Ray’s BYOB Kitchen

Great new place in the Chinese Cultural Plaza right on River St. Went here on New Year’s day, we were a group of 9 and ordered the Holiday Special meal. Amazing good food. Started out with the shrimp cocktail and the oriental chicken salad. Then came a whole steamed parrot fish (yum yum yum), baby back ribs, Mongolian rack of lamb, steamed lobster with a pork hash and crab with a homemade black bean sauce. For dessert there were mocha ice cream balls to die for.
Service was spot on. The waitress took good care of us. It’s BYOB, so we did! No corkage fee and they even supplied a corkscrew to open the bottles.
Just a few minor things would have been nice and earned them the 5^th star. Though the Special meal also included rice we had to ask for it. The crab was cut into bite sized pieces but not cracked, we had to ask for a cracker in order get to the meat. They don’t have any large round tables with lazy Suzan’s and the table soon got overcrowded with plates of food.

I have been here a few times. Food was okay, but stopped coming after I saw a bug in the desert. Came back again only because my dad wanted to eat here even though I had no desire to come back. This was the worst experience. First our main dish was given to another table who came in 30 minutes after us. So we needed to wait for ours even though the rest of our dishes were done. Then I looked at our waters near the end and realized that there was pink glitter in our water. My two year old Daughter was drinking the water! When we explained to the owner he said it it was okay and because the other table was excited and had a ribbon on the wine. He said he saw it and moved it. Then asked what you want me do? Followed by it’s a new year put it all behind you. Worse customer service I have EVER experienced. Will never come back here.

It was so good that we returned for our Christmas Eve dinner and had another excellent meal. Everything was prepared in a way that pleases both the eyes and the taste buds. Picture perfect food that tastes even better than it looks.
We are so happy to find this great restaurant in a place that’s so accessible if you are travelling by bus. Virtually every bus line runs close to it on Beretania or Hotel Street.
The service is friendly and efficient and the servers are most helpful and take time to tell us about the menu selections. The food is of excellent value in both quality and quantity. We will be back again soon as we plan to try everything on the menu and then do it all over again.

They are lier to the customer, we order some dish, they mix with something with our dish, the fish is not fresh. Is smell bad. We come from Cali so I know what’s fresh mean!!!

Recently helped to plan a lunch for 20+ friends and Chef Chau was very helpful in helping me to choose the dishes, determine the quantity and stay within budget. The steamed mullet was moist and perfectly cooked; the sauce with the tea chicken was to die for; a must try is their signature scallops and eggplant; as well as their baby back ribs which were both outstandingly onolicious; the oyster omelette made with baby oysters was extremely flavorful and our last dish steak and onions was cooked to perfectly.

Another Chinese restaurant? Yes, but with a twist! Chef Raymond offers some of the traditional Chinese dishes with a hint of Taiwanese fusion. For example, spicy crab hot pots and fried baby oyster pancake to name a few. In addition, even the fried noodles have something different in it. And the portions are big. Most dishes goes from $ 10 to $ 15. The restaurant is newly renovated and spacious, and the staffs are friendly.

We ordered the set dinner tonight, very tasty, have a whole steamed fish, steamed crab, shrimp, vegetable, chicken wings, and birds net soup… and the price is very reasonable. We will be regular here…

New place in Chinatown Cultural Center. Very good food. The owner is a well know Chinese chef back in the 90’s. Very clean place, very tasty, will be back for dinner.

