1. Restaurants
2. Honolulu

AV Restaurant

Reviews 54

• Vikram S
  Mon, 27 Nov 2023 20:50
  I will tag this place as Asian influenced vegan/vegetarian tasting. We went to this place to celebrate the wedding anniversary. As said in other recent reviews, the place was empty. That means we had the entire restaurant for ourselves. We were asked to choose a table or bar, and we opted to table. Good things: 1. Food is loaded with flavors 2. Not all items are supposed to be eaten by chopstick. The crew provides specific instructions on how to eat. If you don't know how to eat with chopstick, don't worry. 3. Staff is friendly and enjoys conversations. 4. There is a happy meal option, in case you are not feeling filled. It is suggested a few items before desserts. It includes a plant based patty and fries and costs extra. A couple of downsides I noticed: 1. Service was too fast. Initially, it felt like they were rushing through items. We had to eat slowly to enjoy the flavors. 2. There are not many pairing options of wine other than sake.
• Felicitas O
  Fri, 10 Nov 2023 0:17
  Oy where do I start? First off I want to say I was very excited to be trying out a vegan fine dining experience in Honolulu and neither the cost nor the small plates were a turnoff. I came with a local friend and we reserved a table at 5:30 expecting this to take a while. When we arrived 5 minutes late the place was deserted and I thought I had gotten the time wrong but no, we were the only guests. Oh well. We were seated at the end of the long bar like sushi counter, like someone else remarked under overhead lights next to the kitchen with little ambiance. No tablecloths, the surfaces are black corian. The server could not have been nicer and it is he that made the entire event bearable! Right of the get go the food was not awesome! Beautiful to look at but not very flavorful. Basically mostly prepared and stored in tupper containers, then plated in front of us! I believe the first three dishes took 15 minutes or less and I made a remark that at this pace we’d be done in about 40 minutes or so! Insane! The server then offered to slow things down. We had a nice conversation with him about where he’s from, his upcoming trip to Japan and so on. I had been to 11madison in New York which I shared images off. We were basically killing time! The food was mediocre at best! The fact that someone was basically standing right in front of us, snapping open Tupperware, taking out prepared items, placing them on dishes then sliding them over simply felt surreal! No chef in site! A second person was there but I’m not sure what she was doing, possibly preparing for guests arriving for the 8 pm seating? I’m grateful that my friend and also myself have a good sense of humor and pretty much laughed this entire thing off as an experience we’d be looking back on one day as a funny story! One dish, done colorful pasta like ravioli looked like kids food with bright blue striped. Rubberlike cold texture! The hot broth poured over it was actually pretty good. The worst was the cream cheese like sauce on the rice ball like things we were served. It tasted like breakfast spread with jelly mixed in. The last dessert I also did not finish! I’ll say at this point that I’m not a huge foodie! I love a lot of things, enjoy “ raised by the waves” because it’s so clean and fresh and flavorful! This food was just terrible! The chef I hear teaches at the culinary institute! I’m beyond astonished! Truly! Amazing!!! I just can’t imagine this restaurant will last. I’ve been vegan for over 6 years and gladly try out any place that offers vegan food but this place was probably the worst vegan food I’ve ever had. Again, the plating is great, it looks pretty enough and our server was lovely. But that was about it. I just can’t imagine what it would be like to book this for a special occasion or romantic evening!
• Marc McIsaac
  Thu, 1 Jun 2023 20:46
  Wow, what an amazing experience! My first time eating at a Vegan only restaurant was incredible. I am a Meat and Potatos, steak is a staple for me but AV is so much more than just a Vegan restaurant, the food is all delicious and the experience of the Chef’s menu was awesome. I took a first date here and we had a great time. Staff was soooo friendly. Set Menu was perfect Two desserts was a shock and welcome A definite must experience place in Honolulu.
• David Yastremsky
  Sun, 5 Mar 2023 3:35
  Wow wow wow. I can’t believe this jewel has only been around a year. The chef talks you through the dishes, which she seems to be experimenting on 24/7. You go around the world with dishes from cultures like indigenious Hawaiian to Indian to Japanese, sometimes in one dish. Every dish was packed with flavor. One of our favorites: the pop rocks that explode in your mouth, releasing fruit juice and a soft shell of the balloon that melts. I don’t want to give much more away, but it’s safe to say that this experience blends cultures, tastes, chemistry (for multiple dishes), and ingredients like you never see. From picking handmade bowls and unique chopstick holders up until the very end, this was a wonderful, unique dining experience. I hope to see this restaurant grow and thrive. It really is worth a visit for everyone, vegan, vegetarian, or omni. I still have trouble naming just one or two favorite dishes from eating here, and I learned a lot to pull into my own cooking. (I’d also happily pay for a plate of some of these, if that ever becomes an option! But every dish is labor-intensive and most/all of the ingredients seem to be made from scratch everyday.)
• Jade Napierala
  Fri, 5 Aug 2022 1:20
  Exquisite food- it is obvious a lot of time and effort go into the different courses. I really appreciated the variety of options and flavors we experienced. We did try the waffle dog- those were incredible! I’d recommend sharing one because they are very filling. All of the courses were dreamy except for the mushroom sandwich. That wasn’t great at all :( The restaurant was not at all what I expected for fine dining. I came here expecting a nice cosy experience where I could bond with my husband on his birthday and feel like we are in an intimate setting. Instead we were alone, under bright lights, facing the waitstaff kinda sharing conversation with her the entire night. She wasn’t vegan which was fine, but just kept talking about her opinion on vegan foods and made a lot of small talk which wasn’t what I expected for a nice dinner. We opted for the sake pairing not realizing it cost $65. So that would have been nice to have a warning on. With the price of the meal and it being a pairing I had assumed it would be included or added on for a small charge. It would have been nice to just have one or two glasses of wine or a cocktail as an option instead of water or $65 sake pairing… Overall, I definitely regret the amount of money spent on the experience. I love the concept and the food was amazing, but I would rather spent half the cost on less courses. To charge $150 and to have to make constant conversation with staff was very off putting/ unprofessional/ unromantic/ awkward. I’m sure a lot of the cost of making the food would be hard for us to conceptualize without being chefs, so I can appreciate that. However, for someone looking to experience fine dining for a romantic night out I left feeling kinda cheated and disappointed with many expectations dashed.