Surf Room

Every year when I am in Honolulu I make sure to have breakfast here at least once. Beautiful setting — gorgeous setting. I love eating right next to the beach with the great view of Diamond Head. Most seats are under the awning so find a more shaded table if you don’t like direct sun. I sit at the tables right by the low wall separating the lanai from the beach and haven’t found it too hot but that is personal taste.. They leave you with a coffee pot so no worries on refills. Service has always been very good for me. I’m sure lunch would be good too but I happen to go for breakfast. It’s really all about the location, being in such a lovely hotel in a beautiful setting.

While staying at Royal Hawaiian, we decided to try the Surf Room. It was an outdoor setting and only served a breakfast buffet. It was $ 28 per person, so I assumed it was going to be something like the Orchid at Halekulani. Boy was I wrong, there were barely any variety… it had the typical pancakes, macadamia, coconut syrup, waffles, cereal, omelette bar and assorted fruits. If I wanted to have all these, I could of just walked over to Duke’s and actually enjoy a good buffet. To top it off, the sitting area was extremely hot and my thighs kept sticking to the leather seats (gross)! Also there were birds all over our table trying to fight for our food! I don’t plan on coming back to eat here… I’ll just stick to the Orchid better yet… Dukes!

We were staying at the hotel so wanted to try out the hotel restaurant. Very nice location, right on the beach. I ordered the taro pancakes, and my fiancée ordered corned beef hash. Food wise, everything was average to above average. Service was terrible. Nobody filled up our water and nobody asked if we wanted beverages. Though it were few people in the restaurant, the food took 30+ minutes to arrive. There were pigeons all over the place, eating food off of people’s plates (isn’t that some sort of health code violation?) The birds were making a huge mess, knocking food, dishes, glasses off tables, drinking liquids off of people’s tables as they went to get food from the buffet. Not very appetizing.

Walking up the beach, looking for a breakfast spot, of course we’d settle on the Surf Room at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel.
Elegant and airy, this place was made for the tropics before air conditioning. We found the buffet to have everything we wanted and more; ethnicity is no problem. Oh, but for two people it came to $ 58.64 + tip.
I’d do it again. And there’s both private and public beach, the real Waikiki Beach, to catch the rays on before or after brunch.