Chef Raymond Chau is THE MAN! Everything we ordered was prepared fresh and tasted so delicious! This restaurant wasn’t even our first choice (our 1^st choice closed at 5pm). Almost walked away from the plaza altogether, but happened to run into Ray’s BYOB Kitchen because it was open!
First impression: a very clean, organized & bright space for dining in. The staff was very welcoming, too.
First order of business… hot tea or ice water? Say what?! It’s BYOB! Yep. Insert sigh here. Since we had no idea this is where we’d end up for dinner, we didn’t BYOB. So, hot tea it was. Roasted and fragrant!
What to order?! Hmmm. The menu was simple, but we were soon introduced to the VIP Chef Special for $ 22/​person (choice of 2 entrees per person from Chef’s selection). Maybe next time. This time, we decided to order Noodle Soup with Shrimp Wonton, Stir fry veggie with garlic sauce, and Sweet and Sour Prawn — pan fried.
My tastebuds were ignited! The sweet and sour sauce wasn’t overpowering at all and made for a great flavor to want to suck the shell from head to tail. Haha. For real! But then you just wanted to get to the shrimp meat, so instead of trying to chomp through the shell you had to pull it apart with your fingers. Okay, so you get a little grimy. But, it’s still good!
The wonton soup was ON POINT. The thin, stringy noodle was excellent in the salted broth. Unfortunately, the wonton was supposed to be shrimp, but they accidentally gave us pork. You know what though? It was still good, so no points taken off. Our servers were so apologetic, too.
The veggie plate was baby Bok Choy sautéed with fresh garlic chunks. OMG! Yum. I could eat this for days. Add a dash of soy sauce here and there. Mmm. So good!
I didn’t see dessert on the menu, so I asked. Once I heard «Mochi» my heart skipped a beat. Yes, please! Two little Mochi ice cream balls were served. One vanilla and the other mango. Wow! Amaze-​amaze-​BALLS! They tasted so fresh, as if the ice cream was just churned and rolled into the lightly sweetened Mochi layer just a few hours ago. It blew my favorite Mochi place out of the park!!! Trust me on this!
Great, great Chinese restaurant in Chinatown. Parking is available at the Cultural Plaza structure for $ 3 flat fee after 5pm.

I was very pleasantly surprised by this place and the number of reviews it has for a Chinese restaurant. I came here after seeing a friend post some pictures of his visit.
Ray’s Kitchen took over Hifumi at the Chinese Cultural Plaza. The menu is a little different from your standard Chinese restaurant fare we are used to in Hawaii. Since I had a fancy dress to fit into that night, I ordered the spicy scallop with eggplant ($ 15) and calamari with stir fried veggies ($ 12). We initially ordered the frog legs but they were out. Next time!
The first item that came out was the calamari. There were nice tender slices of calamari with bean sprouts, onions, carrots, and cabbage. Pause. It wasn’t what I expected because I thought it would be with broccoli or Choy sum like the typical Chinese restaurant so I was a little disappointed. However, flavors were good and everything was cooked so perfectly so I couldn’t stay mad.
Finally our spicy scallop and eggplant came out. It was winnahs! Medallions of eggplant and plump scallops over this bomb spicy black bean (?) sauce. It was delicious and I poured that sauce over my rice. The waitress said she often recommends that one.
Service was great and prices were fair. The hot pots are something I’m curious to try next so I will definitely be back! Check out this little new restaurant for something different from the norm!
PS: no photos, too hangry to remember to take pics.

Located in the Cultural Plaza Center, facing the canal where all the homeless people hang out. The place is clean and the employees are friendly, Even the chef himself, Ray, seated my parents and I.
We ordered family style (each entrée comes with a bowl of rice). Like the name of the place it is BYOB (I think with no charge).
Steak with steamed vegetables: 4 stars. Came with mostly onions, a few mushrooms, and two choy sum. Not bad.
Steamed fish: 5 stars. Same like any other Chinese restaurant, although the fish is on the smaller side.
Chicken Hot Pot: 5 stars. By far, my favorite dish of the night due to the crazy good sauce. Filled with chicken (duh), bean curd, mustard cabbage. Yummy!
I would come again. For the chicken hot pot.

Good food located in the Chinese Cultural Plaza, facing River Street on the ground floor.
Mandarin (?) cuisine that is different than most Chinese fare locally. We shared the sizzling steak, fresh lobster in cream sauce, and spicy crab pot. All were tasty and good. We also shared the chicken and liver pot (don’t care for liver), salmon belly, garlic shrimp, oyster pancake, and crispy noodles with seafood.
Great that we can byob.

Great service, good food and very clean for a restaurant in Chinatown. Located in the Chinese Cultural Plaza it’s a refreshing new establishment amongst the dimsum and various noodle shops.
We were greeted and seated right away. The waitress/​owner? was very personable and friendly and we got right down to ordering.
We ordered the medium pork rib hotpot and the crispy beef with orange sauce. Food was delicious. The broth was pork and mushroom based and had a complex but subtle/​clean taste to it. In Japanese I would say it had Ahsari na aji.
Definitely going back to try again soon.

Took a group from our school yesterday after an outing to Foster Gardens and what a surprise!
Chef Chau has done a great job with this location bringing his expertise in Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese cooking and combining it with our unique local taste. We had some dimsum, stir fried organic baby bok-​choi, fried rice and dumplings. What a meal.
Food was excellent and the price was more than fair. Chef Chau took time to come out of the kitchen, making sure the food was to our liking and the making us feel right at home. We all left satisfied and will all be back soon for more unique Chinese creations and heartfelt service given with a smile. Thanks for the great Chinatown experience.

