Kani Ka Pila Grille

Went hear for a birthday dinner. I asked the welcoming host if they had candles to celebrate my wife birthday. She said yes and directed us to our seats at the back of the venue. We could not see the entertainment. The entertaining is usually excellent and we enjoyed listening most nights from the pool.
The food was very average.
After our meal I asked the waiter for a cake with candles. He immediately said they did not have candles. I went to the host who searched for about ten minutes without success. She was apologetic and suggested that I could purchase some candles at a local convenience store. I was not impressed. I chose this venue as I was staying at the Outrigger and had enjoyed the intertainment.
We went to Denny’ for desert and they went above and beyond to help us celebrate the birthday.
I contacted the manager the next day to explained that I felt mislead and that no effort was made redress the mistake. I thought she would offer us something as we were house resort guess. She was apologetic but like her staff made not effort to redress the lack of care. Very poor service. I would recommend the Outrigger restaurant along the beach. Avoid eating at the Kani Ka Pila Grille.

The acai bowl was delicious for breakfast. My friend had the delicious cheese omelette and potatoes. The service was good. One guy for many tables but he did a great job. Overall, great experience and id recommend this place for breakfast. I’d suggest Starbucks for coffee that’s several feet away if you need a majoring pick me up:) hope this helped.

Local flavor musicans.
Kani ka pila grille was a very convenient choice as we are staying at the Outrigger Reef hotel but it does give a positive experience with great musicians playing a mix of local tunes and acoustic greatest hits remixes.
Only real negative thing i can think of is that if your sitting near the pool on occasion there can be very loud children swimming and playing around as the pool closes at 9pm but it doesnt really bother me as the music is the main attraction.
The service was really good the waitress was well mannered and polite, the food came out quickly and was a decent size serving.
The meal i had was the Angus steak and it was cooked as i requested and was pretty good!
Again the music is definitely a high stand out for this restaurant, good open seating and good service

Always an excellent place for breakfast! Very fast, friendly service and they have a very reasonably priced menu, including several breakfast specials for $ 10. Pool view with a nice bar area with several tvs. Our server was Violet and she was very attentive, get her section :)

We chose to eat here because we are staying in the hotel. When we tried to use the coupon the hotel gave us we were denied it’s use because I had ordered a special. It was a buy one get one for 50% off coupon. We would have saved a whole $ 5. Really??? There was nothing on the coupon that said specials were excluded. Poor customer service if you ask me.
By the way, my pancakes were nothing special.
Very disappointed guest.

Food and drinks came relatively quickly. Service friendly. At lunch and dinner here. Dinner service was a bit slow. It was Convenient, tho, so worth that. Be sure and check in here. Your reward is delicious!

This place gets one star for being lame. The food I ALWAYS order is good, the drinks are good, & the service from the bartenders (Chad & Teddy) is good. Jun (who is also good) will order you to food but isn’t allowed to deliver it 10 feet past the pool boundary. However, it’s pretty lame that the restaurant offers both room service and pool service but won’t deliver to the spa AT THE HOTEL that is literally 10 feet from the pool?!? The rooms for room service are further away! I go to the spa a couple times a month and when I stay there for 3+ hours I’d like to at least have a bite to eat real quick. I’ve offered to pay the 20% room service charge PLUS an extra $ 5-​$ 10 to any server who will walk the extra 20 feet (10 seconds) to drop it off at the spa front desk but they adamantly tell me no every time which makes zero logistical sense to me. The restaurant is making more money for less delivery time than taking food to a room and the servers are getting 20% PLUS $ 10 to walk an extra 10 seconds?!? It’s ridiculous. The manager (who
is all of about 28 years old named Ryan Kotani) told me I should order take out before I arrive then pick it up after I valet for the spa?!? Really? You can’t just walk 20 more feet past the pool when I’m spending money on a regular basis? If someone gave me 20% plus $ 10 to walk 20 feet I’d do it all day! His rationale was that «Shorebirds doesn’t deliver either.» Yes… but Shorebirds in the same hotel doesn’t offer pool and room service like you do. Stupid! 20 feet, more money, 10 seconds, you’re already walking that far or delivering to rooms further anyways. This pisses me off.

