L&L Hawaiian Barbecue

Average quality food. Their spam musubi is pretty good for the price. I had their loco moco before too and it was decent. Pretty fast service. Good to come when you are in a hurry and want Hawaiian bbq!

So i used to work at L&L in San Mateo and let me say this place is no where near as good in terms of food. I ordered the katsu curry and the chicken wasnt even fully cooked. Also their customer service was horrible. The cashier was complaining about how she needed to clock off and was completely rude. I was looking forward to L &L because i havent had it for awhile and i was really disappointed. Wasted 10 $ on a regular chicken katsu curry.

I come here for immediate cravings only. This place has very ill-​mannered workers who pretty much don’t know what they’re doing and/​or don’t really care that they don’t know what they’re doing. The food is not authentic. It’s the generic brand Walmart crap you get when you just can’t do McD’s anymore. I appreciate the effort I guess.

L&L provides fast food Hawaiian BBQ style. It’s very casual for grabbing lunch or dinner. They have a variety of options including BBQ chicken, chicken katsu, shrimp, short ribs, salads, burgers and musubis. It’s part of a small complex with other food joints like regents pizza.
Food wise, average. Nothing special but not horrible tasting. The portions are generous for the regular size plates. Each plate comes with your meat, rice and macaroni salad.
Parking can suck during the daytime because you have to pay but in the evenings and weekends the gate is open.

COME THROUGH MAC SALAD COME THROUGH! YASSSS!
Seafood Combo Plate~ Mahi mahi, short ribs, katsu shrimp, rice and mac salad $ 10.95
Spam musubi ~$ 2.50?
They validate parking too!
* I ate their tartar sauce by itself last night, tasty treat LMAO

I frequent this L&L every Friday for lunch because I work at an office building near by. I always get Spam Musubis and Spam Saimin. The musubi itself is not terrible, but it isn’t fantastic and it’s also kind of expensive (comparing it to Homestyle Hawaiian where if i recall, the musubis are cheaper, larger, and tastier). The saimin has a salty broth, but I welcome it on some days. It comes with some spam cut into strips and green onion.
I’ve also had their thai tea boba and milk tea boba both of which are not fantastic. The thai tea is SO much better than their milk tea. Milk tea is not good, but what do you really expect?
If I were just rating the food, I would probably give it a 2 or a 2.5, but I think the service (at least on Fridays) is fantastic. There is a girl that works there and she is patient and kind. She never rushes me when I’m deciding and when orders come up, she doesn’t announce them by screaming across the restaurant.
Quick and easy. People come in and out and it’s a nice place to people watch if you’re eating by yourself!

I ordered the regular chicken katsu curry and it was just over $ 10 with tax. I’m not a total cheapass but I do expect good tasting food if I’m spending $ 10. Now, don’t get me wrong. The portion size was ridiculous (but in a good way) and I’ve honestly never seen someone stuff so many pieces of fried chicken goodness into one Styrofoam container.
The chicken katsu was crisp and dare I say somewhat juicy. But, before long, I began noticing that there was an odd taste to it, almost as if they have accidentally dumped all of the spices that they own into that particular batch. So I dipped the chicken into the curry, hoping that it’d help a little. Nope! The curry tasted so nasty that I had to throw it out and make my own batch of curry. I don’t know what happened back there but it really tasted like they had over spiced everything but the macaroni salad (which as always, was divine). The rice was mushy and didn’t seem fresh but it wasn’t the worst that I’ve had.
I don’t know what it is with this L&L. It just never meets my expectations and I’m consistently let down. it’s also a buck or two more expensive than the franchise close to my house. cant speak for the service because everytime i’ve been here, i’ve gotten it to go and usually got my food within minutes. i just can’t help come back for the huge portions. but seriously though, insanely expensive prices if you’re just eating it for just one meal.

I love their chicken bBQ meal, served with with white rice and Hawaiian macaroni salad. Portions are big.

I have checked in here a lot recently. I CAN EXPLAIN. A football-​fan friend lives pretty much next door to here, so ever since football season started, L&L’s has become the convenient lunch pick-​up spot before the Sunday game. But. Throwing that explanation aside, I would totally come here 1+ times a week anyway because chicken katsu is the most dang delicious fast food meal in UTC. Love the humongous 2-​meal portion size, love mac salad, love that you can swap scoops of rice for more scoops of mac salad. Their spam musubi with that magic sauce is good snacking, and saimin noodle soup is great on cold days. But that crunchy chicken katsu with the sweet and sour katsu sauce that I have shamelessly been eating once a week is the way to go my friends. L&L’s, thank you for your chicken katsu (…and mac salad!!). That is all.

Terrible service, filthy sticky restaurant. They have good food, but when the staff truly just DOES NOT CARE about your experience as a customer, it’s hard to justify continuing to give them my money. I may check in again down the road but current management sucks.

I have eaten lunch from here several times and never been unsatisfied. I can not speak outside my experience (friend claims ’ meh, ok ’)
PARKING SUCKS !. .. whew, there — got that off my chest
I have been to other L & L Hawaiian BBQ (s) with better food & service but — given close location to my current living location and being able to walk here (see PARKING issue) this is good and I will visit this location many more times.

I like BBQ. And my only experience with Hawaiian BBQ is L&L Hawaiian Barbecue. The history of L&L is pretty interesting, but it’s pretty much a chain restaurant like as Mexican as Chipolte and Chinese as Panda Express. With that said — the food quality pretty much reflects what it is — a fast food Hawaiian joint.
Got the healthy #5 — salad, brown rice and BBQ chicken. Salad was fresh — just lettuce and tomatoes (nuttin’ fancy) and a boneless chicken thigh. Chicken was good — a bit more on the sinewy/​ligament side — but you expect that with thigh meat — it is the most flavorful. I would rate this chain higher than your normal chains — and probably a bit healthier.
I have to agree with the other Unilocalers, it is a sticky joint. They need to slap some Orange Clean Degreaser to their tables and chairs. It is BBQ — you expect sticky — but this place is stickier than most.

