Pau Hana

This place is a gem, hidden in the neighborhood of north Capitol Hill, and if you weren’t looking for it you’d probably never find it.
It’s nicely decorated in Hawaiian theme without being obnoxious about it. The owners have Hawaiian roots and are genuine and friendly. There’s a comfortable little bar there with tasty drinks, and a TV above the bar with sports on mute. The place is tasteful and well appointed while still being casual and easy going.
But that’s all beside the point. The main point is that the food is great. They have a Sunday brunch that is delicious, substantial and reasonably priced (OMG good Loco Moco for $ 9– I got mine w/​Spam). Their happy hour is very good (4 pieces of Spam Musubi for $ 4, nice-​sized side salad $ 5, three solid Khalua pork sliders for $ 5, pint-​sized Mai Tais for $ 5, etc.).
I’ve been there three times for brunch and happy hour and it was awesome each time. Now I’m looking forward to hitting them up for dinner!

A friend and I stopped here for a low-​key dinner and were mostly satisfied with what was received. I really liked the interior of the restaurant, it is a series of small dining rooms that open into each other, this could be very useful for large groups to have a room on their own. It seemed like there was a single employee doing everything: host, waiter, bartender, chef, but service was great and very attentive.
We ordered the Poke, which was quite good, especially with the crispy wontons. My only criticism was that the marinade had a touch too much soy sauce, but that could just be my personal preference. We also ordered the sweet chili chicken wings, the sauce was pretty good, but could have used more chili. Aside from the sauce, the wings didn’t have any flavor, which left the dish pretty mediocre, especially for anyone used to good wings.
For entrée I ordered the kalua pig which comes with mac salad and rice. The pork was quite good, if very salty (it’s Hawaiian, so an expectation for this). The macaroni pasta was overcooked to the point of being mushy which really brought down the quality of the salad.
My friend ordered the beef short ribs which were very tasty, they came with a side of rice. The marinade on these short ribs is identical to that of local teriyaki places, good, but not unique.
Overall, it’s a nice, laid-​back atmosphere for some meaty comfort food. There is a brunch on Saturday/​Sunday that looks pretty tasty, I will definitely be back later to try this.

Happy Hour Review (Monday through Friday, 4−7PM)
As the only Hawaiian restaurant in Capitol Hill, I was happy to try it out because I needed a close place to get my Musubi fix.
We ordered the following items off of their Happy Hour Menu:
Kalua Pork Sliders — you get 3 sliders, but beware that the Kalua Pork is extremely salty, but when you put some of the side slaw into the slider — it cuts down on the salt level.
Spam Musubi — 2 spam musubis cut in half. Served with soy sauce, the nori was soggy when we got it.
Sweet Chili Wings — wings were a bit small, but they were crispy and swimming in sweet chili sauce and served with a scoop of rice. This was perhaps our favorite order from Pau Hana’s Happy Hour menu.
Ultimately, we had small issues with each happy hour dish, but at $ 5 each entrée, I must say, you get a pretty generous amount of food.

If your looking for good comfort food. You have found it at the bruddahs at Pau Hana.
Come kick off your shoes and enjoy a wonderful island setting at a true hole in the wall location. Brunch here on Sundays are wonderful. The Banana Pancakes: House recipe pancakes topped with banana rum caramel compote is a winner.
Poke, Short Ribs, BBQ chicken, and the Kalua Pig are all my favorites.
House specials like Oxtail is a great surprise for dinner. Island beers complement everything on the menu.
So if you want a little sunshine in the pacific northwest come to this hole on the wall at the north of capital hill.

Terrible Hawaiian food. If these owners are from Hawaii, they should know better than to serve this kind of food. What Hawaiian restaurant serves a main plate with no mac salad? Hello, it should come with the meal! I ordered a loco moco, soooo disappointed! The whole plate was all rice, literally! One beef patty that was so burnt tasting I couldn’t eat it! It’s pretty hard to mess this dish up, but I was wrong! My bf ordered the chicken katsu, another pretty basic thing to make if your a Hawaiian restaurant. Very little portion, sauce tasted like straight southern BBQ sauce, and again, no mac salad! They poured the sauce on the katsu, so this made it very soggy once we got it home to eat.
I’m really bummed that this place was so bad. I would maybe want to try it again, get something different, but I don’t know what would really make me want to go back. :-(

We came here for brunch this weekend (all the way from Renton) and it was so yummy! They make the best fried rice I’ve ever had! It’s packed with depth of flavor. Their portions are really big, too! My fried rice was 3 portions (one I ate there and 2 lunches). I have to applaud their fried spam musubi again. It’s out-​of-​this-​world delicious!
I’ve never had an issue with parking (rare for Capital Hill). The staff is really friendly and helpful.
I can’t recommend this place enough!

