Just being on Maui can be pretty darn romantic. All you need to do is step outside and all five of your senses will light up. Hearing the ocean, smelling the flowers, seeing the palm trees, touching the sand and tasting the ono (delicious) food sets you up for a romantic vacation that you’ll never forget. Here is our breakdown of the top 10 most romantic activities on Maui.
Sure, Maui has the standard fast food restaurants: McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Wendy’s, Burger King, etc. But Maui also has Hawaii-based fast food joints if you want a quick meal with more of a local flavor. Since we’re only including restaurants with two or more locations, we won’t include our favorite hamburger shop, Teddy’s Bigger Burger in Lahaina. Here are our five favorite Hawaii-based fast food restaurants.
Sure, you may look like a tourist while sitting at a beach bar with an aloha shirt, sunglasses, a straw hat and big fruity drink with an umbrella or pineapple wedge hanging precariously off the rim of the glass, but damn… who cares? Tropical drinks can be served anywhere in the world. This is fact. But tropical drinks taste better when served in a tropical environment. This is opinion. But most people share this opinion! We’ve compiled a list of the most popular tropical cocktail drinks on Maui. If we were able to track down the history of the drink, we’ve included it. If not, or if it’s maybe something we made up, well, then you’ll just get the ingredients. Bottoms up!
Though poke is now a “thing” on the mainland, here in Hawaii the plate lunch is still king. So what is a plate lunch? Simply, a plate lunch is a scoop of macaroni salad, two scoops or rice and some sort of protein. Popular proteins include chicken katsu (fried chicken breasts or thighs, pictured above), kalua pig, shrimp, kalbi ribs, pork lau lau and of course, loco moco. Most places also serve a “mini” plate, which includes just one scoop of rice and cut-down portion of the meat.
When you travel to an island locale like Maui, the last thing you think about eating is a hot dog. But not all hot dogs are created equal. One item that separates Maui hot dogs from hot dogs available elsewhere are the local toppings we can offer up. Here are our choices for the best hot dogs on Maui. Woof!
Generally speaking, a plate lunch consists of two scoops of rice, mac (macaroni) salad and an entree. Historians believe plate lunches started when pineapple and sugar cane plantation workers would bring bento boxes, made up of rice and a main course, to work for lunch. In the 1030s, food carts visited the fields serving up similar lunches on plates, thus crowning the name “plate lunch.” Today, plate lunches can be found in grocery stores, drive-ins, restaurants and food trucks. Here are our five favorite plate lunch places on Maui.
For this list, we’ve made sure all of the burgers are under $10. At some point, we’ll do a second list for “high-end” burgers. But for now, we want to focus on affordable, good burgers. The other thing to note about this list is we focused solely on “standard” cheeseburgers, not the fancier varieties that most of these places also offer. So with those caveats in place, here are our favorite burger joints on Maui.
Shrimp trucks are a mainstay in Hawaii. The most famous is Giovanni’s on Oahu’s north shore. But here on Maui, we have some good shrimp truck options, as well. Here is a list of our five favorites.
We’re talking traditional donuts, not malasadas, OK? We have a different article about our favorite malasadas. For this one, we’re talking straight donuts. We love donuts. The round kind with the hole, the long kind, the twisty kind, the filled kind. All kinds! Whether for breakfast or dessert, donuts rule. We pretty much had to flip a coin between number 1 and number 2 on our list. They are both so ono! Here are our five favorite places to get donuts on Maui.
For many people, a romantic night on the lanai with a nice bottle of wine makes for a perfect vacation night. For others, part of the fun of vacation is going to a lively bar and laughing with friends. Here are five places on Maui that serve fantastic wines in fun and/or romantic settings.