I went in today a few minutes before closing to see if they were open; they said they’d take my order. I WISH THEY HADN’T! Horrible service, I had ordered chicken katsu, but when I had received my order it was entirely wrong. They gave me a bbq chicken bowl, which is fine, mistakes happen. HOWEVER, when I asked about the mistake they basically argued to me that it was what I had ordered and even that the bbq chicken was chicken katsu. There was literally a picture of what chicken katsu was in front of me, so it was complete and utter BS. I tried to argue more, but they said they were now closed. L&L you disappoint me, you should reevaluate those you hire. I really didn’t mind if they were closed in the first place, I was simply curious. now I wish they were closed for good.
P. S. Since I was stuck with the bbq chicken, I tried it anyways and it tasted old. I’m almost certain the reason they took my order was to get rid of the meat that was going bad.

My friend and I needed to get a quick bite for dinner so we came here. I only had L&L once at another location and I remember I didn’t quite enjoy it because it was so greasy and oily (I got a beef bowl I think). So when we came here I didn’t have high expectations.
I got a beef curry plate and my friend got the loco moco. We both enjoyed our meal and actually finished the whole thing! At first glance I thought the curry was too diluted because of the light color. But it turns out the taste was there and the beef was super tender. In addition, the side macaroni salad was pretty enjoyable as well.
The only two downsides are that first, there are no veggies at all! But then again they sell comfort food and you shouldn’t really expect anything too healthy here. The second thing is that it’s too pricey! A curry plate costs $ 10?! I’m not sure if it’s because it is located at Regent’s plaza or it’s like that everywhere but $ 10 is a little too much for a meal like this. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed it and I’ll definitely come back for more!

Food was good, came out hot.
But everything here is STICKY: the chairs, tables, sauce bottles, etc.
The place needs a good scrub-​down.

This place was… Eh. I left the place leaving really disappointed because everything tasted so bland and dry. Nothing tastes fresh, and it feels like one of those to-​go quick fixes places if you just needed something to eat.
Cashiers were nice but the place was pretty dirty when I had gone. I didn’t expect it to be super clean but when it’s evident that the place is dirty. Then you know it’s bad.
Parking is kind of lame here unless it’s weekends because you have to pay if you park at the front lot.

I never have issues ordering at this location. Only my last visit (I occasionally eat here for my lunch break) the time it took me to order to get there, roughly 10 mins the food was ready to go! I’m not sure if it’s the construction in front of the business suite that deterred people from coming into a usually busy area for lunch. My coworker had the Atkins plate and basically devoured it before I could snap a picture.
I normally get a half katsu half bbq chicken plate with all brown rice, no Mac salad. This time I wanted to switch it up and got the mini shrimp curry w/​brown rice. Now I’m basing this review off of how I’ve gotten shrimp curry from other places. The amount of shrimp I got blew my mind. Usually other places will give like maybe 4 pieces tops and smother curry veggies. If can’t tell from the photo I added I probably got somewhere near 8 or 9 pieces and that’s the mini! The brown rice seemed like it was cooked with too much water but was glad to know it was freshly made.
Lastly the service is always fast and professional. I would recommend coming here again because I do!

I didn’t realize there was an L & L this close to my place: It’s a total guilty gravy pleasure.
Like all busy professional couples, there are days of the week where the BF and I simply give into laziness and refuse to cook or even make the effort to get dressed to go out. Those nights it’s take out and our options within 10 mins of our place aren;t the best-​We can’t agree on Thai we like, there’s meh Chinese, pizza etc. And then we realized, hey-​Is there aHawaiian Barbecue? Hooray L & L.
Its a nice alternate to our other casual grab and go options, but just A-​ok in general. This location was a bit slower then some and the gravy on my cutlet was a little bit off in flavor I felt. Cutlet was crispy, but I had asked for no mac salad and only rice-​they didn’t remember and the mayonnaisey salad persisted to appear. Le sigh, luckily the boyfriend likes it.
All in all It’s typical of the chain and we’ll be back to snag a bite again soon. Nice change of place. Located in a small shopping center, parking is limited. Indoor seating is okay, looked like the had wi-​fi but unconfirmed.

The food quality, taste, and portions at this location are comparable to that of all the other L&Ls I’ve been to, however, this one’s just more crowded during lunch. At least service is fairly quick.
Also, I’d like to add that my favorite dish is the Lau Lau combo. Here, they list it as a regular item on their menu, whereas at most other locations, it was offered only on certain days of the week. That was a few years ago though and I’m uncertain if that still applies today. Just glad this place had it because I had a major craving.
I love their Spam Musubi (sometimes they make it with way too much rice though), as well, but didn’t have anymore room in my belly to accommodate.

I don’t come to this particular location all that often, but when I do it’s been to buy plate lunches and/​or Mac Salad «to-​go».
Pretty standard as far as taste and options go as with all of the L&L’s.
My only gripe is that when buying Mac Salad «to-​go», they only sell it in small container portions (1 person serving, albeit appropriately priced), as opposed to one large sytrofoam tub of it. I’ve even asked the cashier and they said that’s the only way they sell it. Uggh.
Note to the Manager of this establishment: It would make it so much easier if you can sell a larger volume size option of the Mac Salad instead of having to buy 5 – 6 single orders when buying «to-​go» for a large family or party.