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

Birthday Dinner at Gyotaku on King Street

I'm soooo behind on my blogs!  I have pictures from my birthday dinner in September.  I was trying to finish my paying work before my son's babysitter went on vacation for three and a half weeks in October. While she was gone, I totally had no time to blog and here it is, almost Thanksgiving!  But, good news: I was lucky enough to eat out.  Many times. So, here we go... my birthday dinner at Gyotaku.

My birthday fell on a Tuesday.  And since my three and a half year old son now eats close to a full-sized meal, Gyotaku's Monday & Tuesday "Kids Eat Free" special sounded good.

We don't normally order an appetizer, but since it was a special occasion, we started off with a Godzilla roll ($13.95).

There's shrimp and green onion tempura, spicy ahi, maguro, avocado and bonito, drizzled with a sweet shoyu-based sauce. It was huge and it was yummy! I had my doubts about tempura green onion, but not anymore. Deep fried green onions taste ono.

There are choices for the  kid's meal. My son got the udon and tempura (one piece shrimp, and one piece sweet potato). There are also lima beans and corn in butter and an orange wedge.  The meal also comes with two pieces of origami paper and origami instructions, a drink, dessert (either pudding or ice cream), and a toy. It's normally $6.50, but since it was Tuesday, it was free-ninety-free. Gotta love that!

Here is the tempura sashimi teishoku ($19.95):

That's four pieces of shrimp tempura, chawan mushi, miso soup, salad, pickles, sashimi and rice.

The zaru soba, california roll, tempura combo


which came with a salad, spicy tuna roll and miso soup.


An adult udon, inari norimaki, tempura combo ($15.95)

It also included a salad.

And finally, the Gyotaku Combination Bento 3 (three choices). This one is a katsu, miso butterfish, tempura combo for $19.95.

It also came with miso soup, salad, pickles and rice.

Obviously, our family likes tempura...

The menu with prices is on their website: http://www.gyotakuhawaii.com/PrintMenus.html

We had Gyotaku cater my son's birthday party and they did a great job. Everything was ready for pickup on time, and neatly packed in serving dishes. They even included serving utensils (tongs and rice paddles). The food was as good as eating in. Gyotaku is very consistent in their food quality. I don't remember everything we had for the party, but I do remember the yakitori (teri chicken kabobs) and yaki soba, both of which were very good.

Gyotaku King Street
1824 King Street
Ph 949-4584

Hours:
Sun-Thurs 11am-9pm
Fri-Sat 11am-10pm

Gyotaku Niu Valley
5730 Kalanianaole Highway in the Niu Valley Shopping Center
Ph 373-2731

Hours:
Sun-Thurs 11am-9pm
Fri-Sat 11am-10pm

There is also another location in Pearl City.