La Pizza Rina on King St.

Tucked between Pho Mai and Sasabune on King Street (right after Keeaumoku), is a "'home-style' Italian" (their description from their menu) pizzaria where you can get tasty pizza with a slightly chewy and lightly crispy crust topped with a good amount of pizza sauce, cheese and toppings at a fair price. It sounds like what you'd expect from a pizza, but don't get often enough. They also serve a sandwich with bread so good you order an extra loaf just to eat by itself.

One night Grammy was jonesing for "Italian" food and wanted to try La Pizza Rina's offerings. I say "Italian" because we're Chinese and probably wouldn't know authentic Italian food if it came up and pinched our butts.

So everyone else had spaghetti and (two) meatballs ($7.75). It was on the salty side, but otherwise good. We smelled garlic when we came into the restaurant, but were quite underwhelmed with the garlic flavor in the dish.


The spaghetti plates came with a side of "garlic" bread which did not have garlic or butter...just some yellow spread with parsley flakes.

That was disappointing. 

But my pizza was not. It was everything I hoped it would be.


I had a small pizza with olives and mushrooms ($11.75). You know how some places when you order pizza, they put just enough of an ingredient to say it's there, but it's by no means enough for you to feel satisfied? Well, La Pizza Rina didn't skimp. They didn't go overboard, but there was a good amount of everything. Mmmmmmm. I recommend eating the pizza in the restaurant (as opposed to take out). In the restaurant, the crust was nicely crispy. When we ordered it to go, the hot pizza caused the box and the crust to get soggy.

It was pretty big.  I took half of it home. The leftovers were not soggy like the hot pizza that went straight into the box. I thoroughly enjoyed pizza for breakfast the next day.

Now, about the sandwiches...  As you've probably noticed if you've been following my blog for a while, I'm often so excited to tear into my food that I forget to take a picture. I've eaten a number of La Pizza Rina sandwiches in my lifetime and I have no photographic proof :(  We've tried the Turkey & Cheese ($5.35 for the 6-inch, $7.55 for the footlong), Roast Beef and Provolone Cheese (same price), and La Pizza Rina Super Sub (same price). The bread, baked fresh by Daily Bread, is ono that I have actually ordered extra bread to eat by itself later. The fixings here are okay--your standard shredded lettuce, tomato, and onion with meat from a package of sandwich meat--but they give you a packet of Best Foods Mayo (in my opinion, the best mayo for almost anything but a diet) and a container of dressing. The dressing is what makes this sandwich special. I don't know if it's much more than something like Good Season's dressing, but it sets their sandwiches apart from others. The prices used to be really good, but, like everything these days, the price went up. So, it's about 50% more than Subway's $5 footlong special. I really liked the Super Sub (Ham, Salami, Capicola, Pepperoni and Cheese). Try it and let me know what you think.

The place has about nine tables, half of them filled when we showed up and it became totally packed and had people waiting for takeout while we dined.

La Pizza Rina
1425 South King Stret
Ph: 808.941.6634

Hours: Monday-Saturday 11:00 am - 2:30 pm, 5:00 pm - 10:00 pm, Sunday 5:00 pm - 9:00 pm