This place is pretty easy to find. Located at the end of Capital Hill, near Seattle Prep. From first appearance, it looked like what was probably a Mexican restaurant.
Parking’s a little tight, but there is a lot, instead of trying to find street spaces.
We arrived in the middle of Happy Hour (4−7pm). They had the usual Hawaiian fair of Spam Masubi and kalua pork sliders w/​slaw. But what was a nice surprise addition to the menu were the Ahi Tuna Poke, and coconut shrimp.
A couple down falls: 1) there wasn’t any hawaiian beer like Kona Brewng Co, available. Really? At a Hawaiian restaurant? It should always be stocked on tap or bottled. Especially for Happy Hour. And 2) I wish there was more variety on desserts. Only 1 of 3 were kind of Hawaiian, the Kona Coffee Chocolate Cake. I was hoping to see Haupia Coconut, authentic Hawaiian Rainbow cake, and/​or Shave ice.
But over all, we’ll be back, and will try dinner.

The host/​server was enthusiastic if not a little green on experience. A girlfriend and I sat at one of the round tables by the bar. The smells of the bathroom wafted our way (like Pine-​Sol and porcelain).
I had been craving loco moco for months. I’m still craving it as the one I was served was charred and hard. The egg needed salt. The gravy was bland. They give a good amount of rice, but I just didn’t have anything good to eat it with.
The mai tai gave me a good buzz and saved the night along with the good conversation I had with my friend.

Absolutely wonderful food and service.
We arrived in a downpour, were rushed due to our need to «kill a ½ hr» before picking up our daughter.
Howie was the perfect waiter and got us out in time. He brought a ray of sunshine to our evening. Everything was authentic Hawaiian, the poke ahi, the loco moco, and the coconut shrimp!
We will be back for dinner and more IZ songs
A wonderful low key dining experience

Took my daughter here for one of our recent «Appetizer Adventures».
The kahlua pork sliders were okay but a little salty. Buns were cheap as well. But then …
I took a bite of a sweet chili pepper chicken wing.
WOW! My daughter and I were sparring with our forks trying to scrape up all of that fantastic sauce. Any sins committed with the sliders were more than forgiven with the wings. Shazam!
Waiter was top notch as well, and happy hour prices were tasty.

they get an extra star!
Returned to Pau Hana after i had another unearthly craving for hawaiin chow. The menu looks revamped and improved! The friendly service was the nice thing that didn’t change.
Ahi tuna poke ($ 9.95) Love the amount of raw tuna you get with this! not a lot of frills you might get at other joints. Tasty!
Oxtail soup ($ 9.95): wow! The best version I’ve had in a while! You get two extremely meaty sections of oxtail to suck on. The broth is nice and hearty, studded with carrots and potatoes!
Spam Musubi ($ 4.95) much improved since I last visited. Nice freshly grilled spam with tasty soy sauce based dipping!
The menu is definitely coming together and I really liked the stuff I got. The only thing missing from the menu is the pork lau lau which is one of my favorite Hawaiian classics (maybe as special of the day?) The hours are good for late night dining on weekends and they have their own parking lot. Check this place out!!!

I am from Hawaii and after recently moving to Seattle I was looking for a REAL islander restaurant. I saw they they were interviewed in the «Stranger» so my girlfriend I decided we would give it a try. We had previously went to Ohana’s

Hawaiians like some disgusting foods. As lovely as the islands are, it’s hard for me to identify with people who treasure poi and spam. But there are some very tasty items on the menu at Pau Hana. I had the very good Kalua pig and excellent sweet chili chicken wings.
Pau Hana (Hawaiian for «After Work» or «After Work Drink») was opened by one-​time Hawaiian residents Peter Duane, Derrick Rowland and Bruce Wilson in November, in the former location of Huiyona (and Galerias and Cellar Bistro and Ortegas and Spaghetti Red’s). As the litany of recent owners attests, it will be tough to make a go of it in this location off the beaten path (around the corner for the also new Easy Joe’s).
It probably won’t be the tiny bar that makes the difference, and while I like the food much more than the overly sweet cocktails, I think the place would have a better shot if it was more of a bar that served food, rather than a restaurant that has a bar. But in any case it is nice to have another different option for good food, and I wish them the best.

