Hawaiian Restaurant Near Me in Torrance: King's Hawaiian's Flagship Bakery Since 1988

King's Hawaiian opened its full-service Bakery & Restaurant at 2808 Sepulveda Blvd, Torrance, CA 90505 in 1988, eleven years after the Hilo-born bread company first baked on the mainland in Torrance. It opens at 7am and closes at 9pm every day, walk-ins are welcome, and reservations are taken online. The loco moco plate costs $20 and the 8-inch Paradise cake costs $39. For anyone typing Hawaiian restaurant near me in the South Bay, this is where the orange-bag sweet rolls come from, and where they are still served warm.

Robert Taira founded the business as Robert's Bakery in Hilo in 1950. His breakthrough was finding a way to extend the short shelf life of Portuguese sweet bread, which let him sell it to supermarkets in volume. The company moved to Honolulu in 1963 and became King's Bakery, opened its first mainland factory in Torrance in 1977, and moved its headquarters to the mainland in 1988.

That same year the family opened this full-service Bakery & Restaurant, which mixes Hawaiian local food with American diner dishes and fresh baked goods. Taira died in 2003 and the company stayed with his family. A faster, counter-service sister cafe, The Local Place, now runs on Western Avenue. The Sepulveda Boulevard dining room remains the flagship, and two recent Google reviewers wrote that they first knew the rolls from Costco or the grocery store.

The loco moco plate costs $20: a homemade hamburger patty grilled and topped with two over-easy eggs, brown gravy and green onions, served over rice with a scoop of potato macaroni salad. Saimin costs $15 and comes with King's Hawaiian noodles in seafood broth with char siu, egg, kamaboko and green onion. The fried rice, $14, mixes Portuguese sausage, bacon, egg and kamaboko under pickled red ginger.

The oxtail soup is the dish Google reviewers name most after the cakes, with 67 mentions. It costs $26 and arrives plate-lunch style, the oxtail cooked until it falls off the bone in a house broth with napa cabbage, cilantro, water chestnuts, mushrooms and star anise, with steamed rice, potato macaroni salad and fresh ginger. The oxtail saimin version, $27, adds noodles, baby bok choy and carrots.

Spam musubi here is a plate of fried Spam with furikake wrapped in rice and nori, cut into eight bite-size pieces with teriyaki sauce for $9.75, so it suits a table that wants to share. Several Google reviewers wrote that the meal began with complimentary warm Hawaiian rolls, and the fish tank in the dining room gets 65 mentions in the review highlights.

The King's Hawaiian French toast, $13.50, uses the original sweet bread soaked in a homemade batter, and it is the most-mentioned dish in Google reviews, with 108 mentions. The Big Island Breakfast, $18.50, pairs that French toast with two eggs and bacon, Portuguese sausage, fried Spam or turkey sausage. Hawaiian eggs Benedict, $19.50, swaps the ham for kalua pork or Spam.

Skip the waffle combination. It is $18, it is only served until 2pm, and one Google reviewer who ordered it with bacon called it a typical breakfast item; the sweet-bread French toast is the reason to come in the morning. The Infatuation went further and called much of the savory menu forgettable, advising readers to come for the baked goods. Order savory dishes for the island classics, then spend the rest of your appetite at the bakery counter.

The Paradise cake is the house signature: three layers of guava, passion fruit and lime chiffon filled with tropical whipped cream and topped with guava, passion fruit and lime glaze. An 8-inch cake serves eight to ten people and costs $39. Each morning the decorators also make a one-off Specialty Paradise design for $50, which can carry a personal message but cannot be changed.

The haupia cake, $36 for 8 inches, layers vanilla chiffon with coconut milk pudding and whipped cream. Malasadas, the Portuguese-style sugared donuts, cost $2.75 but must be ordered one day in advance. Mochi donuts get 78 mentions in Google reviews, and this October's pumpkin spice version costs $3.50. A Jack-O'-Lantern pumpkin cake, $40, is available for pickup only on Oct. 30 and 31.

Walk-ins are accepted, but the restaurant recommends a reservation because it gets busy; tables are booked through the reservation link on its website. Prepaid pickup orders are collected inside at the bakery counter, where you take a number and wait to be called. The restaurant does not ship restaurant or bakery items, and gift cards are sold only as e-gift cards through online ordering.

Holiday orders open well ahead. The Mahalosgiving family meal, $200 for four to six people, includes oven-roasted turkey with homemade gravy, guava ham, Portuguese sausage stuffing and dinner rolls, with pickup only on Nov. 25 and 26. If the dining room has a long wait, drive nine minutes to The Local Place at 18605 S Western Ave, the counter-service sister cafe, where one Google reviewer found the prices cheaper than on Sepulveda.

Charles H. Wilson Park, at 2200 Crenshaw Blvd, is a 12-minute walk away and hosts the Torrance Certified Farmers' Market on Tuesdays and Saturdays from 8am to 1pm. Google reviewers single out the fresh fruit, pupusas and kettle corn, and one regular advised going early with your own bags. The park itself is open from 6am to 10pm and has a splash pad and batting cages.

Del Amo Fashion Center is a three-minute drive or a 27-minute walk away, so the restaurant works as a breakfast stop before a shopping day. The building has a wheelchair-accessible parking lot, entrance, seating and restroom, according to its Google listing, and the 5,568 Google reviews put its rating at 4.6.

King's Hawaiian Bakery & Restaurant, 2808 Sepulveda Blvd, Torrance, CA 90505. Open daily 7am to 9pm. Loco moco plate $20, saimin $15, oxtail soup $26, Spam musubi $9.75, King's Hawaiian French toast $13.50, 8-inch Paradise cake $39, malasada $2.75 with one day's notice. Reservations online, walk-ins accepted. Pickup orders at the bakery counter. Sister cafe: The Local Place, 18605 S Western Ave.