Koko Head Cafe: Pan-Asian brunch in Honolulu

Koko Head Cafe is a Asian-fusion brunch restaurant in Honolulu run by celebrity chef Lee Anne Wong. It is located really close to Koko Head trail actually, so if that is one of the hikes/trails you are interested in doing, you may want to stop by here for some food before or after.

Patio

We didn’t have a reservation and we actually had quite a large group of people (8) so instead of waiting for a seat inside, we settled for their outdoor patio. The outdoor patio is actually quite cute with fake grass and is tented so don’t worry if it rains, but the only downfall is that we did find it quite hot still eating outside.

Food and drinks

This is almost everything our table ordered. I won’t be writing much about the items I didn’t actually taste, but wanted to include the photos at least so you can see what the dishes look like.

All prices listed in this post are in USD.

Guava juice ($7)

All of the juices at Koko Head Cafe are locally sourced and freshly squeezed. They actually have quite a large selection of cocktails and alcoholic beverages, but we wanted something with no alcohol so settled for guava juice. The guava juice was really yummy! Super fruity and sweet and the viscosity is actually a little thicker than some juice so it was almost like a smoothie.

Don buri chen ($22)

One of our friends order the donburi. It contains 2 eggs (on the menu it says scrambled but I think you can cook it in different ways if you want), five spice pork belly, miso pork, chicharron, sushi rice and house pickles.

Koko moco ($20)

Another friend of ours orders the Koko moco, which is their take on the classic Hawaiin dish the loco moco. This one by Koko Head Cafe has Kua’aina beef patty, a savoury mushroom gravy, sunny up egg, tempura kimchi and garlic rice. I thought the tempura kimchi looked quite interesting because I’ve never had it battered and fried in tempura before.

Chicky and eggs ($20)

The skillets are popular at our table as another friend orders the chicky and eggs skillet. It features boneless chicken thighs marinated in sake, shoyu, mirin, garlic and ginger, then poached and deep fried in tempura batter. It’s served with French style eggs, house made pickled cucumbers, red onions and chillies, over garlic rice with a side of maple tabasco sauce.

Ohayou eggs ($24)

My boyfriend and I share an ohayou egg, another skillet dish, apparently one of their most popular ones. This one uses parmesan dashi cream, caramelized onions, local mushrooms, heritage ham, baked eggs, bonito flakes, and is served with toasted baguette.

Presentation was really appetizing and it’s a very unique dish because I’ve never had baked eggs like this before. It is very creamy and cheesy and I really like the combinations of the caramelized onions and mushrooms. It is easy to eat on a baguette but I was disappointed they only gave us 3 as it wasn’t enough even though we were scooping on huge portions of the baked eggs to try to use it all. In the end, we had to ask for more baguettes and they charge you like $3 which I think is dumb.

Cornflake french toast ($20)

For those with a sweet tooth, you may want to consider their cornflake french toast. The size is really big (I’m not sure if you can tell from the photo since there’s nothing to scale it lol). We actually ended up sharing one piece of it between 2 people.

On top of the french toast, we have billionaire’s bacon, frosted flake gelato and a creamy black pepper maple sauce. The french toast is crunchy and I really like the texture of the cornflake on the outside. The bacon was normal but I was very interested in the creamy black pepper maple sauce because it was a bit more special than just regular maple syrup. In general, it paired really well with the frosted flake gelato – kind of tasted like cereal!

Final thoughts

Loewe’s rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

We had a nice lunch at Koko Head Cafe – everyone was satisfied with their food. I think their skillets would be the most popular and some of them are actually large enough to share with 2 people (ex. the Ohayou skillet was enough to share between me and my boyfriend, but I also wasn’t the hungriest so just know that you can definitely finish one on your own lol). I would recommend both the ohayou skillet and french toast as the more unique choices out everything everyone ordered.

For drinks, their iced coffees actually come with 1 free refill so that is something to keep in mind if you are on a budget but still want a nice cold beverage! Seating in the patio was quite hot just fyi so if you are not used to heat, maybe make a reso and sit inside.

Sincerely, Loewe