Experience What Mediterraneo Has to Offer

King Street is home to numerous restaurants and eateries from sushi to scampi. Also a wide range of restaurant types, from board shorts and slippers to coat and tie. Well, coat and tie are optional at most places but every so often I liked to get dressed up. Anyway a restaurant came highly recommended to me so I tried it out. Mediterraneo located on the makai side of King Street and serves a variety of Mediterranean/Italian dishes. On a weekday my wife and her father went to Mediterraneo and had a rather pleasant meal. The food was tasty and the portions were modest. The lone waitress seemed to handle the three of us and one other table just fine. Beside from putting her foot on the back of the empty chair when taking our order, our experience at Mediterraneo prompted us to have another dinner there for my wife and her mother’s birthday dinner. A few weeks after our first visit my wife’s family including her 89 year old aunty and 92 year old grandmother came to experience what Mediterraneo had to offer.


This time Mediterraneo had a few more customers than the last time but our table was reserved for the seven of us. The same Asian waitress seated us and took out orders with a nice sized foot on one of the chairs. A middle aged man also was there helping out with the orders and bringing out the food. Within the first 15 minutes, our orders were taken and the wait for our food started. If you have been to Mediterraneo before you will probably guess that the countdown for food will go on for a long time. After an hour and a half the first dish came out of the kitchen. I don’t know about you but an hour and a half is a bit excessive for me. Already a little steamed I sat back waiting for the rest of the dishes to come to our table but it’s a good thing I didn’t hold my breath otherwise I would have passed out. We had to wait an additional 5 to 10 minutes to get the rest of meals out. I don’t know about you but if you have a 92 year old grandmother they are not used to eating at 8:45. My grandparents, may the rest in peace, use to eat at a rather late 4:30 PM.

Anyway this story happened about six months ago and I still can visualize that waitress with her foot on the back of my chair and never apologizing for the slow kitchen or the slow service or even bringing another subpar loaf of bread to pass the time. Bottom line is we had reservations at 6:30 and didn’t leave that place until 9:30. So if you have three hours to kill and you don’t care about a size 5 shoe on your chair then Mediterraneo sounds like your kind of place. I’m guessing that that most people want their food as close to the time they order it. Call me crazy.