Maui Trip 2022
/We took our first trip of the new year to Maui this week and it was exactly what I needed to rest and recharge.
Day 1
We were lucky to have booked this trip pretty far out when Alaska prices were reasonable for first class. This flight left from the N gates, so we visited that lounge. It was really nice, but the food was just as mediocre as our last trip.
The meal on the flight from Seattle to Maui was pretty great though - we preordered one kalbi beef meal and one ancient grain bowl and split them. The meals themselves were tasty, but I really liked the chocolate dessert. We also giggled about the tiny bottle of booze.
It was so lovely to see the island again from the air as we were descending for landing. Maui is such a beautiful place!
When we landed in Maui around 5pm Hawaii time, we headed straight for the food trucks near Costco in Kahului. First up on our list of places to try was Geste Shrimp. I ordered the Hawaiian scampi shrimp plate. It came out hot, fresh, and deliciously garlicky. Next time we’d like to try the Pupu Plate.
Jeff walked around the food truck pod, noticed Like Poke had fried poke, and thought it was interesting. He ordered it and we ended up really liking it - the fish was tasty, the breading was light, and the sauce paired very nicely.
We also picked up some food from a truck we’d tried previously - Thai Mee Up. We got the chicken pad see ew and green curry shrimp. The pad see ew wasn’t our favorite, but the green curry was great over rice. From here we drove south to check into the hotel, unpack, and lounge around since travel days are always exhausting.
Day 2
One of my favorite things about staying at the Andaz is waking up, opening up the blinds, and taking in the morning view. I usually end up opening the sliding door and just sitting out on the lanai (balcony) taking it all in since it’s gorgeous and relaxing.
For the first meal of our first full day, we had a favorite from previous trips - the breakfast buffet at Ka’ana Kitchen. The selection was a bit smaller than before, but we anticipated changes just like many other places due to covid. There was a new to us item called a mochi cascaron that we couldn’t get enough of. I’d describe it as a deep fried mochi ball. We also had our first taste of actual lilikoi (as in an actual passion fruit - not in a baked good). The presentation was a bit interesting, but the tangy taste was just right. As always, Ka’ana Kitchen did not disappoint.
After breakfast, we walked down to the beach to take in more of the gorgeous views. The photo above is a panorama that Jeff took on his phone and I think it perfectly encapsulates the beauty and tranquility we always experience on Maui.
Next we hopped in the car and headed to Leoda’s Kitchen and Pie Shop. We were prepared for a limited menu since this was noted on their website, but the selection when we arrived was quite good in my opinion. We chose a banana cream pie and a guava chiffon pie and ended up eating them out of the back of the rental car in the parking lot.
The banana cream pie was exactly as expected and we enjoyed it. The guava chiffon pie was interesting in a great way - it was regular pie crust with a chiffon sponge, guava custard, whipped cream, and guava jam on top. The only thing I didn’t like was the wild parking lot chickens that were borderline invading my space to try to get some pie. We’d definitely visit here again (and maybe eat inside if we’re able to).
As we headed back towards Wailea, we stopped by Maui Bread Company in Kihei to pick up a favorite from a previous trip - a loaf of pog bread. We also got a lilikoi lemon mochi. These baked goods were consumed later on in the hotel room and the pog bread was just as good as we remembered, but the mochi had a bit too much lemon and the texture was not so great so we’d skip that item next time.
Our next stop was Outrigger Pizza - it’s basically a pizza food trailer complete with wood burning oven situated in the parking lot of Kukui Mall. We ordered the lilikoi pork pizza and had only nice things to say about it. The crust was the way “Judgy Jeffrey” likes it, the toppings were tasty, and our favorite part was the lilikoi drizzle. Next time we’d like to try the Maui onion pizza.
We needed some time to digest, so we headed back to Andaz where I spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening out on the lanai relaxing and taking in the views.
Jeff made a dinner reservation just down the road from the hotel in the Shops at Wailea at a place called Lineage because the pictures on Yelp looked really good. We ordered the charred tako and crushed local potato, garlic Szechuan noodles, and Korean fried chicken. The food was every bit as excellent as the Yelp pictures made it look.
The food from the meal had us fairly stuffed, but we’re not people who miss dessert while on vacation. We couldn’t decide between the tapioca or the sorbet so we asked the server for his recommendation. He said to go with the tapioca since it’s different than what most folks would expect so that’s what we ordered. The dish wasn’t the most exciting looking when it came to the table, but after digging in we totally understood. The tapioca was lilikoi flavored and covered in an almond foam. All the food here was excellent, but the dessert quickly became our favorite dish of the evening.
