For years, if you lived in Kahala and someone asked where to eat close to home, the honest answer was short. The Kāhala Hotel & Resort for something dressed up. Kahala Mall for everything else, which meant Assaggio, GomaTei, The Counter, or Whole Foods on the way home. Waialae Avenue west of the mall was Kaimukī's problem to solve, not ours.
That map is out of date. Between the Alan Wong's revival announced for The Kāhala, the Kū'ono Marketplace build-out anchored by Foodland's Kahala MKT, and a slow-cooking stretch of new rooms along Waialae toward Kaimukī, 2026 is the first year in a long time where a Kahala resident can plan a full week of eating without repeating a room. The thesis of this post is simple. Kahala's dining footprint used to run on two anchors. It runs on three now, and the third one is a loop, not a location.
Anchor One: The Kāhala Hotel, Rewritten by Alan Wong
The single biggest change to the Kahala dining picture in 2026 sits inside the hotel most residents drive past without thinking about. Alan Wong closed his King Street flagship in November 2020 after 25 years, and Honolulu Magazine reports the revived restaurant is expected to open at The Kāhala Hotel & Resort in March at the earliest, taking over the former Hoku's space. Wong will be on as consulting chef, with an initial menu built around the King Street classics before newer, locally sourced dishes fill in.
If you have lived in Kahala long enough to remember Hoku's as the default for anniversary dinners and out-of-town parents, this matters. The ginger-crusted onaga, which Wong once estimated had been ordered more than 10,000 times, is expected to return. What was previously a hotel room you booked when nothing else fit becomes, on paper, one of the more serious dining rooms on this side of Diamond Head. Residents who used to drive to Kaka'ako or downtown for a name-chef occasion will have that option four minutes from the driveway.
Anchor Two: Kū'ono Marketplace and the Foodland Play
The second shift is at 4210 Waialae Avenue, directly across the street from Kahala Mall. Kū'ono Marketplace opened with Kahala MKT by Foodland as its anchor, and the store is doing something Foodland has not tried at this scale before.
The grocery half
Kahala MKT is positioned as curated grocery plus grab-and-go, not a standard Foodland run. The nearest peer in concept is R. Field Wine Company, which shares the roof. For residents who have spent the last decade choosing between Whole Foods on the mall's exterior corner and driving to Foodland Farms Ala Moana, this is the first credible third option inside the neighborhood.
The et al. half
Inside Kahala MKT is et al., a full-service restaurant and bar with a menu Foodland describes as multi-regional and seasonally driven. Reservations run through OpenTable or by calling 808-732-2144. What makes et al. structurally interesting is that it is a sit-down room attached to a grocery store, a format Kahala has never had. A resident can hand off a pickup order at the market counter and stay for a glass of wine next door without moving the car.
The practical effect on the neighborhood is that the block across from the mall has stopped being a place you drive to for one errand and become a place you plan an evening around.
Anchor Three: The Broth Bar and the Rest of the Mall Perimeter
The third anchor is not a single address. It is the tightening ring of rooms around Kahala Mall itself, plus the mall's own steady tenants.
The most recent addition is The Broth Bar, a ramen shop that Honolulu Coupon flagged in February 2026 for a tonkotsu built on rich, creamy broth, with chashu, a soft-boiled egg, and sides that include karaage, gyoza, and takoyaki. Early diners have been told it is BYOB for a stretch while licensing sorts itself out, which is worth confirming by phone before you show up with a bottle. For a neighborhood that already had GomaTei inside the mall food court, having a second, more focused ramen room across the perimeter changes the weeknight calculus. GomaTei is where you go with kids at 6:30. The Broth Bar is where you go without them at 9.
The mall itself is stable in a way that reads as an asset for residents rather than a knock. What you still have on the perimeter and inside:
- Whole Foods Market, which opened here as the state's first Whole Foods location
- Consolidated's Kahala Theatres, the 8-plex that continues to carry international and indie titles that do not play elsewhere on the island
- Assaggio Bistro Kahala for the standing Italian option
- The Counter for a build-your-own burger that has outlasted three rounds of national burger trends
- Olive Tree Café tucked in the exterior corner for gyros and hummus at counter prices
None of that is news. The point is that with Kū'ono opening across the street and The Broth Bar arriving on the perimeter, the mall's tenants stop being your only nearby option and become the reliable middle of a much wider rotation.
The Waialae Avenue Tail You Already Drive
Anyone who lives in Kahala drives Waialae Avenue west multiple times a week, whether or not they think of themselves as going to Kaimukī. The stretch between the mall and roughly 10th Avenue has had more turnover in the last twelve months than in the previous five combined, and it is worth naming the specific rooms because the difference between Kahala and Kaimukī on this axis is about seven minutes of driving.
Late 2025. Marujuu Japanese Hamburg & Steak opened in the former Chubbie's Burgers space just before Thanksgiving. It is part of Funergy Group, the same operator behind Tori Ton and Tenkichi in Mō'ili'ili and the Totoya sushi-bowl shops.
January 2026. Totoya's Kaimukī original at 1127 12th Avenue continues to run lines, and Honolulu Magazine has confirmed a third Hawai'i location opened in 'Aiea on February 15 with Mainland expansion under discussion. Late lunch around 1:30 remains the shortest-wait window.
February 2026 (target). Miro Kaimuki, the chef's-counter tasting room at 3446 Waialae Avenue, is being elevated as Leila under the Miro Restaurant Group banner. The original Miro space is being reopened as Cafe Miro, a more casual daytime concept from the same team.
March 13, 2026. Bad Ass Coffee, the Hawai'i Island-born chain, opened a Kaimukī location at 3502 Waialae Avenue with weekday hours starting at 5:30 a.m., which fills a real gap for anyone commuting west toward town before Starbucks at the mall opens.
Ongoing. Diamond Head Market & Grill has quietly become one of the more interesting weekly stops on this axis. Chef Jason Peel, who ran Nami Kaze before it closed last Halloween, is now in the kitchen. He has brought back ginger fried chicken, Grandma's potato salad, and furikake Goteburg musubi, and added a Wednesday early-morning okazuya with sweet potato tempura, fried saimin, and old-school kim chee.
Summer 2026. Mokihana Haus, a beer bar from Keola Warren of Moké's Bread and Breakfast, is slated to open next door to Moké's with a 20-seat bar, 16 patio seats, 25 indoor seats, and roughly ninety percent of its twelve taps pouring beers brewed in Hawai'i. That is a materially different ratio from any existing bar within a ten-minute drive of Kahala.
Read as a single tail rather than a scatter of updates, the pattern is clear. Every one of these rooms is within a fifteen-minute round trip from the middle of Kahala. The Waialae corridor is no longer Kaimukī's separate scene. It is the third anchor of a Kahala week.
A Rotation, Not a Roundup
Two anchors give you a habit. Three anchors give you a rotation.
That is the actual change worth registering. A resident who used to alternate between the hotel and the mall now has a working three-way split: The Kāhala for the occasion, Kū'ono for the sit-down weeknight or the pickup that turns into a glass of wine, and the Waialae tail for the ramen, the coffee run, the counter dinner, and the summer beer. None of these rooms replaces another. They compound.
For a neighborhood that has been described for years as quiet, residential, and a little dining-thin relative to its zip code, that compounding is the real 2026 headline.
If you would like to talk about what any of this means for your block specifically, or you are weighing a move within Kahala and want a read on the market that is not filtered through a portal, Jaymes Song and the SoldBySong team live and work here. Expect better. Schedule your free market consultation.
