Kenny’s Express Hawaiian BBQ

Quick, decent, mall food. Service was friendly and the price was right. On the second floor.

Save your money and go somewhere else.
I was surprised at how little the portions were… Ordered the garlic ahi plate and expected more than what was in my plate. It wasn’t very good either dry and didn’t taste like what garlic ahi should.
I’ve had better garlic ahi plates for the same price with better portions.
Gave two stars because even though their food wasn’t great the workers were very nice

My mother got the chicken yakitori and said it was delicious. She loved the mac salad and rice. The cashier was super friendly, spoke perfect English and gave her parking validation without her having to ask.

Great place to stop in for lunch during a beach day. Loved the Lau Lau plate with chicken lau lau, chicken long rice, lomi lomi, poi and haupia. You can substitute white rice for the poi but I went for the poi! We are in Hawaii, after all. Very good. And very friendly service.

Man, this place has a pretty bad rating, and I’m not sure why. The food is fast, decent, affordable and the service is friendly. Maybe I just have had really good Hawaiian food yet?
I ordered up Kenny’s Hawaiian Plate, which included a small portion of the following: Laulau, kalua pig, poi, lomilomi salmon and chicken long rice. The laulau was the interesting item here. I had never eaten taro leaves before, but thanks to this fast food version of laulau, I can’t wait to encounter them again. The kalua pig was good. Slow-​smoked taste, tender and juicy as all get out. Lomilomi salmon, good but salty. Reminded me of ceviche. The chicken long rice was more like cellophane noodles in chicken broth. Pretty tasty! As for the poi, it sucks by itself, but dunk the pork in it and magic happens.
Absolutely delicious plate lunch and represents a nice variety of Hawaiian grub in food court fashion.

Closest thing to Huli Huli Chicken in the tourist area!!!
The woman running the cash register has been very pleasant on each occasion.

Very disappointing. I came here starving and there was a line so that’s always a good sign. I thought it would be a good place to quickly grab some Hawaiian food. I ordered the laulau plate. Very small portion and it tasted just OK. The macaroni salad was bland. The lomi lomi salmon was too salty. Definitely not going here again.

Not so Ono! Runny Poi, clearly boiled pig, Lomi Lomi Salmon not so good. Pretty sure it was previous days left overs

This place is nothing compared to the Kenny’s in Kalihi!
I understand they’re located in Waikiki but for a local plate lunch place, I thought it would be better. Boy was I wrong! I ordered the chicken Katsu plate and when I opened my takeout container I was like WHAT YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS… It doesn’t even look decent enough to look like a mini plate. Lol. The chicken was dry and so was the mac salad. The only thing was good was my rice with shoyu and tobasco! Lol the mister had the tri tip steak which had like a teri sauce on it, it was ok but portion wise… It wasn’t worth $ 12. The only reason why they’re getting a star is because of the rice with my tobasco and shoyu! Lol
If u come to this Kenny’s… Don’t say I didn’t warn you! Lol

if you want to waste your money on shitty food then kennys is the place for you. everything about this place sucks. The portions are super small, the food isn’t seasoned and the price is outrageous. dont waste your time and money here. This is by far the worst restaurant at the food court and if anyone else thinks differently they must be on crack…

Kaluha plate (pulled pork was delicious, super moist and juicy and had a great pork flavor; lo mein, they used clear noodles and it added curry to it, it was weird and quite salty but it didn’t have bad flavor; tomato salad, yo this salad was so good and went well with the rice; the rice itself was delicious, super moist and chewy and sticky; the taro coconut dessert was weird at first but it had an ok texture, it should have been smoother I felt).
This place is in the food court of a mall, and I think they produce good food for a food court restaurant

Took the cashier’s recommendation and tried the teri chicken plate with two scoops rice and mac salad (can’t substitute for tossed greens). Ono with enough teri sauce to cover all the chicken. The mac salad was good too. Too much food to finish for lunch, so I have lunch for tomorrow too! The service is really friendly with a smile!
TIP: Items 1 — 17 allow kamaaina discount of 10% — woo hoo! In Waikiki, any discount is a good discount because the prices are high! Thank you Kenny’s Express!

Yikes… for a Hawaiian BBQ place. I was not impressed at all. I always give business’ a chance even if I see them with low reviews but this one might be getting the ratings it gets because of quality.
First off, the Garlic Ahi that we ordered did not seem like Ahi at all. The way it looked was a awkward to me. I was debating whether to eat it or not since the wife and I were sharing. Im not really sure how it was prepared but it seemed like they deep fried the filet and then threw it in a pan to fry the outside. If you look in the picture, you’ll ask yourself… wheres the garlic?
It looked like there were chili seeds baked onto the fish. The quality was not good, the flavor wasnt Ahi (to me)…the only thing that made it edible was dousing it in the Wasabi mayo that they provided and the squeezes of lemon.
Our original order was Korean chicken, but the lady at the counter said they didnt have it because it was spoiled so they threw it away! I guess that should have been our first warning, but we had already ordered.
About an hour AFTER my wife and I shared the meal, we were getting these massive headaches. I normally do not get headaches EVER! I tried to sleep it off but the more I tried to sleep, the worse my headache got. So much for napping it off. My wife things they may have used MSG. I wouldnt know… but what I DO KNOW is that im never eating there again.

Fast service with a smile. Tasty kalua pulled pork, and decent mac salad. We only ordered the «sides» of them, and found the portions to be large. The pulled pork was tender, and served on a bed of cabbage slaw. The mac salad was a little bland, and overly «potato-​y» for my taste, but ok.
The food here is very consistent and the portions are nice. Prices aren’t bad, and they’ll even pack it up for you to-​go no problem.