Day 3
We started our day at Four Sisters - a bakery and catering service that Jeff found on Yelp known for fantastic butter rolls. It was about 9am when we arrived and they only had 12 rolls left. He purchased 4 of them and we took them back to the car to eat. The rolls must have been fresh out of the oven because they were so hot we had to sit there a bit to avoid burning our mouths. The texture was soft and the butter flavor was amazing - we totally understood the hype.
Next we headed to another repeat from a previous trip, Home Maid Bakery, in search of more tasty baked goods (and donuts). We got a glazed donut, a coconut anpan, and some sweet potato mochi. We ate everything except the mochi in the car then headed back to the hotel for some down time.
One of my favorite places at Andaz is the Tranquility pool since it’s a great spot to relax and do some reading while also being able to hop in the pool. It’s also served by the Bumbye Beach Bar. We’d previously ordered fancy drinks here, but this time we decided to try the food. We ordered a pog smoothie, chips and guacamole, and the mochiko chicken. It was just the right amount of food to have by the pool (and was surprisingly tasty too).
After a long afternoon by the pool, we got cleaned up and went to check out the Maui Sunday Market that we enjoyed on our last visit. We checked out a food cart serving garlic noodles that appears to have changed names since our last visit from Shorebreak Grindz to Holo Holo Garlic Noodles. We were so pleased that the noodles don’t appear to have changed a bit!
We spotted another truck from our list at the Sunday Market - Nonoy Da Poi Cascaroon. They serve up poi cascaroon (which I believe are very similar to the mochi cascaron from Ka’ana Kitchen) and mochi donuts and I was excited to try both. We ordered 2 sticks of cascaroon, an original glazed mochi donut, and an ube mochi donut. The mochi donuts were super tasty, but the cascaroon was my favorite here. They came out fresh and warm in some kind of syrup or glaze. The flavor was sweet, but not overwhelming. I’ll be looking for this truck on our next Maui visit.
There weren’t as many food spots as we expected at the Sunday Market, so we decided to check out the food truck pod by Costco that we didn’t go to when we arrived (there are multiple pods there). Sparky’s Food Co was on our list, so we got a mini loco moco and pastele stew nachos. The loco moco was good, but the nachos were great!
We decided to get some beverages from the other food trucks in the pod. Jeff ordered from a spot we’d seen a lot of hype about - Kraken Coffee. It was a bit late for coffee, so Jeff tried the strawberry kombucha. It was fruity, but not necessarily our favorite. Right next to Sparky’s was 2 Cheesy Guys. We didn’t order food here, but we did get a frosty pogg. To be honest, it tasted more like a creamsicle than a pog beverage (not that that’s something we would be upset about - just not exactly what we expected).
Day 4
The original plan was to have a lazy morning and then spend some time by the pool, but we had a hard time with the time change the entire trip (meaning we typically awoke around 6:45am). I woke up with the idea of heading up to the Maui Lani Sugar Beach Bake Shop location (since we had heard previously the Kihei location was closed) to get some malasadas, so that’s what we did. We got one each of the sugar, lilikoi, and ube flavors. The sugar version was good, but the two filled malasadas were exactly what my taste buds were looking for.
It wasn’t even 9am yet, so we decided to head to the T Komoda Store in Makawao for our favorite stick donuts. We have made the drive here on each of our visits to Maui and in our opinion, it’s totally worth it. The stick donuts were still as good as we remembered and they hold up well into the next day. Next time we’ll get a whole box to keep in our hotel room for snacking!
Next we visited Pukalani Superette - a market that sells groceries and has quite a bit of prepared food. All the items on the pre-packaged hot bar looked really good, but we ultimately only picked up the inari. We accidentally left it in the car and it got a little hot so I was hesitant to eat any, but Jeff had some anyway and declared it good.
We left Makawao just before 10am and needed to kill some time before our next planned eating adventure in Paia, so we decided to check out Costco to see what kind of local foods were specific to Hawaii. We found guava cheesecake, guava danishes, sweet rolls (I guess they don’t call them Hawaiian rolls in Hawaii), and custard pie. These were all too big for us to clean off on our own, so we only looked and did not buy.
