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