So my boyfriend and I both got the maverick badge after checking in here and at other 2 star establishments… haha. Ok, but in all honesty, we ended up eating here like 3 or 4 times, I’m not sure why everyone is hating on this place, but every time we ate there the service was super friendly (unlike most of the rest of Waikiki) the food was made promptly (express, yeah) and everything was really yummy!!!

I am surprised to read all the negative reviews about this place here on Unilocal.I checked the last review was posted a year ago so I want to believe this place have changed for good for the past year. I was there this past January ’13 while visiting Hawaii for the first time. I do think the prices were a little bit high seeing the small amount of food they served, but then again this spot is located in the food court at a shopping center where all first time visitors like me and fiancé go while visiting Honolulu. I remember I ordered the Kahlua pork plate and my fiancé ordered the mahi-​mahi plate with the macaroni salad. The food was hot and tasty. Parking was more expensive than the food even with the validation we got for eating in there.

If you’re local, you don’t really go looking for a place to eat in Waikiki, unless you have a special occasion, like say… an Anniversary or birthday, wedding…
Some event where you rummage through your closet and look for your «Good Aloha Shirt». And for these ‘special occasions’, you would choose an up-​scale restaurant and not really care about prices.
But on any given day, you certainly won’t go out of your way looking for a fast-​food joint. Not in Waikiki.
A lot of visitors are surprised to find that locals don’t know their way around Waikiki. Until a decade or two ago, Waikiki was still local-​friendly. There were movie theaters; 4 of them to my recollection, game rooms with free validated parking.
Plenty of reasons to make locals want to visit the area.
Kenny’s Express doesn’t change any of that.
You still won’t go out of your way to get a plate lunch there.
But they’re there, and for those who still do venture into the boundaries of tourist-​land, they offer local favorites like chicken katsu, kalua pig, laulau and such. For people working in the area, they might appreciate Kenny’s opening a location there. There aren’t too many places that serve a plate with mac salad and two scoops rice in Waikiki…
Don’t expect much — it’s not as though they care too much about repeat business.
The chicken katsu had the texture of breaded cardboard, and I question if they use real meat in the hamburger steak patties…
The gravy was OK, and it helped down the alleged «Synth-​patties»…
BBQ Rib was not bad though.
Meat was tender, and the sauce was pretty good, actually.
Might have had a touch of Kentucky Whiskey…
The up side is, the Shopping Center offers free parking with validation, and if you flash you ID, you can get a 20% Kama’aina discount.
That’s probably not enough incentive to make a special trip there though…

As the little brother of Kenny’s Coffee House and Restaurant on School Street, Kenny’s Express Hawaiian BBQ should be better. The prices are high (but normal, I guess for Waikiki), the portions are okay and the service is always awful.
The Good
They have a kamaaina discount that saves you 20% if you show them a local ID. But you have to bring it up because they won’t.
The food is decent and made to order and you can get a drink refill you just have to ask. Bonus: They have Coke Zero.
There’s lots of seating since it’s located in the food court.
The Bad
I’ve been here four times and they’ve gotten my order wrong 75% of the time.
The service is sub-​par, and most of the people who’ve helped me were rude or seemed irritated that I was interrupting their stare-​into-​space time.
The prices are relatively high for a «Hawaiian BBQ» and the portions are on the small side.
Parking
If you park at Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center and get your ticket validated, you get an hour free. After that it’s like $ 1 per hour for the next three hours or something. Meh.
Overall
Skip this location and check out the location on School Street because over there, the food is better, the service is better and the portions reflect with the prices better.

If my buddy and I hadn’t been in a pinch to eat something quick, I highly doubt we would have eaten here. Rather, I know we wouldn’t have. And now, having gone, I wish I could have a second crack at picking somewhere else to eat because we easily could have done better. If only it hadn’t been so close to our hotel…
Since our day’s schedule was full of groomsmen duties, I ordered the Chicken Katsu rice plate since I figured it would be both safe and filling. It definitely ended up being a safe choice, but it certainly wasn’t filling. Although I didn’t really expect much (it was a food court after all), my cutlet was relatively modest even for «mall food». On top of that, the thing was pretty overcooked. Initially, I thought my dish was taking a while because they had to prep it, but I guess it was really because the thing was sitting in the cooker for so long. By the time I was done eating, I wasn’t hungry anymore, but I wasn’t exactly thrilled with what I ate either.
Given where you are, it’s needless to say that you should go try something a little more unique than Kenny’s Express. Even if the food here was halfway decent though, I’d still be telling you the same thing — you can get mall food anywhere, let alone Waikiki. But if this is the kind of thing you’re really set on… there’s a Panda Express a few counters over.

Have you ever walked by an establishment and thought, «Hmmm, this place looks legit. I guess I’ll try it.» You then look over the menu, order what you think might be an amazing dish, try it, and then think to yourself, «Maybe I should have looked this place up on Unilocal first.»
Kenny’s Express was exactly that kind of experience for me. I was on a lunch break at the Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center and I stopped here to take a peek at the menu.
The menu was filled with your standard fare like chicken katsu, hamburger steak, and bbq beef. What caught my eye however, was the garlic ahi. I love ahi. And in my opinion, it’s very hard to mess up.
Well, apparently, Kenny knows how to mess it up. First of all, there was no flavor. Secondly, it was DRY. As in almost inedible.
Thirdly, it set me back $ 10.
I really wish I checked the Unilocal reviews before even thinking of eating here.