Customer Reviews

Big Island of Hawaii Restaurants and Dining with Hilo and the Kona Coast

5 star:		(7)
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I recently visited the Big Island and brought the usual guidebooks including this new restaurant guide. This volume is well-researched and provides visitors with an unbiased, and well-written guide to many Island restaurants. There are reviews on every type of restaurant from high cuisine (Merriman's in Waimea) to local diners with huge portions (Hawaiian Style Cafe with real people and friendly service ). I agreed with each review of all the places visited and feel that the authors have done an excellent job of helping sort out too many dining choices. Tako Taco is an obscure place in Waimea but has some of the best Mexican style food anywhere in the Islands, and this guide does an honest evaluation of a place that should not be missed.
I look forward to using the authors' other books when visiting Kauai and other islands next year.
I found other guidebooks with restaurant sections to be too generalized and not as comprehensive.

"Big Island Of Hawaii Restaurants and Dining" became a Bible, of a sort, for eating on a recent trip. Without it, selecting restaurants from the multitude of choices on the island would have been hit or miss. Every one of the places where we ate were listed in the book and fit their revues perfectly.

This book is an excellent guide for delectable dining on the Big Island. We were fortunate enough to visit both sides of the island and dine at several of the recommended establishments. After dining on excellent scampi at an Italian bistro in Hilo, we sampled dessert with the locals followed the next day by innovative pizza overlooking the bay. It all proved quite satisfying.

This book is much more than a restaurant guide. The selection of eateries is well diversified with regard to formal or fun, stylish or easy island laid back but the impressions section helps make it a memory creating travel guide. Thanks.

This book is ok. The restaurant scene in Kona is ever changing so this book is already slighty outdated. The info inside is good but not very comprehensive.

Wow! Another great book from the Carpenters! I have received 2 of their VERY interesting books so far and I am lookig forward to reading more, by them, in the future. They are very straight-forward and full of very useful information. I highly recommend their books for the tourists as well as the locals. They have done the research for me.....WELL DONE!!!

Being a frequent traveler in Asia and Eastern Europe I have come to rely on culinary guides like the Hawaii Restaurant Guide Series. My enjoyment of diverse culinary experiences is enhanced when I have good understanding of what I will partake in. The Carpenters are very knowledgeable and straight forward in presenting the cultures, cuisines and preparations involved in a wide variety of dining experiences. This latest offering, "Big Island of Hawaii" is an education in the dining practice and an invaluable guide to individuals with a taste for adventure and a discerning pallet. I highly recommend this guide.

Overall, this is book is a fine compilation of notable Big Island restaurants. I bought it because I was drawn to a book simply about the restaurants, hoping that the authors might come up with some choices that we wouldn't find elsewhere. But most of the restaurant choices are also listed in "Hawaii The Big Island Revealed," a much more comprehensive travel book that is practically required for a trip to the Big Island. We used this "Dining" book as a secondary resource only. Making matters worse: The restaurants are organized alphabetically, which is just silly. The book should be organized by location. There is an index in the back of the book of restaurants by location, but it gets frustrating having to keep flipping back and forth through the book to skim through all the choices in a given area. My wife eventually gave up on it entirely. Generally, when traveling, we aren't looking for a specific restaurant by name and instead want to know all the choices around the area we're in. If we did want to look up a specific restaurant, I'm sure an index would suffice. But this book has it the other way around, making it not very user friendly.

Bottom line: Save yourself some money and frustration. Invest in the "Revealed" travel book and skip this one.

I found this guide to be of exceptional value and assistance.

I was in Hawaii in 2007 and did not plan any restaurants as part of my pre-holiday investigations. All the planning went into sight-seeing activities. Upon my arrival I was amazed at the amount of restaurants available, the differing cuisines and of course the difference in costs from the inexpensive to the wow, sell your house. As a result, my dining experiences were a `hit and miss' exercise. Let's face it; dining is an integral part of travel.

In 2008 I revisited Hawaii with this guide `in-hand'. I purchased it well before my holiday and spent some enjoyable hours studying up on the Hawaiian restaurant scene. As a result of planning, our dining experience this time was superb. We dined in `cheap eat' diners to 5-star restaurants. Thanks to this guide there was no `hit and miss' this holiday. We particularly enjoyed the `neighbourhood restaurants', which a typical tourist would normally miss, but thanks to the guide we didn't.

This guide was invaluable with a great depth of information for each listed restaurant. It includes an `Impressions' section giving us an author summary and its coverage crosses all boundaries ensuring inexpensive to very expensive restaurants are covered - all holiday budgets are catered as a result of this coverage. A great read and highly recommende.