After getting plenty of steps in inside Costco, we headed to Paia. Our first food stop here was Paia Fish Market for Cajun mahi mahi and a shrimp taco. The shrimp were large and meaty in the taco and Jeff really enjoyed the fish (even I took a few bites and thought it was good).
Next we headed over to Mana Foods and picked up a slice of lilikoi cake to eat later. Unfortunately I shoved it in my purse and it got both melty and squished (but was still quite moist and flavorful when we ate it).
We walked over to Surfclub Tacos next and ordered a fish taco and a pork taco with chips and pineapple salsa. The chips and salsa were great, but the tacos were not our favorite. There had been a few other items on our list to try here, but they were in the process of changing the menu and those were no longer available. One thing we discovered that we really liked here - a lilikoi orange guava kombucha tea from Pauwela Beverage Co.
Our final stop in Paia was dessert at Paia Gelato. We were pretty stuffed from a morning full of eating, so we shared a lilikoi and pog gelato. I think we leaned slightly towards lilikoi being the better flavor, but not by much - both were really delicious.
After spending the afternoon by the Tranquility Pool, we got cleaned up and headed to Lahaina to eat dinner at Down the Hatch. We ordered a mai tai, lava lava shrimp, crispy fish tacos, and the lobster & crab stuffed grilled cheese since these were the items that looked the tastiest in the photos as we researched. I am happy to report the food was great and we were really pleased that this spot lived up to the hype.
We walked around Lahaina a bit since we left Down the Hatch incredibly full. We checked out a food truck pod, but didn’t see anything that piqued our interest. On the way back to the car, we spotted Prison St. Pizza and Jeff decided to grab a slice of pepperoni. In shocking news, it actually lived up to his very high pizza standards.
To end the day, we hit up Island Cream Co. It serves something that is a cross between gelato and ice cream (and is apparently a registered product according to signs inside the shop). The item that really drew us in was the Banana Maui (banana island cream with banana bread, bananas, caramel sauce, etc), but we also got a scoop of banana chip. Service was excellent and the items had a great (aka not fake) banana flavor. I tend to love all things banana so I’m really happy we tried this place!
Day 5
We started the day with a second quick stop into the Maui Bread Company for another loaf of pog bread, a lilikoi bun, and some lilikoi butter to take home with us.
Our first eating stop was brunch at Kihei Caffe which was a favorite from a previous trip. I ordered the kalua pork loco moco (which was every bit as tasty as the last time) and Jeff got the blueberry French toast with a side of Portuguese sausage. Our only regret was that they didn’t have the mochi pancake special that we loved so much on our last visit.
We made a second visit to Kraken Coffee to actually try the coffee. The iced Kihei Kicker was quite good! They also gave us the option of including coffee ice (aka ice made from cold brew coffee so when it melts it doesn’t dilute the drink) so we tried that - it worked great!
One big difference for this trip compared to the previous two is that we visited during whale season. We had done a quite a bit of research for this trip and came across the Hawaii Vacation Guide’s YouTube channel. They had a video on Kai Kanani’s sunset sail that looked really neat, so when I saw the same company listed on their whale watching guide I was inclined to book it. The Adventure Whale Watch was $135/person and included shuttle service to and from our hotel (since it left from Makena just south of our hotel). The catamaran beach loaded at Maluaka Beach and we did get a bit wet, but this was indicated in all communications so we were prepared!
The boat was not too crowded, the staff was friendly, and the trip included snacks and beverages/cocktails. We saw plenty of whales and received a lot of great info about them from one of our guides. There were two instances where whales approached the catamaran and we essentially got spit on - it was magical and gross all at the same time. The boat even had a hydrophone so we could listen to the whales nearby. I don’t think we could have asked for a better excursion!
After the whale watching tour, we spent some time lounging at the hotel before heading to Da Kitchen in Kihei for dinner. This is a new version of a spot we had visited previously. The old version of Da Kitchen was in Kahului and unfortunately closed in 2020 due to the pandemic. In mid 2021, they took over Piko Cafe’s space in the evenings. Near the end of 2021, Da Kitchen completely took over the space and Piko Cafe is no more (which is sad since that was another spot we really liked). We ordered the fried spam musubi, garlic noodles, and mixed plate (which included teriyaki chicken and beef, chicken katsu, and breaded mahi mahi). The food was all great and the garlic noodles were very similar to what we had previously received at Piko Cafe so their legacy seems to be living on.
