Protea Cafe

Full Disclosure: I was a huge fan of the old Protea café at this location.
The new place, «Café Italia» is a step down from the previous restaurant. Everything lacks the fit & finish of typical restaurants in Waikiki. The paper menus, chalkboard sign, empty pastry shelves, and vacant walls didn’t set a great mood.
Food-​wise, I ordered an Acai Bowl and they had run out of granola by 10am. It tasted OK sans-​granola but the ingredients were thrown into a bowl haphazardly instead of Protea’s elegant presentation. My fiancé ordered the King Kamehameha which was good, with noteworthy sweet/​spicy pineapple topping on the ham. Her vanilla late was «up to barista standards.» Service was prompt & courteous, but not exceptional.
Bottom line, it takes much more than adding crepes to the menu to make this an Italian café. Especially since crepes are French.

Lovely little café with true delicious Italian food! The french toast and pancakes are to die for. And the little Asian chef makes you feel right at home and makes you want to come back again and again, and we did! Must have eaten there five times during our stay. Highly recommend this little hidden gem.

This is a cute little café inside the Luana Waikiki. My dad had the breakfast burrito and loved it. My mom and I had acai bowls, mine without yogurt that normally comes with it. The acai bowls had too much granola for the amount of acai (which was not quite as much as I might have liked), but they were quite delicious nonetheless. Service was good. This is a cash only establishment.

So shocked by the number of poor reviews for this place! Me and my boyfriend stayed at the luana for a week (café is located inside this hotel) and we ate here almost every morning!
We tried the caprese sandwich, tomato soup, bagels, crepes, and a few other menu items. Everything we had tasted really good and fresh. Not sure what these others are talking about?
Prices are also relatively low for it being the Waikiki area.
Staff was also super friendly and we all became good friends by the end of our trip!
Ignore the other reviews and give this place a try. Well worth it!

The choices seem to keep getting less and the flavors/​style are not as unique as before the big changes. Still friendly, still cozy, but not nearly the «something special» it once was. Pizzas gone. Mostly a hotel breakfast joint with some salads now. On the upside I’ve never had to wait and never been dissatisfied.

Not terrible but like most people here, I was accidentally looking at the OLD menu. The new menu is very limited. My $ 9 breakfast burrito was more like $ 4 quality and my boyfriend had to sit and watch me eat for 10 minutes before he got his food…

My husband and I tried protea on two different occasions. The first was for breakfast and two males were working. They seemed to be overwhelmed and we had horrible service– we ordered at the counter and eventually found some seats only to wait for a long time before finally asking what was up. No drinks or anything for at least 15 minutes. By the time we got our food it was in to-​go cartons and cold and the «server» seemed annoyed with us for sitting down. We had to ask for silverware, water, ketchup, etc.
Days later, we tried it again at lunchtime and it was great. Two different people working and we were waited on quickly and had great service. The menu is healthy and the ingredients fresh. The crepes are great and I regret not trying their acai bowl– it looked fab.

Soooo happy they re-​opened
If you’re a fly by night tourist… you might catch em on a bad day
Or moment… but as I live and work in the area, Protea café is my go to.
No franchise freeze dried preservatives for this lady on the go.
Only fresh produce and kindness all around.
And if you’re into theme décor you’ll be in heaven… authentic type antiques from the South Pacific.
Any great establishment has growing pains.
Bah humbug negative nellys

The chicken pesto panini with bacon was best I ever tasted. The crust was so crispy. Very healthy for those who are on a diet. Well, that’s what I think. This place is under new management, the staff are polite, but the menu is small. Not to bad though cause it’s about quality, not quantity.

JUST TERRIBLE! DO not come here!
There’s like 4 things total on the menu.
They were out of green onion and spinach for the omelet, which ended up not tasting like anything.
The french toast tasted like crap, the cook even made a weird face at it as he flipped it!
The acai bowl was all acai purée — didn’t even taste legit.
The coook was yelling at his staff right in front of us! It was so ridiculous. WIll not be returning, ever.

Somehow my husband didn’t quite read current reviews and was deceived by food pics from past reviews. This is not the same place. Super tiny café, not family friendly-​no high chairs available. Nothing special about menu. 3 of our dishes needed to be substituted because they were out of the original item in the description of menu. I heard the server say «sorry» to almost every table because it either took long to serve or they were out of something.

I use to come to this place fairly consistently for over almost two years. The menu used to be amazing with a great environment and good service. protea closed and reopened under new management. Mediocre food and paper cups. Don’t bother…

Protea is barely visible from the street as it’s apart of a hotel and tucked in front of the lobby. It’s pretty small inside but it was clean and serviced by friendly girls.
I ordered the acai bowl and it was huge! Shared between two people, it was the perfect fresh start for a day around Honolulu. If you’re staying around the Waikiki area, walk over to this place and grab some breakfast.

Couldn’t BELIVE they are tricking the customers, it’s not right!!! The owner needs to step up and put the real menu items on Unilocal!!!There lying and tricking us to go there and service and food is terrible!!! Who ever owns this place is very deceitful!!! It’s so WRONG!!! Waste of my time!!! Will never RETURN!!!

Different owner different menu. Terrible food, no comment on the service.
Got tricked by Unilocal!Wasted a meal here!

This place is under new management.
Most of the food in the photos are not available any more including the bloody mary’s.
They ran out of granola for acai bowls when we came. At noon.

This is for last week when I was in wakiki area.
«Under new management» my server told me. When I brought up various complaints.
Ordered: their acai bowl ($ 11) and classic omlet ($ 9ish)
There’s a sign outside that promotes their $ 11 acai bowl. «Come in and try our acai bowl» it says. When the bowl came it was half full/​empty in a small bowl, mostly just acai purée with small amount of Banana and strawberry. Do not believe the previous photos taken. Most likely from previous management since that’s what the server keep saying.
Omlet was fine (bland, 3stars at most, and you can’t really go wrong with omlet.), however, the server never asked what two sides I wanted and I honestly did not know i needed to choose. But what they ended up randomly picking for me was two piles of white rice. They never bothered to come back and double check. I would’ve figured default would be hash brown or or regular breakfast.
I don’t want to include service in the rating but it was horrible regardless. All three server seemingly were out out of it. I basically had to ask for our utensils, I heard another group ask the server to clean the table after they sat down for over 5 minutes. Granted the place was small and it wasn’t even busy at the moment.
Overall under this new management, it is not a good culinary experience. I recommend goofy around the area, me and my group stayed at modern hotel and that is probably a way better choice for breakfast/​brunch.

Opened under new management with a new menu.
Well, the menu isn’t that great. The sandwiches are very small for the price you pay. Regular sliced bread and the blt was maybe 4 slices of bacon, small piece of lettuce and 2 tomato slices with barely any mayo for $ 7. Chicken sandwich was basically the same thing minus the bacon (I did ask for bacon but I guess they forgot). The chicken «breast» was so small/​thin, that after my first bite of the sandwich I was left with cheese, tomato and lettuce on sliced bread. This cost about $ 12.50.
Both came with chips. I hope the new owner/​manager/​cook understands Ch. 50, the new food code. No bare handed contact with ready — to — eat foods. So please next time you put chips on someone’s plate use gloves and perhaps we’d not waste it. Afraid to say anything at the time because you know, they make our food.
I miss the old Protea with delicious pizzas and other great filling menu items. I left here for lunch, and had to go have a snack, and not a light one. Not good for a $ 21 meal for 2.
The only good thing is they still honored the IDcard discount, even though the girl serving us had no idea what an IDcard or its discount was.
Maybe I will go back once they’ve been open for a couple of months or expand the menu, but I doubt it.