The food was better than good, but not quite great. We ordered the coconut prawns (which were phenomenal. Order these!), musubi, fried rice, roasted pork, kalbi short ribs, and some drinks.
The beers were Hawaiian, and delicious.
My vodka cran was a bit light for my tastes. I had two and still didn’t have a buzz. Order the beer here, not the liquor.
I can stand behind the short ribs and the coconut prawns. They were really good. I wasn’t as impressed with the musubi, fried rice, or roasted pork. Nothing special there.
Still, I will probably be back.

We had to try this place out because I love Hawaiian food. Actually what I love is meat, rice, fried eggs, and gravy, so if a cuisine includes that, I love it.
I had the kalhua pork. It was really good. A touch over salted but still very very flavorful. I liked the BBQ chicken too which my bf had. He liked the pork better as did I, but there was a LOT of chicken.
Spam musubi was delicious.
The service was great and friendly, and they were really interested in our feedback, which was awesome. Prices were great and the brunch on the menu looked good and, again, well priced so we’ll be back for that for sure. They’re new so give em a try and cut em some slack, I think they’ll turn out well!

Please come here so they won’t close!
Yummy food. Quirky space. Great service. Stacks of Spam tins!

After seeing all of the great reviews on Unilocal and other sites, I decided to give Pau Hana on try on Friday night. While there here some positive notes along the way, overall I came away wanting more. The service was great and the staff very friendly. You could definitely tell that it was a close knit bunch of people running the place, but the food just did not deliver enough. The menu is not very large, but I always think that if you do it right, there’s no need for a large menu. So with all of that said, we ordered the spam musubi, chicken wings, kalua pig, and Hawaiian style fried rice.
Chicken wings — Best part of the meal by far. The wings had a nice crisp to them and the serving size was generous. The chili graze was not too sweet and not too spicy. Overall, the best item. The only drawback was that they included rice (didn’t need to) and it was not edible. It appeared to us that they used old rice and didn’t reheat it well since it had no moisture.
Spam musubi — Biggest disappointment of the night by far. There was some nice flavor there, but the rice was similar to the rice above. When you bit into it, the rice broke off into chunks. I left half of my serving on the plate. And while cold spam musubi is as great when you are out and pick it up at a store, at a sit down restaurant I would expect it to be cooked right then or at least thrown on the grill quickly.
Kulua pig — Solid, but nothing special. The pig had a nice smokey flavor to the meat as you would expect.
Fried Rice — Nice flavor here as well. The Portuguese sausage and spam are always great when cooked well and in this case they were.
I could have ordered other items on the menu, but with a small menu you have to nail all of the items well if not great. I was very excited to have a new Hawaiian place in town, but Pau Hana, at least right now, is not going to be my go to place.

I’m surprised I’m the third reviewer on here — this place has only been open 3 days! The first two reviews gave 5 stars… I’m not seeing it. 3 stars, plus a full star for excellent service.
Highlights: The staff was super friendly, the entrance area attractive, and there is a sizeable parking lot, which in this part of town really helps. Come to think of it, there’s a star right there…
The food was pretty good, though Hawaiian isn’t usually my thing. My understanding of Hawaiian food is that it ranges from salty to bland, with some spam and egg here and there. The Kalua pork and cabbage was pretty good, but one serving was enough for me.
Neutral points: Given that Pau Hana is new, I expected a bit more… renovations, we’ll say… to the interior. It is definitely clean and attractive, but I’m told by patrons of the former spot that all that was done is that the walls were painted. Same sinks in the bathrooms, even.
In fact, the silverware I used was already pretty bent up, which tells me that this was NOT 3 days’ worth of use, and that perhaps the silverware came secondhand as well.
Hopefully this place will start to get busy, which would liven things up quite a bit. My friends and I were the only ones inside at 8:00pm on a Thursday. Let’s hope for a grand opening soon, as apparently the liquor license came in just today.
I’m optimistic about Pau Hana, but their location is going to be tough to stay in business without serious word-​of-​mouth advertising. It is right off I-​5, however, which coupled with the parking lot, really should make a good location overall.
Good job so far, you guys.