We stopped in to Maui Gelato for dessert. I got a scoop of banana gelato in a cup while Jeff got pog gelato in a waffle bowl and we ate them on the hood of the rental car. Both were great.
Day 6
We woke up and took a stroll over to Akamai Coffee in Wailea Village where we ordered iced versions of their current specials: La Perouse and something cherry that I can’t remember the name of. We also got a lilikoi filled croissant. Overall, we were quite pleased with this stop.
After a bit more walking around, we headed back to the hotel to pick up the car and made the short drive to Vidad’s Local Kine Grindz for some garlic noodles and banana lumpia. The food was all great, but I did not appreciate the momma chicken and her babies trying to challenge me for food. Maui and its random wild chickens really does not play well with my fear of birds.
Next up was Kitoko - a fancy looking food trailer we thought was fairly permanent at Wailea Village, but that we didn’t find when we walked around after our trip to Akamai earlier in the day. Thankfully, we were able to locate this spot in South Maui Gardens. We were greeted right away by one of the two chefs who was very friendly and thanked us for coming to find them in their new location. We ordered the special - a half lobster loco moco. They brought it out to us and it looked just as amazing as the other dishes we had seen on Instagram that attracted us in the first place. The lobster was grilled nicely and the accompanying salad and egg fit perfectly with it. We also enjoyed the rice cakes we added on. We still had some stomach space left, so we ordered a lilikoi meringue pie too. It was exquisite. We’d rate this spot 10 out of 10 and look forward to coming back in the future since it’s not often you find a food trailer that feels like a fancy restaurant with food and service that far surpasses expectations.
On the way to dessert #2, we stopped by Maui Pie and picked up a mini lilikoi pie (which was basically like a key lime pie, but not) to eat later. It ended up being breakfast on our final day and it tasted great!
It’s not a trip to Maui without a stop at Ululani’s for some shave ice. We got our usual of pog shave ice with Roselani vanilla ice cream, but added mochi this time around. It was so delicious. I really wish we had something this good on the mainland near us.
We were under the impression that Sugar Beach Bake Shop’s Kihei location right next to Ululani’s was closed (due to flooding/mud), but it had reopened during our stay so we popped in for some lilikoi and guava macarons. These were the perfect little treats to eat poolside later that afternoon.
We had one last long lounge afternoon at the Tranquility Pool before it was time to eat again. For dinner, we headed to Maui Brewing Co. They had a big outdoor patio with live music by Brian and Carisa Santana. Unfortunately, the outdoor seating was filled so we sat inside (which was not a big deal since they had huge garage doors that opened to the patio). Jeff had a flight of beers, we split a hard seltzer, and I also tried the root beer float. We ordered a hunter pizza and guava BBQ pork sliders for our meals. The pizza crust lived up to Judgy Jeffrey’s expectations and I loved the pork sliders (they even had fried onions!).
Our final dessert on the island came from Maui Sweet Shoppe. We were initially looking at this spot for wafflesadas, but the owner confirmed that they had done away with those during the pandemic because they were too difficult to make when only one person was working. We bought oreo birthday cake covered frozen bananas, a scoop of ube ice cream, and pog fudge. The bananas and ice cream were great, but the fudge was not what we were expecting (it had too much of a white chocolate flavor that we just don’t love). We headed back to the hotel to start packing.
Day 7
It was finally time to head back to the mainland, so we spent the morning with the sliding door open enjoying the views while we packed and finished up all the treats we had brought back to the room.
The Andaz has a resident artist named Welzie that we really enjoy, so we picked up a few more prints to add to our collection as we headed to the front desk to check out. I can’t wait to get them hung up in our house!
After departing the hotel, we made a final food stop at Tin Roof for some mochiko chicken over garlic noodles and a spicy chicken sandwich. Both were great final tasty items, but the chicken sandwich was the star (and only $7!).
The flight back to Seattle felt like it took forever, but the meals were good. The clouds hanging over the greater Seattle area as we descended looked like a giant land of marshmallows (which I didn’t take any pictures of) and were surprisingly low. We were exhausted by the time we arrived at the house, but we were so happy to be reunited with the kitties (huge thank you to RN for taking such great care of them while we were away!).
This trip was amazing and I’m so pleased with how many new food spots we tried this time. Maui will always be one of my favorite places and I can’t wait to go back - maybe for our 10 year anniversary in 2024.
