Kolohe’s

Ko’Olina rests at the southwest end of Oahu and at the end of the H1 highway, far and away from the populous city of Honolulu. Several resorts and timeshares make up the majority of the buildings here, with more just around the way. Marriott has plans to build another building to build a fifth building, while Disney is busy putting up their own massive Hawaiian outpost here. To say that Ko’Olina will be a major vacation destination on Oahu is quite the understatement.

What does exist there now are several restaurants on the Marriott properties, both at the JW Marriott at the north most point, to the restaurants that are part of the Marriott Beach Club to the south.

Jen and I had the opportunity to eat at one of the restaurants at the Marriott Beach Club that sits outdoors, just a few feet from one of the four lagoons in the area, and a couple of hundred feet from the expansive, ever crashing waves of the Pacific.

I ordered the macadamia crusted marlin, which comes in some sort of glaze that could have been a crab juice reduction for all I know.  Wanna know what I about marlin?  It tastes like poo.  Well, not literally.  I blame the poo taste on the crab juice.  The marlin is apparently a very dry textured fish, with no tender flaking like I had hoped.  I did at least take comfort in that I’ve always wondered what marlin tastes like, so I can check it off my list of meats to meet.

Norm’s Meats to Meet

• Ostrich
• Marlin
• Extraterrestrial
• Alpaca
• Dodo
• Clown

The menu was light on vegetarian fare, so Jen didn’t have too many choices here.  There was either the pasta or…the crabgrass growing near the beach.  Seriously, there were pretty much zero available vegetarian options. She finally settled on a pasta dish, which looked decent, but fell a few steps short of being satisfying or appetizing.  For the price, I’d expect the kitchen to put some effort into this, but, like I said, even imported slop comes at a premium in Hawaii.  She left more than half of her dish on the plate, and I managed to pick at the limp vegetables, playing vulture cleanup crew as always.

Our friends had some equally uninspired dishes, one being a chicken salad and the other being another fish that left him just as unsatisfied with the meal.  We could have opted for dessert here, but thought better of it with the restaurant already batting a .000.

It would seem that Kolohe’s has little to offer visitors other than an absolutely phenomenal view, and drinks to enjoy it.  The service here is reasonable, but certainly not doting, and as I mentioned earlier, the prices are a bit severe for the quality.  The presentation is better on some dishes than others, which looking back at the photos I took here, I’d say is more actually about half.

It’s sad that a place as beautiful as the resorts of Ko’Olina suffer from some really bad tourist trap restaurants like this, but at least the JW  Marriott seems to have a better selection of places to eat, which we did for a number of our meals while in Oahu.  But I wouldn’t recommend this place for anything other than just drinks, and saving your dining experience for someplace else.

Kolohe’s gets two fins down.

See Kolohe’s on a map here.

Recommended For:

• Drinks
• People Watching
• Blandstravaganzas
• When Pringles and a Diet Coke Won’t Cut It For Dinner

Not Recommended For:

• Frugalistas
• Flavor Mavens
• Marriage Proposals
• Gastronomic Adventures