Hawaiian Restaurant Near Me in Gardena: A 16-Lane Bowling Alley's Hawaiian Royal

Gardena Bowl Coffee Shop serves its Hawaiian Royal, a heap of Portuguese sausage, chashu, green onions and eggs over rice with teriyaki sauce, from 8am every morning inside a bowling alley that dates to 1948. The diner sits at 15707 S Vermont Ave, Gardena, CA 90247, closes at 9:30pm Sunday through Thursday and at 10:30pm on Friday and Saturday, and keeps its whole breakfast menu running all day. As Hawaiian restaurant near me answers go in the South Bay, few come with 16 lanes next door.

Gardena Bowl is an old-school, family-run alley that opened in 1948, and the coffee shop occupies one corner of it. Frank Nakano has co-owned the diner since 2001 with Hideki Obayashi, his brother-in-law. Both men are of Japanese descent, and Islands magazine reported that they have a soft spot for Japanese American food, which explains why tonkatsu and saba miso share a menu with loco moco and lau lau.

Islands also noted that the menu has barely moved since the 1970s, and the room matches the bowling sign outside. Eat the World Los Angeles counted roughly 30 seats at full capacity, with booths along two walls and a counter that solo diners favor. A yellow hibiscus, Hawaii's state flower, is the only hint from the street that island food waits inside, and every table carries its own box of condiments.

The coffee shop itself calls the Hawaiian Royal one of the dishes it is known for, and The Infatuation described it as a massive plate that should be on your table. Sausage and chashu are chopped into the eggs, scattered with green onion, then laid over rice and finished with teriyaki. A sibling dish, the Our Own Style Portuguese Sausage Mix, swaps chashu out and lets you pick rice or potatoes underneath.

The section titled Da Kine is where the islands show up most clearly. It lists a loco moco, a kalua loco moco, lau lau with lomi lomi, kalua cabbage with mac salad, a kalua pork plate and a poke plate. Sides include poi, lomi lomi, Spam musubi sold four pieces to an order, and fried won ton in sixes. The Infatuation singled out the smoky, fatty kalua pig and cabbage as a highlight.

Noodles carry the Japanese side of the kitchen. Saimin comes with chashu or chicken, or as a won ton saimin, and both can be paired with teriyaki sticks as a combo. Tempura noodles, nabeyaki noodles and fried saimin or udon round out the list, and a cold saimin appears in season. Fried rice runs from shrimp to the kimchi bacon version that The Infatuation called excellent and that one recent Google reviewer described as massive.

Breakfast is the house strength, and the main menu carries the note that it is served all day. Eggs come two large with chashu, teriyaki beef, Vienna sausage, Spam, bologna or a breakfast steak, and fried bologna or fried wieners can be ordered simply over rice. Hawaiian French toast is made with sweet island bread, which Eat the World identified as King's Hawaiian round bread from nearby Torrance, and it also comes in a combo with eggs and bacon.

After dark the menu leans toward Japanese set dinners. Sukiyaki and tempura, chicken teriyaki and sashimi, and tonkatsu and tempura are each served with tsukemono, miso soup, rice and green tea. The kitchen also posts daily specials, and its own description names egg foo young, oxtail soup, chili wieners, fish and chips, sashimi dinners and boiled peanuts among them. Those specials rotate and are posted on a dedicated page of the diner's website, which shows a 4pm to 6pm window for the day's board.

Read the small print on the Asian dishes before ordering. Plates such as garlic chicken, beef teriyaki, saba shio and miso butterfish include miso soup or salad and rice when you eat in, but takeout orders do not get them. You can swap in half an order of fried rice for an extra charge, and the menu says plainly that no other substitutions are allowed. Garlic chicken, for the record, is the dish co-owner Obayashi told Islands he prefers.

Skip the Caesar and Chinese chicken salads, the club sandwich and the patty melt. They are fine diner fare, but The Infatuation's verdict was that you come here for the Hawaiian and Asian dishes, and the turkey burger will not justify a drive to Gardena. One reviewer quoted by Islands warned to expect a short wait before sitting down, with service fast once you are in, and the parking lot fills when the room does.

If every booth is taken, walk 0.2 miles north on Vermont, about four minutes, to Cherrystones at 15501 S Vermont Ave. It also serves Hawaiian and Pacific Rim plates, has booth seating and a bar, and says it has over 30 years of restaurant and catering service. Its lunch menu runs Tuesday through Friday, prime rib is a Friday night dinner, and the Chili Shack opens on Sunday from 11am to 4pm. Cherrystones is closed on Monday.

Eat the World described a morning crowd made up largely of older Japanese American diners, many with roots in Hawaii, alongside Hawaiian families and customers chatting with staff in Spanish and English. Two older men at one table were trading stories from the Vietnam War. When breakfast winds down, bowling leagues arrive to lace up their shoes, and the 16 lanes start to rumble on the other side of the wall.

Reviews collected on the diner's own homepage show how long people have been coming. One Google reviewer said he had eaten here since he was a young boy and listed the loco moco, the Royal fried rice and the oxtail soup among his orders. Another called the place an institution of more than 30 years and said the Portuguese sausage is a guilty pleasure she makes sure to eat at least twice a year.

The diner is inside Gardena Bowl on S Vermont Ave, and Islands magazine notes that parking is available for diners in the alley's own lot. Driving is the easy option. Without a car, Google Maps puts the Harbor Gateway Transit Center at 731 W 182nd St about 1.6 miles to the south, a 36-minute walk straight up Vermont. The coffee shop takes table bookings online and lists online ordering for pickup or delivery.

Mas Fukai Park at 15800 Brighton Ave is a 13-minute, 0.6-mile walk away via Magnolia Avenue, according to Google Maps. The Los Angeles County park is open 24 hours and has a baseball field, a children's playground and picnic areas, which makes it a handy spot for kids to burn energy after a plate of fried rice. The park's diamond also hosts games for the Azteca Baseball League, whose field listing opens at 8am on Sunday.

Gardena Bowl Coffee Shop, inside Gardena Bowl at 15707 S Vermont Ave, Gardena, CA 90247. Hours are 8am to 9:30pm Sunday through Thursday and 8am to 10:30pm on Friday and Saturday, with breakfast served all day. Drinks include fresh-squeezed orange juice, Hawaiian Sun, green tea and coffee. The online menu does not list prices. Reservations and online orders are both available through gardenabowlcoffeeshop.com, and the diner also caters parties.