IHOP

Do not bother. I am local, but this was the first time I ate breakfast at iHOP. What a disappointment. I ordered from the Senior menu. Even though the portions are smaller, the prices are GREATLY inflated. If you have an AARP card, you can get a Senior breakfast at the Grand Slam restaurant at Kūhiō and Kapahulu for $20, which includes a drink AND the tip. iHOP doesn’t have an AARP discount, and the small breakfast was $18.59. With an iced tea and 20% tip, my total was nearly $30 for one person. You can get a better deal nearly everywhere in Waikiki. Now, ABOUT THE FOOD: firstly, unlike the Grand Slam restaurant, iHOP does not offer a gluten free bread option. So my breakfast consisted of two scrambled eggs, a small portion of hash browns, and two small, thin rashers of bacon. I asked for the eggs “soft scrambled”; they were hard. The hash browns were only browned on one side, and consequently underdone. SERVICE: the service was good, Brad did his job as one would expect and he was given a 20% tip, in spite of the food. I do not believe in holding a server responsible for the kitchen help’s wrong-doing, nor the corporate price structure. I realize that they need to pay rent and having to seat one senior citizen at a table is not very profitable. But here is the thing: I go out for breakfast once a week. They’ve lost at least 25 weeks of my patronage. Moreover, they’ve lost 100% of the business they might have gotten with my visitors, who are many. On my bus ride home, I happened to be seated next to their expediter and had a discussion of my experience. The expediter told me that they were short of cooks today and that the manager was even cooking. I told him it was his job to make sure “bad” food didn’t get served, but that I understood that he had to make a choice between making patrons wait longer and serving orders properly prepared. He told me he did see “a couple of orders that went out with hard eggs”. I’m sure he regretted it; we had a very nice conversation. But I will never go there again, nor will any of my guests.

I-hop is also popular in the mainland United States. Between Denny's and I-Hop, I prefer I-Hop because they have vegetarian and gluten-free menus. I think the selling point of this store is the pancakes. Four types of sweet sauces are always on the table: strawberry, blueberry, butter pecan, and old fashioned. They also had gluten free pancakes. We also have an extensive kids menu.