Sueoka Store

We wanted to check out a couple of the adjacent shops, but the common parking was full. This place has parking for customers only, and we wanted to play fair so we went in for bananas. And what did we find? Organic bananas for $ 1.29 per pound, about what Safeway charges for ordinary, and quite a bit less than Safeway organic ($ 1.79). Who would expect a quaint, one of a kind family grocery store to beat a huge supermarket chain? Nice going Sueoka!
OK, maybe beating the chain store on price is an aberration; maybe I caught Safeway on a bad day and Sueoka on a good day. But Safeway and Costco aren’t this store’s real competition. The local competition is Living Foods in Poipu, where the prices are best described as «you don’t want to know.» This place beats that one by more than enough to be worth the five minute drive.
In addition to decent prices, selection looked good; I saw some foods that were unfamiliar to my mainland eyes.

Probably the best SPAM musubi I have ever had. It has the perfect proportions of rice, spam, egg, nori, and sauce. Some places just give you an overwhelming amount of rice with a small strip of nori and SPAM. Not here. They split the rice and sandwich the spam and egg in the middle. One section of rice is seasoned with sauce. The nori covers the entire thing instead of just a small strip.
It is also hard to find if you don’t come early. Locals stop by before they go to work in the morning to grab these! We went at 8AM and there was only 1 Spam and Egg Musubi left.
There is a private lot for parking.

Friendly local grocery with eclectic mix of asian and american food items. Got some ginger chews (delicious way to help stay awake driving), a canned assam milk tea (ditto), and an ice cream bar to placate the kids. Not as nice & modern as Ishihara Market further west in Waimea, but a good stop to get snacks on the way to Poipu beach.

Conveniently located in Koloa I found this market suits my grocery needs for items such as fruits and veggies and meats. Friendly and helpful employees and this store has everything from foods to prepare meals, souvenirs, beach items and postcards. I LOVED that you can get spam musubi but you must come early!

This store brings back so many memories here on Kauai. Wether it was lunch stuff or bait, this was a frequent stop. The store gives you the feeling of a country store where all the locals knows each other. The shelves are stocked but not overly stocked knowing that this is a country store.
I haven’t been here for over 15 years yet it made me feel the same way I did way back then. I hope it never changes.

Over the years we’ve visited Kauai we’ve stopped in to Sueoka’s to replenish fruit supplies or pick up other food items. They tend to be expensive, so most of our produce comes from fruit stands and farmers’ markets. We stopped at Big Save last week and bought papayas, bananas, limes, English muffins and peanut butter. The bananas are STILL green after close to a week, the papaya we had this morning was «not bad» at best and the English muffins were boring. Last night Alan stopped in at Sueoka’s to buy more English muffins. His eye was caught by a loaf of Midnight Bear 9-​Grain bread from Hanapepe. It was $ 7, but he bought it, figuring it would be more interesting than English muffins. We had it w/​breakfast this morning and it was fabulous. Any leftovers are going home w/​us in my carry on. We may even buy another loaf and freeze it. It’s that good. Sueoka’s is a cool, old school market. I think we’ve made our last trip to Big Save.

I had two choices for supermarkets in Poipu: this place or Big Save and I thought Big Save would be better for my boyfriend and me but I thought wrong. Sueoka’s produce was fresher and cheaper and their meat selection was just what a couple bbqing dinner at their condo near the beach needed: single chicken breasts rather than Foster Farm packages of 12 chicken thighs.
Now, Sueoka’s lunch plate place next door is another story. We went on a Sunday afternoon and waited 15 minutes to order and then 10 minutes for the food to be ready. I ordered the the rice plate with teriyaki beef and mahimahi for about 6 bucks. My boyfriend order the mahimahi hamburger for about 3 bucks. Such crazy cheap prices, right?
The mahimahi hamburger was a fried fish fillet with a sad bun, a leaf of lettuce, and mayo.
The rice plate was white rice, a variation of the ubiquitous macaroni salad you find every where in Hawaii, the same mahimahi fried fish fillet that was my boyfriend’s lunch, and four cubes of teriyaki beef that must have been cooked that morning.
I wanted it to be such a cheap, good eats place. But it turned out to be the local favorite with a long wait, reasonable prices (most rice plates will end up costing you about 10 bucks), and tired, outdated food. Not worth the calories but will do in a pinch since it is a local favorite and not merely a tourist trap.

My husband and I stopped by Sueoka’s at least three times in our week long trip. Just down the road there was a larger chain grocery store but we really liked shopping at this local ma and pop shop.
One time we grabbed some Arizona ice teas, spam musubi, fish and rice, and some apples for breakfast before our surf lesson. These items were very convenient to take to the beach and were really tasty.
Another time we stopped by to get some local snacks: a banana muffin, marlin jerky (bleh), and onion chips. A bit random, but whatever…
Basically, I really liked this store because of the location and homeyness place.

This is a cool market. Many of your mainland needed-​items but also local and even Fillipino things too. Not much fish – you need to go to a fish market. Plus parking!