Featured writer: Nurse Frugal

After carefully reviewing my Frommer’s Guide to Oahu and several other emails that friends have sent me with recommendations on good eats in Oahu, I decided there were 4 must-eats I had to try. My decisions were based on price and reviews.

First stop: Waialua Bakery. We had just picked up our car rental and were starving!!! We called up our friend that we were staying with to see if he recommended any delicious places to eat and he said Waialua Bakery.  This place is located in Haleiwa and is an adorable little organic bakery where they bake their own fresh bread. Our buddy has been living on the island for at least 13 years, he’d be considered a “local” so we took his word for it and I’m glad we did

Here is the incredible Turkey Pesto Sandwich.

Next stop was Matsumoto’s. I heard that they are notoriously busy so we decided to ride our bikes (we are staying in the North Shore) to the shave ice store.  We went twice at the last minute, we were the last one’s in the store (they close at 6pm daily) and we hardly had to wait. The shave ice is so sweet, you get to choose three different flavors, my favorites were the banana cream, strawberry and Pina Colada. It was $6 total for a large and small shave ice with ice cream.

I had three different people tell me that I needed to try a shrimp truck, and all three recommended Giovanni’s Shrimp Truck. It was delicious and quite greasy, I ordered the Shrimp Scampi plate and Mr. BigTime and I split it. It was $13 for a plate, so we got a little side of mac salad with it for $1.50. There was enough garlic in the Scampi to permeate through my pores for a good 2 days, so I would highly suggest splitting it with the one you love

Finally, the 15 mile malasadas. We had just finished a long day walking around in Waikiki and I thought it was time to try Leonard’s famous Malasadas.  I google-mapped the directions on my iPhone and thought it was a bit strange that the closest one to Waikiki was about 15 miles away. I never conveyed this information to my husband who would have immediately figured out that we were heading to the wrong one. We drove the 15 miles, and I we couldn’t find it!  Mr. Bigtime looked up the directions again and realized that there was actually a Leonard’s about 3 miles away from where we were in Waikiki! To top it off, when we finally found the 15 mile Leonard’s, we drove past it THREE times until we finally found it.  Needless to say, I put way too much expectation into that, and they were delicious, but they did taste like a donut.  I won’t forget Mr. Bigtime saying “we drove 15 miles so you can have a donut?!!?!”  It was a fun conversation.  90 cents per Malasada.

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