Grylt Manoa

I’ve seen Grylt at Manoa Marketplace before; I think they opened last summer. But I never had the occasion or the urge to try them out.

That location next to First Hawaiian Bank has been the bane of fast-food restaurants for a long time – fast-food eateries have just come and gone before I had a chance to try them out. So I guess I made an unconscious decision to see if they could survive for a while before I went there to eat.

After picking up a prescription at Long’s Manoa on Friday, we decided to give it a try. The ambiance is nice and fresh, the help was efficient and courteous (although a little math practice would have come in handy), and the food wasn’t bad.

I had the steak platter – sliced-up Angus steak with grilled veggies, mashed cauliflower, and some Asian fusion sauce. The price was $11 plus 50¢ extra for the mashed cauliflower. The Asian fusion sauce tasted exactly like Mae Ploy sweet chili sauce, (maybe that’s what it was).

The steak was a little tough, but tasty and passable; the grilled veggies included cauliflower stalks, which I thought was unusual, yet nice and crunchy, almost jicama-like; the mashed cauliflower was to die for. I gotta make some soon at home.

The wife had a grilled ahi tuna sandwich with side salad for $9 plus $1 extra for the salad. It was too big for her, so she brought half of it home. She thought it needed to be seared a little more, and that it felt weird eating, as she called it, “a sashimi sandwich.”

Everything comes on eco-friendly, plant-based plates, and they don’t serve you at the table, so I can’t justify running this review on my “A Place for My Taste” restaurant blog. That’s why it’s here.

My take? It’s good! Grylt has two other locations in the Waikiki Shopping Plaza and Ala Moana Shopping Center.

Grylt Manoa: Manoa Marketplace, 2764 Woodlawn Drive, Honolulu 96822, phone (808) 988-7832.