staple Rooftop pale ale to the recent Snoop POGG, an imperial kettle sour ale riffing on Hawai‘i’s beloved drink of passionfruit, orange, and guava juices. The ground floor has a lively and open atmosphere, while the second floor hides a more intimate cocktail bar.

California import Chengdu Taste helped bring Sichuan cuisine to Honolulu. Between the boiled fish with green peppers and the toothpick cumin lamb, it’s all about Sichuan classics executed with finesse. It’s best to bring a group; the menu is long and portions are heaping. Meanwhile, its sister restaurant downstairs, Mian, specializes in noodles and meaty wontons in pork bone broth or hot chile oil. Both restaurants offer takeout.

This mochi shop has been around since 1953, but recently changed ownership, resulting in new flavors like a purple sweet potato daifuku and yuzu marmalade manju. The classics, such as red bean daifuku and milk-flavored chi chi dango, are still available too. Few other mochi shops anywhere are able to meld the old and new as beautifully and deliciously as Fujiya.

There’s no shortage of excellent izakayas in Honolulu, but Uosan rises to the top of the impressive field with its intimate atmosphere and seasonal sushi. On the handwritten sheet of daily specials, you might find rich ainame from spring to summer, mild and sweet suzuki in the summer, and fatty nodoguro from fall to winter. Plenty of luxe options are available to round out your meal, including uni, truffle-butter, egg yolk rice (yes, that’s all in one bowl) and foie gras over braised daikon. Equally delightful are the baby sardine chips which fill in the izakaya’s version of chips and dip. Make a reservation to avoid disappointment.

This upscale-ish restaurant adds a fresh vibe to Honolulu’s Korean barbecue scene with its minimalist interior and counter, where you can see the butcher slicing marbled meats. You’ll find cuts ranging from tongue to tripe, including go-tos like rib-eye and short rib. For dinner, order one of the set menus for variety. Or better yet, come for the lunch set, with combinations for under $30 that include a choice of meat, stone pot rice or cold noodle, and plentiful banchan.

MW Restaurant represents Hawai‘i regional cuisine at its best. Wife-and-husband team Michelle Karr-Ueoka and Wade Ueoka (both formerly of Alan Wong’s) convey warmth and attention to detail in their intimate dining room. Favorites include the mochi-crusted kampachi, miso honey glazed butterfish, and all of Karr-Ueoka’s desserts, especially her ethereal, seasonal fruit shave ice. Downstairs, in the more casual cafe Artizen, find oxtail soup and strawberry matcha cake, along with weekly specials.

There are newer and brighter shave ice spots offering fresh-made syrups or organic options. Waiola doesn’t have any of that, but everyone still lines up at the original location on Waiola Street for the no-frills nostalgia. The shop offers the best bang for your buck when it comes to shave ice: $3 scores you a large cone or cup with up to three flavors. Plus, Waiola has an enormous selection of flavors. Don’t leave town without trying the li hing mui (salty dried plum), liliko‘i cream, and pickled mango.

Honolulu has plenty of excellent izakayas, but Bozu stands apart for its creativity within the izakaya framework of grilled, fried, and raw small plates. You’ll find classic and new preparations side by side on the menu: impeccable sashimi and a raw surf and turf roll of uni, beef, shiso, and yam; a braised pork belly kakuni alongside an American-style beef stew made with tongue and topped with melted cheese. Always order off the specials menu, which might include firefly squid, barely bigger than a thumb, with mustardy miso, or fish and chips Japanese-style: fried flounder and its crispy bones.

What started out as a coffee truck parked at the University of Hawaiʻi is now (after a change in owners) one of Honolulu’s most beloved cafes. You’ll find a noteworthy coffee program, as well as specialty drinks like a pandan matcha latte. And while it was once lacking in the food department, Curb now serves sandwiches and sweets by pastry chef Hana Quon. The ever-changing options have included hojicha cinnamon rolls, lychee and cherry tarts, and not-to-be-missed caneles. The Curb also doubles as a natural wine bar on weekend evenings, when you can bring your own food.

A butcher shop and bakery, the Local General Store is a one-stop shop for local meats and sweets. The all-local butcher case — the only one on O‘ahu — showcases cuts like venison, beef, and pork, as well as charcuterie including bacon, ‘ulu (breadfruit) scrapple, sausages, and even a house-made Spam. Sometimes there’s crossover between sweet and savory in the ever-changing bakery case, like in Chinese almond cookies made with lard tucked into a croissant. But the pastries also shine with Hawai‘i’s local fruit, like the liliko‘i baklava danish. No matter what’s offered here, Jason Chow (the butcher and Eater Young Gun) and Harley Tunac Chow (the baker) emphasize local ingredients.

One of the hardest reservations to get in town is at this omakase yakitori restaurant, hidden in the corner of a parking lot behind a bank and jiu-jitsu school in the Kaimukī neighborhood. Takashi Ando helmed the grill at Honolulu’s yakitori restaurants for more than two decades before he opened his own place and did away with menus. Here, he presides over a charcoal grill, attending to skewers of chicken cartilage and hearts, bacon-wrapped mochi, and Kaua‘i shrimp. Dinner ends with motsunabe, beef intestines simmered in a clear dashi broth. It’s omakase only and BYOB. Prices average around $60 a person.

As the lines outside Pipeline can attest, people have been hitting the comfort carbs hard during the pandemic. Like the best spots, Pipeline fries its malasadas to order, and you should definitely enjoy one while hot. But Pipeline breaks away from the crowded field with superior shelf life. The malasadas actually remain delicious a day after you pick them up. They’re not too greasy, strike the perfect balance between airy and heft, and come dusted in sugar, coffee, cocoa, or puckeringly sour-sweet li hing powder.

Make a reservation at La Vie around sunset to witness the full glory of one of Honolulu’s loveliest, open-air dining rooms. On the eighth floor of the Ritz-Carlton, chef Patrick Collins offers a five-course, French-inflected dinner, which might include swordfish au poivre or Big Island abalone with black truffle and sunchoke. Or for something a touch more casual, grab a seat at the bar on Wednesdays for fried chicken and Champagne.

Maguro Brothers’ two locations are hard to find: One is hidden inside Chinatown’s Maunakea Marketplace, the other in the basement of the Waikiki Shopping Plaza. At either spot, you’ll find some of the best quality fish in town — even if it’s served in takeout containers — in sashimi platters, donburi, and poke by the bowl or pound.

For a good time, make it Suntory time at Restaurant Suntory in Waikīkī. The restaurant specializes in beautifully prepared teppanyaki, sushi, and washoku (traditional Japanese cuisine). Think: kamameshi that steams in its iron pot tableside and single-serving shabu shabu. Because this is a restaurant by Suntory, there are plenty of whisky highballs made with Hibiki, Yamazaki, or Hakushu (also available served neat, of course).

You have to overcome a lot of skepticism to get locals to pay $20 for katsu when they can get it in a plate lunch for less than $10. But given how difficult it is to score a reservation at Tonkatsu Tamafuji, it appears a lot of people have bashed through that psychological hurdle. Attention to detail shows in the quality of the pork itself, the house-made panko crumbs that fry up into an ethereally crisp crust, and the accompaniments: a bowl of sesame seeds to grind at the table and then spoon into a plummy tonkatsu sauce. If you can’t get a reservation, the tonkatsu holds up surprisingly well for takeout.