Hawaii Food Tours, Honolulu

My husband and I were recently in Honolulu as a stop on a cruise, and booked this food tour as an excursion through the cruiseline. The few hours we had with Matthew & Keira completely exceeded all of our expectations. We had such a great time meeting them and having them share their love and knowledge of the great eats in Honolulu! The food stops were phenomenal and Matthew and Keira really share themselves with everyone on the tour and helped us feel completely comfortable getting around Honolulu later on our own.

Hawaii Food Tours---Hole in the Wall Tour...as the advertising goes: You begin as strangers and leave as friends. Matthew and Keira have a winner in this and when they expand to the Mainland I hope to possibly become a part of this venture. We were taken to a number of culinary outlets known only to these true friendly and outgoing local "folks." No question was too difficult and as Matthew said, "If we don't know the answer we'll make one up." My wife and I enjoyed a great Japanese meal at a restaurant only a 15 minute walk from our Waikiki hotel thanks to M & K. Plus we grabbed ice cream as well at the shop next door. Don't pass this by. I rate this a MUST!!

My wife and I just moved to the Island and really wanted to find some nice, out of the way places of Honolulu. Hawaiian Food Tours was perfect. All the establishments were excellent food choices and will suggest all our visitors to try their tours.

If you love food then this is the tour for you. The Hole in the Wall food tour was the best part of my trip to Oahu! Matthew and Keira the owners are just dolls! The trip was very informative. They take you to places that you may not experience by yourself on the island. I wish I could have taken the tour sooner in my trip! I definitely recommend this tour and would take it again the next time I am in Hawaii - I will be on the evening tour too! Thanks for a wonderful experience! The Coco Puff patries were the best from Liliha Bakery! Yum!!!

If you’re looking for a memorable and enjoyable activity while in Honolulu, be sure and make reservations for Matthew Gray’s “Hole in the Wall” Food Tour! Our very first trip to Oahu was highlighted by this fabulous Food Tour which is a “must do” for vacationers and locals alike. Matthew’s culinary expertise and knowledge took us to some very interesting places which we would have never found on our own nor ventured to try on our own. Our 16 year old daughter enjoyed it so much, she insisted we go back to Royal Kitchen (one of many stops) to pick up more of their delicious manapuas (baked, moist and tender buns stuffed with an unbelievable number of fillings to choose from!). Complementing Mathew’s extensive knowledge of food facts, great places to eat at and new recipes to try is his sweetheart of a fiancé, Keira. As a local, Keira truly had lots of interesting facts and stories to share with us about the Hawaiian culture and was an absolute delight to talk to. Like Matthew, she also had some great suggestions for additional places to dine at while on Oahu. Be sure and take the Food Tour early on in your vacation so you will have the opportunity to visit some of these other places (we did and our feasting continued for a few more days!). Both Matthew and Keira are extremely down to earth, fun-loving and friendly people who truly enjoy what they do. While on the tour, a few of their past customers saw them and were thrilled and excited to meet up with them once again. This certainly reinforced our positive feelings about this wonderful experience. When parting company, you can’t help but want to go back and see them again for another great Food Tour!

I have been visiting Hawaii for over 20 years. Hawaii is the most wonderful place in the world to relax, get in touch with love, to synch with reality. I found this Food Tour company by accident, but what a sweet accident ; ) My boyfriend wasn't with me, but we got to sample his favorite island food - manapuas. We also visited places that on our next trip together we will absolutely visit. You know, as you travel, experience and enjoy the islands, you as the traveler get to become a teacher eventually. Matt and Keira have shown an experienced visitor like me what wonderful gems Honolulu has that I had been missing. What's funny is that we did lunch across the street form one of my most favorite Bead Stores in honolulu, and I didn't even know what a treasure that lunch spot was. I cannot wait to bring my boyfriend and friends to the wonderful spots we visited on the Locals Food Tour. What can I write? I absolutely recommend this tour company. It is run by professionals who truly love their subject - Good Food! Hawaii is so diverse and so lovely - Food is a form of love and to take the tour is to experience the love that Honolulu has for its people. Have some fun and love a little - go on a tour : )

