Food & Drink
Kihei is one of the best-fed towns on Maui — casual, fresh, and mostly easy on the wallet. Here’s how we’d eat our way through a week.
Kihei is one of the best-fed towns on Maui — and most of it won’t cost you a fortune. From early-morning poke to sunset happy hours, the food scene here runs casual and fresh. Fine dining is a short drive south in Wailea if you want it, but some of our favorite meals have come from a food truck parked in the shade.
Kihei stretches a few miles along South Maui’s coast, and the dining options spread with it. North Kihei leans quieter — a handful of neighborhood spots you’d miss without a tip. South Kihei, around the Kalama Village area and the stretch of Kihei Road near the beach parks, is where most of the action is: food trucks, casual eateries, plate-lunch counters, and the breweries and bars that fill up by sunset.
If you’re after a candlelit splurge, Wailea is ten minutes down the road. But week after week, the visitors who tell us they ate the best of their trip are the ones who skipped the white tablecloths and bought fresh-caught fish at the market instead.
Breakfast in Kihei is a serious matter. Kihei Caffé is a local institution — a no-frills spot that opens early and draws a line for good reason. Expect hearty portions, strong coffee, and eggs done right. Arrive early or expect a wait.
Further into South Kihei you’ll find a handful of bakery-café spots good for a lighter start — an acai bowl, a pastry, cold brew. We usually make eggs at the bungalow a couple of mornings (the kitchens are stocked), and save the Kihei Caffé run for the day we’re heading to the best beaches early.
Malasadas — Portuguese-style fried doughnuts rolled in sugar — are a genuine Maui morning tradition. If you spot them at a bakery or a roadside stand, stop immediately. They do not improve with time.
Poke is not a trend here — it’s lunch. Cubed raw ahi, shoyu, sesame, green onion, served over rice, available at dozens of spots including most grocery stores. A good rule of thumb: the busier the counter, the fresher the fish. Look for spots that cut their poke in-house and rotate flavors daily.
For fish tacos, the food trucks and casual beach-road spots are your best bet. Grilled mahi-mahi or ono in a warm tortilla with slaw and a squeeze of lime is as good as it sounds, and often cheaper than you’d expect. Ono is a firm, mild white fish — if you haven’t had it before, Maui is the place to try it.
If you’ve never had a plate lunch, here’s what you’re in for: a generous protein (teriyaki chicken, kalua pork, beef stew, fresh fish) with two scoops of white rice and a scoop of macaroni salad. It is filling, it is unpretentious, and it is deeply satisfying after a morning in the water. Loco moco — rice topped with a hamburger patty, a fried egg, and brown gravy — is another local classic worth at least one order during your stay.
Spam musubi — a block of rice topped with a slice of grilled spam, wrapped in nori — is sold at gas stations, convenience stores, and plate-lunch spots all over Kihei. Try one on the way to the beach. Most people go back for a second.
The food-truck scene around the Kihei Kalama Village area (locals call it “the Triangle”) is one of the best casual-eating situations on the island. Tacos, teriyaki, garlic shrimp, Thai, and more — often two or three trucks clustered together, with picnic tables and a cold beer from a neighboring shop. It changes over time, so part of the fun is just walking over and seeing who’s there.
Hours are generally midday through early evening, but the best trucks sell out. Go by 1 p.m. if you want full menus.
Garlic shrimp trucks are a North Shore tradition, but you’ll find good versions down here too. The garlic-butter version is the one worth getting your hands dirty for. Bring napkins.
Shave ice is not a snow cone. The ice is shaved thin as powder, piled high in a cup or cone, and drenched in syrups — haupia (coconut), lilikoi (passionfruit), strawberry, mango, or combinations that turn the whole thing bright. Get the version with a scoop of vanilla ice cream at the bottom.
Maui Gold pineapple — a sweeter, lower-acid variety grown on the island — is worth picking up fresh. Kula strawberries, grown upcountry at cooler elevation, show up at farmers’ markets in season and taste different from what you get at home.
Kihei takes happy hour seriously. Maui Brewing Co. has a large taproom in town — long picnic tables, a good rotation of island-brewed beers, and food worth staying for. It fills up by late afternoon.
Along Kihei Road, several spots face west and catch the full sunset over the water. If you’re staying in our Couples Getaway bungalow, Monsoon — an Indian restaurant just across the road — is a short walk for dinner after a beach sunset, with no car required.
Happy hour typically runs somewhere between 3 and 6 p.m. at most spots, though hours shift with the season. Ask us when you check in — we keep a short list of current favorites in the bungalow welcome folder.
All four of our bungalows have full kitchens, and using them is part of the Kihei experience. The major grocery stores on South Kihei Road carry fresh fish counters; the poke alone is worth stopping for. For produce, the local farmers’ markets — typically a few days a week around Kihei and Wailea — are the place to pick up Maui Gold pineapple, Kula strawberries, papaya, and whatever local vegetables are in season.
Buying a piece of fresh ono at the market in the morning and cooking it on the lanai grill that evening is, in our opinion, one of the best meals Maui has to offer — and nobody will make you wait for a table.
Eating well in Kihei is easy — mostly because the ingredients are excellent and no one here is trying to impress anyone. If you want a recommendation beyond what’s here, just ask us. We eat out in this town all the time, and we’re happy to point you somewhere good.
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Each of our four bungalows has a full kitchen — cook the fish you bought that morning, or walk to dinner across the street.