The Best Places in Waikiki

1. AAA Five Diamonds
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Five Star

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Five Star
2. AAA Five Diamonds

Every room has a lanai big enough to actually live on, and guests frequently do. Halekulani is a classic Waikiki beachfront hotel that runs on the kind of unhurried, attentive service that feels almost anachronistic now. The spa draws from Hawaiian, Asian, and South Pacific traditions, and surfing lessons are steps from the lobby. Forbes Four Star and a Michelin two-key property, it wears its reputation quietly, which is part of the point.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
2. Michelin Guide 2 Keys
3. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Nine suites, each occupying its own private floor, with a butler who arrives by a separate service elevator so you never have to share a hallway with him. ESPACIO is a boutique hotel in Waikiki that takes residential-style luxury at its most literal, pairing oceanfront balconies and Jacuzzis with in-suite shopping curated by Neiman Marcus. It holds a Forbes Five Star, and the staff practices omotenashi with enough commitment to make leaving your floor feel like a poor decision.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Five Star

The lobby, pools, and restaurants all live on the eighth floor, which means no street traffic filters up and no one is cutting through to anywhere. This Waikiki high-rise hotel holds a Forbes Four Star, and every room is a privately owned residence with a kitchenette, laundry, and enough square footage to feel like you actually live here. The upper floors shift color palettes by level to mirror the island's landscape, which is either lovely or a lot, depending on your floor.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. AAA Four Diamonds

Three separate dining rooms, three separate reservations to even consider: teppanyaki, sushi omakase, or traditional washoku, each run as its own operation. The spirits company behind the whisky built an elegant Japanese restaurant in Waikīkī that takes itself seriously without making you feel like you wandered in underdressed. The drink menu is, predictably, excellent. Pick your room before you call.

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1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The name is optimistic: you're a few minutes' walk from the water, not on it. But in Waikiki, where the default is a 500-room resort charging fees for breathing the air, a 125-room indie hotel with a rooftop pool, no kids' club, and no mineral-water-misting attendant by the pool feels like a negotiated peace. Rooms are white and wood, with Wegner wingback chairs and oversized showers. A ground-floor café handles coffee and drinks for the beach run.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The pink Moorish palace on Waikiki has been there so long it basically predates Waikiki. This resort splits between a historic building, where the Moorish detailing and coral stucco run deep, and a contemporary tower for guests who want the postcard view without the period atmosphere. The spa sits in a garden, the pool has cabanas, and the beach puts surfing and sailing right outside. A Michelin Selected Hotel.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A three-story walk-up wrapped around a palm-lined pool, White Sands calls itself the last of the vintage walk-up hotels in Waikiki, and the claim is easy to believe. The towers that swallowed the beachfront decades ago never touched this low-rise compound, where the vibe is unapologetically 1970s Hawaii, laid-back and a little overgrown, the kind of place that makes the glassy resorts next door feel slightly embarrassing.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Spirited Awards 2025 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best U.S. Hotel Bar – U.S. West

The Coco Puffs in the bakery case are cream puffs frosted on top, not cereal, and locals have been devoted to them for generations. This outpost of a Honolulu institution sits in a bright, open-air space at the top of International Market Place, which feels a little glossy for a diner that trades in pancakes, Denver omelets, and mochi donuts. The food is the same as the original, which is exactly the point.

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The bar stools here are swings, which tells you everything about the mood. Heyday is a neighborhood restaurant and bar tucked into the courtyard of a midcentury hotel in Waikiki, leaning hard into the retro-tropical bit with mai tai variations and boozy slushies alongside cheesy toast and a fried mahi sandwich that reads as a Filet-o-Fish with ambitions. After dark, the Green Lady Cocktail Room in room eight opens as a dark lounge spilling into a palm-fringed courtyard.

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2. Eater The 20 Best Restaurants in Waikīkī, Hawaiʻi

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A Cuban-inspired brunch spot on the second floor in Waikiki where the Cubano and choripan keep locals coming back despite the tourist foot traffic below. The chef leans hard on local sourcing, which is rarer here than you'd think, so the fruit plate runs on farmers market tropicals instead of the usual imported berries flown in from somewhere cold. Sandwiches and braised brisket do the heavy lifting on a menu that reads like it belongs somewhere else entirely.

1. Eater The 20 Best Restaurants in Waikīkī, Hawaiʻi

1. Eater The 20 Best Restaurants in Waikīkī, Hawaiʻi

Sit-down wine bar and all-day cafe in the Royal Hawaiian Center, where the menu wanders happily from breakfast plates to burrata to garlic shrimp without apologizing for any of it. The move many regulars make is the fried breadfruit, served with brown sugar and coconut cream in a way that makes you wonder why breakfast potatoes ever went another direction. Steamed clams and acai bowls from the adjacent cafe round out the options nicely.

1. Eater The 20 Best Restaurants in Waikīkī, Hawaiʻi

1. Eater The 20 Best Restaurants in Waikīkī, Hawaiʻi

1. Eater The 20 Best Restaurants in Waikīkī, Hawaiʻi

1. Eater The 20 Best Restaurants in Waikīkī, Hawaiʻi

A grab-and-go musubi counter inside the Aqua Pacific Monarch Hotel, with the largest menu of the three Waikīkī locations. Fresh rice gets packed around fried chicken, salmon with roe, or any number of Spam variations, including one loaded with avocado, bacon, and egg that operates as a breakfast sandwich in musubi form. The space is small, the turnover is fast, and the whole operation runs on the principle that rice pressed around a good filling is a complete argument.

1. Eater The 20 Best Restaurants in Waikīkī, Hawaiʻi

1. Eater The 20 Best Restaurants in Waikīkī, Hawaiʻi

1. Eater The 20 Best Restaurants in Waikīkī, Hawaiʻi

1. Eater The 20 Best Restaurants in Waikīkī, Hawaiʻi

The original 1930s wooden beams, plastered over for decades while the building housed a scooter-rental shop, are visible again here. Zigu is a modern izakaya tucked into the ground floor, running a menu of small plates, tempura, and sushi with local touches woven through: mochiko fried chicken, kale noodles, green papaya rolls. Waikiki usually does loud and obvious; this room does quiet and considered.

1. Eater The 20 Best Restaurants in Waikīkī, Hawaiʻi

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