Hata Restaurant

Best for: Japanese
Location: McCully
Foodgasmic dish: Sashimi

Tsukemono (Japanese pickles), grated tofu, and tea

The best restaurants really are the ones with no website, inconvenient parking lots, and dirty walls. Hata is one of those unassuming restaurants that you always pass by driving down King Street. I hope you can parallel park. Otherwise, come with someone who can, just as I did. After spending small fortunes on meals at Nobu and Morimoto, Hata is a nice change and reminder that amazing Japanese food is easy to find in a place like Hawaii. Lucky me - Japanese happens to be my favorite cuisine (in case you haven't noticed).

For about $14, I had the sashimi and teriyaki beef combo meal. This meal comes with miso soup, three dishes of pickled vegetables, a salad, and lots of rice. The sashimi was perfect - soft, buttery, melts in your mouth. The teriyaki beef was tasty, cooked just right, and had the ideal amount of teriyaki sauce poured on it (I hate it when local restaurants drench meat in sauce, just like most Americans drown their pasta in tomato sauce - gross!)