Swirl Cookies

Came here in Sept 2014 and this place is closed.

I walked past swirl cookies one day while walking my dog and it smelled AMAZING. I had to pop in to check it out. I was instantly greeted as I walked into the cozy little shop. They have samples of all their flavors and even label their 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd best selling cookies. I decided to grab a couple for my boyfriend while I was there. They don’t sell assorted packs, but you get a free little paper bag with pictures of the cookies and their flavors with your purchase. I commented on how the smell drew me into the shop and the woman working was kind enough to offer me a freshly baked cookie. It was still warm! I’m unfortunately unable to eat them due to allergies but the gesture was very kind. My boyfriend said the cookies weren’t too bad!

I had such a great experience ordering through Swirl Cookies!
We decided to use Swirl Cookies as our holiday client gift this year, as we wanted something new and local that wasn’t as mainstream as other Hawaiian cookie competitors. I found an advertisement for Swirl in a Japanese tourism magazine and reached out to the Owner, Hitomi, to see if she could accommodate a larger, bulk order. She responded immediately with pricing and packaging options that were affordable, and more importantly presentable to my bosses.
I ordered around 900 cookies in 2 different styled packaging. I picked them up this morning, baked fresh, packaged, and ready to go! She made my job so easy!
The cookies are very unique in that they are shortbread cookies swirled with different flavors. The favorite seems to be matcha/​chocolate and chocolate/​coconut! We were lucky enough to also try the lemon/​poppyseed, vanilla/​strawberry, and new acai/​vanilla. Everything was delish!
Hitomi has a quaint store located just off Lewers street, with parking on the side and in the back. The store is adorable and matched the uniqueness of the cookies she bakes! If you’re in the neighborhood, be sure to stop in for a treat!

Advertized in Japanese Guide books this small shop caters to Japanese tourists wanting Japan style souvenirs, in Japan style presentable containers, for their Japanese co-​workers, at Japanese prices, of their trip to Japan, I mean Hawaii. No reason to seek out otherwise.

Small cookie store owned by a young Japanese family.
Unilocal says they close at 6:30, but its actually 5. It took me a little while to find the place, but when I arrived they had already closed. I peeked into the window and the owner caught sight of me, so she let me come in to buy cookies anyway.
They had already closed up, but she was nice enough to take out all the samples and let me taste.
The cookies are individually wrapped, adorably small and colorful. The texture is similar to a shortbread, though maybe slightly more crumbly. Not soft like a Swiss roll as I had expected. They are $ 1.50 each.
Like many pastry places I’ve been to in Japan, the cookies look good, they smell amazing, but sadly, the taste is a slight let down. The cookies are very mild flavored. Maybe we’ve all just gotten too desensitized to the taste of sugar, but I could hardly taste the chocolate in the chocolate swirls.
The also sell other things besides cookies there like chocolate-​macadamia nut buns and pineapple buns. The chocolate macadamia nut bun has a thick texture, similar to peanut butter. The bun is a sweet bread with a glaze on the outside. It’s a little heavy, but tasty!
The place also serves coffee and tea. They have French-​pressed coffee! Didn’t order coffee this time around, but would love to stop by again some day and give it a try.
Like Japanese tea cookies, maybe Swirl cookies are supposed to be eaten with a bold coffee or tea. I’ll have to try a combination next time I stop with.

I work close to this shop and have heard a handful of people talking about it. I decided to try it for myself to see what the hype was all about.
Personally not a big fan of the cookies since they were dry and lacked much flavor. Each cookie is $ 1.50 at the size of a small compact mirror. They advertise their top three sellers which is the green tea/​chocolate, vanilla/​strawberry, and coffee/​chocolate. I bought 2 of each and also added the orange/​chocolate and pineapple/​chocolate to my basket. It seemed that 99% of the flavor options had chocolate in it. If you don’t like chocolate then your only option is the vanilla/​strawberry.
I would have to say that my favorite out of all of them was the orange/​chocolate. Unfortunately it still didn’t wow me enough for me to want to recommend it to anyone.

Good cookies and great ambiance. I’ve never had these combos of treats, but I must say it was great!

After eating at Kimukatsu (4 Stars!) on Lewers street, I Unilocaled on my phone for dessert places to eat. Let’s see… there’s Swirl cookies located on the same street! Yay! So I convinced my husband & son it was just down the street and we had 45 minutes left on the parking meter. The pics of the cookies looked oh so delectable and so cute! Hmm cookies made with organic flour, ok I’m down. I walked my pregnant butt down the street.
COOKIES WE TRIED (there are samples of pretty much all the cookies, mini cut up samples were a little stale though, so you gotta buy the packaged ones. It tastes better) $ 1.50 per cookie or for 2 mini cookies. They also have cookie lollipops and gift sets available.
–Strawberry & Vanilla (meh)
–Matcha & Chocolate (not bad)
–Mint & Chocolate
–Lemon & Poppy Seed (my favorite)
–Orange & Chocolate
ENVIRONMENT
Very small space. French, country patisserie feel with pastel colors. It fits just a table of cookies, a few bookshelves of displays, and the register with counter where I guess the owner makes her cookies daily. No place to sit. Street metered parking, Ala Wai parking, or go to the parking lot on Lewers & Kuhio-​it has coin meters also.
SERVICE
Sweet, quiet lady I assume is the owner & baker.
TIP
Unique. Hard, almost biscuit like cookies. Good with tea or coffee. If you are a chewy cookie fan like I am, not sure if you may like it. But, it’s worth a try. These cookies would make cute baby/​bridal shower favors or Christmas gifts.

