Longhi’s Ala Moana: Are you kidding me?!

When it was finally the week for our friends from Tokyo to return home, we went with my dad to take them out for a sayonara dinner at Longhi’s in Ala Moana. I’ve been here once before, and several times to the Longhi’s on Maui.

What I remember about this restaurant, especially on Maui, is that it was always so accommodating with excellent service and good food. I remember back when they didn’t use menus. The waiter would just ask you what you felt like eating – seafood, meat, chicken, pasta, etc. And in a couple minutes you’d have a personalized order being sent to the kitchen.

One of our favorites at Longhi’s has always been the Chicken Marsala. It doesn’t usually come with pasta but if we asked the waiter, they’d always been more than happy to add some linguine to the plate.

Anyway, back to our night. We were seated at a pretty nice table with a view that you can see in the picture above. Our waiter greeted us, gave us dinner and drink menus and promptly announced that they were out of Marsala wine. So therefore, what just so happens to be our favorite dish was not available. This was so disappointing.

The drink menu was interesting, and our orders were given to the waiter when he came around after ten minutes or so.

About five minutes after that he came back and told my husband, I’m sorry but we are out of the beer you ordered. Okay, now we were 0 for 2. No Chicken Marsala…no beer.

After he changed his drink order we put in our dinner order. Since they didn’t have Chicken Marsala, my hubby ordered the Chicken Parmesan instead and asked for a side of linguine on his plate as we usually do.

Our waiter told us that they CAN NOT do that.

Really? You can’t put linguine on to the plate? We used to get this before. In fact, on Maui the waiter used to offer this as an option! Instead if he wanted pasta he would have to order a side dish of linguine with some kind of basil sauce. We decided to just give in and take that.

At this point there was a kind of shouting going on in my head that sounded like – Do you guys have anything that we want?

The answer apparently was yes. Because I looked through the menu to find a replacement for my Chicken Marsala and found that they had lamb chops. My dad and I both decided to order this. Yay! I love lamb.

Another 5 minutes went by after putting our order in and the waiter came back to tell us, I’m sorry but we are out of lamb. I asked him, are you kidding me?! Thinking that this had to – HAD TO – be a joke.

But alas, it wasn’t. While feeling defeated being 0 for – is it 3 or 4 now, he proceeded to tell us that they did have steak available. But really, if we had wanted steak for dinner we would have gone downstairs to Morton’s Steak House.

The waiter rattled off about 3 or 4 different steak options. I asked him what the prices were for these options and he said the steaks were all the same price, same as the lamb.

I didn’t have my menu anymore so I just ordered what I thought sounded the best. But funny, looking over the menu photos tonight – it doesn’t look like they were all the same price….

After my dad and I chose new steak orders for dinner, things finally got rolling. They brought out their bread which I always look forward to and is really an appetizer in itself.

And about 15 minutes later, our orders:

Mussels appetizer

Scallops and seafood appetizer

Chicken Parmesan

Prime Rib Eye Steak

Filet Longhi

Dessert

While everything up until the food coming out was an absolute train wreck, the food actually tasted pretty good. My favorite was my dad’s Rib Eye Steak. The accompanying balsamic reduction sauce was really good. Everyone else really liked my dish, the Filet Longhi with basil butter sauce.

The dessert was also really good. It tasted like a lighter version of a cheesecake with lots of berries which I love. And to end this Tuesday evening – maybe just because the universe knew I was so disappointed from earlier – there was a fireworks show right outside the window.