I have been there about six times. I simply love the soup there especially the lamb soup, rib soup and chicken soup. Oh also the steam mullet is to die for. Prices are very reasonable, service is good and the restaurant is clean. Raymond Chow, the owner chef makes delicious food. Those who have not been should give it a try. Right now they have some good deals going. Definitely not to be missed.

I heard about this new B.Y.O.B place called Rays byob Kitchen so we decided to try out and wow wow wow. Good food at a good price.
Chef Ray welcomed us and started cooking. Oyster Pancake, Pork Charsiu, cold ginger chicken, Steamed Fish & Sizzling steak.
Highest price you will pay for an entrée is $ 15 dollars

I been coming here for the pass couple days straight. 2 time I try the wild chicken mushroom n today I try the pork rib. Each pot is $ 20. Cheap. I love the soup here!!! It flavorful n healthy. I also order the Singapore noodles too. For $ 11 it’s a big ass potion.

I heard great things about the new owner who also does all the cooking from friends, so I decided to try it.
The tea they served came in a cute pot with colorful things inside and the tea cups were so cute too, I wanted to take it home lol. I liked this place cause they had a lot of different things on the menu! The crab was so amazing and tasty I could eat it forever. We also had the crispy noodles which was another yummy dish and one of my favorites. We also had this fish hot pot, i love hot pot but it was a little different from the usual hot pots I eat. It was still very tasty and it tasted very fresh and healthy.
The price is very reasonable, the food is tasty, and it’s byob! I highly recommend all you Unilocalers to try this place out!

Ray’s BYOB Kitchen is a new Chinese restaurant in the Chinese Cultural Plaza! Besides your typical fried noodles and fried rice, they have some pretty unique dishes that I have yet to have in other Chinese restaurants. I really enjoyed the crab with the egg custard. Kind of reminded me of a Chinese version chawanmushi but it had clear noodles inside which wasn’t what I was expecting! You have to really like egg though cause the dish was very eggy lol. The salt & peppered prawns were addicting!
I definitely also recommend their seafood crispy fried noodles or beef chow fun.
Ray’s has a variety of different things on their menu. They have a little bit of dim sum (during the day). They even have hot pot! I love hot pot but usually eat Taiwanese style hot pot. The fish & mushroom one I tried was surprisingly very good! The soup was very flavorful and it seemed very healthy. There were some things that I was not used to being in hot pot… like ummm this weird jelly looking thing which I later found out was the fish intestine. I guess they use everything of the fish! It didn’t bother me too much that it was in my soup but I just didn’t eat it: P
The food is reasonably priced and portions are pretty big! Definitely a must try here!

There’s a new restaurant in Chinatown that offers Chaozhou/​Teochew cuisine! For those who are unfamiliar with Chaozhou food, it’s primarily seafood and vegetarian dishes. Think clean eats, which I know most people don’t associate with Chinese food (MSG, MSG, MSG). Ray’s BYOB Kitchen replaced the old Hifumi Restaurant in Cultural Plaza.
They have a $ 12 set menu for dinner, which is what my family and I had.
We started off with the Oyster Omelette that was filled with cook oysters, green onions, and onions. The omelette was cooked like a pancake. The Drunken Chicken (chicken marinated in rice wine) was weak in flavor and there was almost no meat on it. I did enjoy the Cream Sauce Lobster. The sauce is actually a cream sauce, not a broth-​and-​stock sauce. It was cooked with mushrooms and asparagus. It was quite tasty and the cream sauce was light. I went HAM on the sauce and finished the rest of my rice with it. What I thought was a chili sauce shrimp was actually Shrimp with Strawberry Sauce. The sauce was tart and could’ve easily passed as a sweet and sour sauce. We finished with a traditional Steamed Tofu with the «white sauce» (the thicker broth-​and-​stock sauce) and shrimp.
Ray’s might not seem much different from the other Cantonese seafood restaurants, but the Chinese population in Oahu would definitely be able to appreciate the different assortment they offer. We were also presented with a goji berry (and jujube?) tea, which is $ 3 for a small pot and $ 5 for a large pot. The most impressive thing is probably their «Made in Italy» glass teacups. It was a pretty pairing, the see-​through cup with berry tea.
Chaozhou cuisine is also known for their Chaozhou hotpot/​steamboat, which I really want to try next time!