It was through Unilocal that I learned about Swirl Cookies which is located on Lewers Street in Waikiki. Since I have a sweet tooth I decided to check this place out and try their cookies.
Upon entering the store I noticed that it is nicely decorated and very quaint. As I browsed through their displays I noticed they offer single cookies as well as minis, mini madeleines, packaged cookies in a box or gift can and even coffee.
These rolled cookies, $ 1.50 each, are made with organic flour and come in 9 flavors:
Lemon & Poppyseed
Coffee & Chocolate
Apple & Cinnamon
Strawberry & Vanilla
Kinako & Cinnamon
Matcha & Chocolate
Orange & Chocolate
Mint & Chocolate
Pineapple & Chocolate
Among the 9 flavors, I decided on the coffee and chocolate, apple and cinnamon and pineapple and chocolate. The coffee and chocolate and the apple and cinnamon was very good. I was able to taste all the flavors without one overpowering the other. It was just right. However, I was a little disappointed with the pineapple and chocolate cookie. With every bite of the cookie, I could not taste the pineapple. The flavor of the pineapple was lost in the cookie so it was like eating a plain chocolate cookie.
Although these cookies are not overly sweet they are on the soft side. It is soft enough where you could cut it evenly with a knife without it falling apart into crumbs (to give husband a sampling).

Service was very friendly and hospitable. I like that they have french press coffee and the cookies are organic.

The short version: I absolutely love this place and hate that they are so far away from where I am in CA! I would be buying Swirl Cookies for any party or event where a tasty treat would be welcomed.
The long version:
I use Unilocal a lot to find great, local, places to eat wherever I go but I admit to never writing a review for anyplace until now. While in Hawaii for the first time I was looking up places in Waikiki and noticed a Unilocal deal on the sidebar for Swirl Cookies. When I checked the location and saw how close it was to the hotel the hubby and I were staying in, I knew I had to check it out.
It’s not the greatest location, not out of the way, but in that it’s off the street a bit so it might be easy to miss if you’re driving and looking for it. But it’s definitely more than worth the little extra time that it might take to spot it (we were walking to the location, so had no trouble finding it at all.)
The first thing I noticed when I walked in was how amazing it smelled. That’s because they were baking fresh batches of cookies at that moment. This was in the late afternoon, which means that they bake all day, so your chances of getting fresh cookies no matter when you go in appears to be high!
They also had samples out of most of their flavors, after the cookies sthat were baking were done, they had samples of all of their flavors, which kept upping the number of cookies that we were buying. This is one of the few places we’ve ever gone that the hubby got more sweets than I did.
We also spent a fair amount of time in the store chatting with the two people working, which happened to be the bakers. Great people, super friendly and made for a really pleasant experience. You could tell that they had pride in what they were presenting.
A few things of note about their cookies:
The chocolate mint is amazing for the sheer fact that it’s not a bright, artificial, green mint. When you look at the cookie, you can see actual, chopped up, mint leaves in it, and the flavor is beautiful and cleanly minty because of it.
Similarly, with the chocolate pineapple, apple cinnamon, and even the coffee flavors, you can see the pineapple, apple, and coffee right in the cookie itself. Everything is fresh and tastes amazing. The hubby was even swooning just over the smell of the coffee flavor when he took it out of the bag later.
And when a non-​matcha fan such as myself can love the chocolate matcha, you know they’re doing something right. Other flavors we couldn’t pass up were the kinaka and cinnamon, lemon poppyseed, and vanilla and strawberry.
We also picked up a bag of their bite sized madeline cookies and were equally floored. Once again the hubby was wowed by a coffee one, I was floored by the beautiful strawberry flavor of the equally beautiful rose-​shaped one and we split the chocolate one and were cursing the fact that we wouldn’t be able to get these after we left Oahu!
All of the full sized cookies are $ 1.50 each, they have bags of two different flavors of mini cookies for $ 1.50 per bag (we picked up large versions of our favorite flavors then a bunch of minis of the other flavors we liked so we could have all of them!) and the bag of three bite-​sized madelines were also $ 1.50, so all extremely reasonably priced.
My final note — the challah! Yes, challah. But not just your normal challah, I bought a mini loaf of a plain/​chocolate/​matcha green tea challah for $ 6 — which was still warm when I bought it! And it tasted beyond amazing. We actually ate it the next morning on the ride to the airport as breakfast and wished we could have gone back for more before leaving.
In a city with Honolulu Cookie Company stores everywhere you turn, this is the true gem of a cookie company that locals and tourists alike should be heading to. We both work in travel and took a stack of business cards to be able to hand out to folks we know that are heading to Oahu and will most definitely be talking Swirl Cookies up to anyone we know.