Island Snow Shave Ice, Kailua

Island Snow is located very close to Kailua Beach Park. It combines a surfwear store with a shave ice bar. We think this place (and Waiola Shave Ice store in Waikiki) has the best shave ice on the island of Oahu. Our favorite flavors include lilikoi (passionfruit), lime, lychee, and raspberry. The lines can get long on sunny weekends, but the lines are not as long as the more famous shave ice store in Haleiwa on the North Shore (where the flavors are a little too sweet - try Aoki's instead, which is very close to Matsumoto's). Options for your shave ice include ice cream at the bottom, and a snow cap on the top (which is sweet and creamy). We always stop at Island Snow for shave ice after a day in the sun at Kailua beach.

If you are looking for a Kailua t-shirt, you may want to pick up a "Kailua Boys" t-shirt from Island Snow.

Island Snow
Kailua Beach Center
130 Kailua Road
Kailua, HI 96734
808-263-6339

P.S. Shave ice is the same as a snow cone.

Buona Sera Italian Restaurant, Kailua

Buona Sera is a lovely little Italian restaurant that has been a kama'aina (locals') favorite for a long time. We had dinner there last weekend to celebrate my birthday. We got there around 6:30 p.m. and the restaurant was already almost full. By 7 p.m., there was a crowd waiting for tables.

The entrees here are delicious and reasonably priced (approx. $15 each). We ordered Rigatoni Carbonara and Chicken Sorrentino. Before the entrees arrived, we got a loaf of very hot, fresh bread - yummy! The entrees arrived very fast - the service was excellent. The portions were not huge, but were certainly adequate.

For dessert, we wanted the Tiramisu (which we had ordered on a previous visit - it was good), but they were all out. We settled for the Spumoni ice-cream and was disappointed with the size of the dessert - a small scoop for almost $5.

The restaurant is decorated with hundreds of empty Chianti bottles. A nice twist is that if you order a bottle of Chianti, you are given colored markers to autograph and decorate the bottle, which is later added to the collection on the walls. We didn't order a bottle of Chianti, but the table next to ours did and they had a lot of fun decorating their bottle of Chianti. I'm sure they will spend a lot of timel looking for their bottle the next time they visit Buona Sera!

Buona Sera Italian Restaurant
131 Hekili St., #101
Kailua HI 96734
Ph: 263-7696

Located right next door to Buona Sera is another restaurant that is a renowned kama'aina favorite - Boot's and Kimo's Homestyle Kitchen. We'll review Boot's and Kimo's in a future post.

This is our first entry :-) We hope to update this blog once a week, so please check back. We'd love to hear from you.

A hui hou!
R & S