Great service and great drinks. Right by the pool. So you can soak up the sun and enjoy $ 6 beer or $ 12 mixed. Strong drinks.

Ahi Katsu was prepared just right, wings were not oily. Could’ve used some protein like Kalua pig on the nachos, but the overall ambiance, hospitality and Ono nahenahe Hawaiian music by some of the legends in the industry make this a must place on your vacation, staycation or a reason for locals to venture into Waikīkī. Oh and do yourself a favor and order the sweetbread pudding!

We wanted to go to Eggs ‘n Things, but it was raining :(
We ended up at hotel restaurant because we were too hungry and too tired.
Ordered ahi poke with rice, kalua pork queasadilla and beer at the bar.
Ahi poke ($ 16.00) and steamed rice ($ 2.00): not the best quality ahi, but it was pretty fresh. I liked its seasoning and red seaweed. The saltiness of the poke was perfect. I really like the thin taro chips that were served with the meal The rice, on the other hand, was a disappointment. I don’t know when they cooked the rice; party fresh and partly dry. It tasted like rice that had been sitting too long in the rice cooker. Pretty pricey for a poke, if you ask me.
Kalua pork queasadilla ($ 13.00):I took a bite of my friend’s queasadilla and it was just okay.
Hapa brown ale beer ($ 7.00): my friend liked the beer.
QUICK TIP: THEY HAVE LIVE MUSIC.
3 stars!
Kani Ka Pila Grille is almost yummylicious!

Great place for happy hour, drinks, appetizers, dinner. My boyfriend and I ended u going here several times during our trip in November. Our hotel was about a block away, but we came to Kani Ka Pila and it was great. They have good happy hour drinks ($ 5 mai tais) and select appitizers for a happy hour price.
The tables are right by the pool and the service was fast. I would recommend reservations for dinner but for lunch and happy hour we were able to just walk in a get a table.

I always feel weird going to another hotel for dinner, like I’m cheating on mine or something. I promise we’ll be back Rumfire, really! It’s not you, it’s… uh…
Anyway. This spot is located in the Outrigger hotel. They have live music in the front. Unfortunately we couldn’t see any of it but on a little flatscreen black-​and-​white TV because we were seated in the back. Another thing we couldn’t see: the menu, because our table was lit by a lone candle.
The menu is small. Mostly fish oriented items. We got the French onion soup, Ahi Katsu, and soup of the day (beef vegetable). Both soups were on the salty side but good. When they say a cup they really do mean a cup. The onion soup had a ton of cheese though and was super filling. The ahi was like a sushi roll almost, just made with fried ahi and sauce on top, plus a little salad underneath with champagne dressing. Pretty good. The sauce had wasabi in it. Filling enough for an appetizer.
Not bad, just a little unthrilled by the seating arrangement and menu selection. Nice atmosphere though.
The waitress got our receipt wrong and gave us one with a lesser amount, even after we showed her, so that was pretty cool of her. Extra star for that.

We tried it during the happy hour:
Liked the outdoor relaxing seating
The live music band was ok
The waitress was very friendly and helpful
Ordered many food items from the happy hour menu (including the spicy sweet garlic chicken wings, the coconut shrimp, the mini ko’olau nachos, the yakisoba, and the garlic fries): the food was less than average.

Our server was very friendly and responsive. Service with a smile, loved it.
$ 5 happy hour mai tai’s can’t be beat. They had a good amount of alcohol in them too.
Coconut shrimp was crunchy, wasn’t much of a fan of the dipping sauce that it came with.
Poke was pretty good, though portions were small.