I'm not easily impressed but I have to tell you that our Hawaii Food Tours experience was incredibly satisfying. My daughters and I took the Hole in the Wall tour after hearing Matthew Gray (the owner) on a local travel radio show. We followed up and did some research and found out that these tours are getting lots of attention from people all over the world. Matthew & Keira are the couple who conduct the tour and they simply have to be the best guides I've ever met. They know almost everything about food and wine, not to mention endless information on things to do in Hawaii. They picked us up at our hotel in the morning and took our group out for a fantastic day away from the tourist center of Waikiki. They entertained us and fed us all day long, about 5 hours in all. We visited several (six or seven) restaurants, bakeries and also an underground look at the exotic and exciting Chinatown! We were taken behind the scenes and shown the real Hawaii from an insiders point of view. We tasted Hawaiian-Chinese sweet bread stuffed baked buns, delectable one-of-a-kind cream puffs from a 60 year-old bakery, fresh handmade rice noodles, Hawaiian crack seed, fresh juicy pineapple, apple-bananas, longan fruit, sweet mochiko garlic chicken, Korean beef, Spam Musubi,, and world-famous malasadas! So much food, great cultural and historic information, and lots of laughter gave us an insight into why this tour is referred to as Hawaii's best single tour. The groups are always kept at 10 guests or less, making Hawaii Food Tours the most intimate travel experience I've ever encountered. Keira and Matthew are certainly special people who love what they do. We all felt like great friends at the end of the day and wouldn't change one thing about this GREAT day. Take this tour as soon as you can because it sets the standard on what the best of the best is all about. We'll be back! Thanks to Matthew and Keira!

This was our favorite tour on our whole vacation! I love to try new food and I would have NEVER tried many of the places Matthew and Keira took us! It was a great experience! We tried Manapuas, Cocoa Puffs, Rice Noodles from China Town, Garlic Chicken, Teriyaki Beef, Spam Musubi, Lychees, Pineapple with Li-Hing seasoning, 5 layers of Heaven, Char Sui, fresh mangos and Malasadas. We visited "crack seed" stores in China Town and visited flower shops making leis. We received a history lesson while on tour and information about Honolulu while riding around town. It was fun, informative and different from all the rest of the "normal" tours. I would highly recommend this tour for anybody who loves food and goes to Hawaii. I would love to see them expand this tour to other cities in the U.S. I also would recommend taking this during the first few days you are in Ohau as they gave you so many different places to eat and you may want to try them on the rest of your visit. The tour is very laid back and you feel at home with Matthew and Keira. The only thing I would have done different was to wear a pair of "stretchable" pants! I will absolutely do this again if I am ever in Hawaii again!

We had never heard of food tours in any other city, but kept hearing and reading about Hawaii Food Tours every time we researched the best things to do in Honolulu. There were so many super-positive reviews and since we're major food lovers we were definitely going to try this out. First of all, when I called, Matthew Gray (the owner & host) actually picked up the phone and was so amazingly generous with information for our vacation. Long before I even booked our tour he gave me a huge list of great restaurants to visit and followed up with an in-depth email for me and my husband, tweaked precisely to fit our requests and tastes. The customer service aspect sold me immediately. Matthew suggested we take his famous daytime Hole in the Wall tour at the beginning of our stay in town so we could see, taste, touch and learn about Honolulu, which we did, and boy are we happy for that. We wound up eating at fantastic places instead of the tourist traps that are all over Waikiki. He saved us tons of money by advising us where to get gourmet-for-less meals, romantic spots, shopping tips, and low cost mai tais (less than $5 each, compared to $10 & up at the rip-off places). When we finally arrived and did the tour we were only two of the entire group of 10. Matthew and his beautiful fiancee Keira lead all the tours and limit the group size at 10 maximum. You are treated like a dear friend, not like a number (you know what I mean if you ever went on one of those other huge tour company tours), and Matthew & Keira are so passionate about showing you a great time. Keira is a Honolulu native of Japanese descent. She's lived there all her life and not only understands life in Hawaii, but she shares it with her guests. She has that aloha spirit and will make sure you get everything you could possibly want. Together, Keira and Matthew will ruin you for other tours... that's how great they are at what they do. Oh, the tour? Simply put, it satisfied us on so many levels. The foods were the flavors that built Hawaii's palate. We had Chinese, Japanese, Hawaiian, BBQ, and Korean styles of food, PLUS we visited two of Hawaii's most famous bakeries. If that wasn't enough Matthew and Keira treated us to some of the most delicious fresh pineapple and lychee, and apple bananas... wow! The food stops are spaced enough apart from each other that you can digest without ever feeling too stuffed. And when you're not eating, you are learning. Matthew & Keira know a lot about everything beyond food; art, architecture, culture, history, where to go, what to do... and on & on. The behind the scenes tour of Chinatown was a tour within a tour, approximately and hour-and-a-half of exotic and colorful and delicious stops. When all was said and done, after 5 hours, we not only loved the tour with Matthew and Keira, but we felt like we had an insiders knowledge about this great city. We even made a few friends! Couldn't ask for anything more. This was the greatest tour we've ever taken and worth twice the price. You'll see what I mean when you take the Hole in the Wall tour!

If you're wanting a great tour of Honolulu/Waikiki then I'd highly suggest the Hawaii food tours. On it you'll be able to sample some of the foods that are found in hawaii but are not usually found in the mainland U.S. Our tourguides Matt and Keira were wonderful guides, and a lot of fun. They would show us places and let us sample foods that most tourists didn't or wouldn't even know exist. The food was wonderful and if I went back to Hawaii anytime I'd be signing up for the tour again to get a taste of the food most hawaiians like to eat.