I ate here when I stayed at the Outrigger Reef. The hotel was fantastic btw, and I was happy that the Kani Ka Pila Grille was available. I didn’t get to spend as much time as I would have liked to here because I was visiting with friends who were staying elsewhere though. When I come back, I plan to spend a lot of time here! The music looked fun and our food was always perfect. The service a little bit slow, but not in a bad way :) (Aloha time, lol)
Pleasant and peaceful :)

Came here last night for dinner. Got seated in front of the Hawaiian music (live) and ordered food. I had the Monte Cristo. It’s an amazing concoction of Hawaiian sweet bread, ham, turkey and cheese. I loved it. Are it all within in minutes. Also, quick tip: if you check in here, you get a present. (Groupon coupon) our waiter was ok. Not good or great. He had no personality. He brought all of our food out at once. Appetizer and main dishes. Kind of made no sense for use to order an appetizer if we had to eat it with our main dishes. Anyways, thanks to Ursula (server) and her AMAZING customer service, our night was a blast. She even remembered our names hours after we left and were walking around the hotel. Ursula! You go girl.

You can find excellent music here in the evenings — at least on Mondays and Fridays, but there’s live Hawaiian music every evening from 6:00 — 9:00pm. There’re also occasional hula dancers; on one evening, they even performed a few songs in normal, casual clothes, which I found amazing as it seemed more relaxed and less forced or ‘standard’ than many performances. The mai tais are good, although at the standard steep Waikiki price except during the 3:00 — 5:00pm happy hour (which conveniently ends an hour before the music begins).
Kani Ka Pila has a large bar and a couple tables under a roof but is otherwise open air. When seating is full, you can order drinks and sit in the seating in the lobby or near the pool, and you can order food to go. I haven’t eaten here so I can’t speak to the food, but the prices are all over the place on a decent-​size menu.

Kani Ka Pila Grille (which means «impromptu Hawaiian music session») is a great place to hang out and enjoy some world class music, yummy drinks, and pretty good food too. Check in on Unilocal and get a free macadamia nut sweet bread pudding!
Breakfast, lunch and dinner is served here from 6:30am to 10pm. Nightly live music/​entertainment from 6−9pm. There are different groups on each night but all of them are award winning performers, so check it out if you’re in the area.
Location: Poolside at the Outrigger Reef on the Beach… the hotel next to the Halekulani at the very end of Beachwalk. This place is in the same hotel as Shorebird and Ocean House restaurant.
Parking: $ 6 validated for 4 hours. Free parking between 10a-​3pm with lunch purchase (Feb 2015).
Food:
KIDS MENU was a hit with the kids, they loved the long poolside hotdog and chicken tenders/​fries. The fresh catch of the day (mahi) and the Cobb salad (try the champagne dressing, it’s very good!) were also great choices. Service was excellent, drinks were good.
Pricing:
Waikiki resort pricing ($ 15 sandwiches $ 30 for entrees) but check for coupons from your concierge!
We live in Honolulu and try to avoid Waikiki at all costs but this place was relatively easy to get to and everyone enjoyed themselves so I’m pretty sure we’ll be back soon. Kani Ka Pila Grill just moved up to the top of our list of places we’ll go into Waikiki for, replacing our old favorite place at the other end of the strip.

Check in here and you get a free bread pudding!
I really like this hotel, the Outrigger Reff located on the beginning of Waikiki next to the Halekulani, it easy to get to, I’ve also stayed here a handful of times… However this bar is great, located near the pool, it doesn’t get too crowded and you can listed to live music! Pau Hana! :)

We dragged ourselves out of our hotel room the first night here to grab some food at Kani Ka Pila Grille. We were pretty exhausted from our flight here, but also hungry, and this seemed like the easiest way to get our needs met and not sit through a super fancy dinner in the hotel.
There is live music in the evenings and the musician changes daily. The night we were there, a trio of musicians was playing some traditional Hawaiian music. We ordered garlic edamame as an appetizer. I ordered the chicken caesar salad and onion soup for dinner. My husband ordered the mahi sandwich.
All of our food came out at the same time, including the appetizer. This wasn’t exactly what I had hoped for, but we let it go. The edamame was nothing to write home about. The pieces of garlic were pretty big and it really lacked flavor and seasoning. The chicken caesar was ok, but not worth the money. You could tell the chicken wasn’t freshly grilled as it was very cold and left over from another preparation. The only thing I thought was actually very good was the onion soup. There was plenty of cheese on top and it had great flavor. My husband said the mahi sandwich was ok, but not as fresh as he was expecting.
We did not see our server often, and overall this wasn’t a place I have been dying to go back to again. But it was fine for that night.