City guide · Honolulu, Hawaii
Honolulu sushi, from the Waikiki counters to the King Street kitchens
How the 143 verified sushi and Japanese restaurants in Honolulu divide between visitors and residents, and where the money and the poke go.
- 147
- verified rooms
- 61K
- public reviews
- Waikiki
- busiest area
- 4.5
- average rating
Waikiki has 27 of Honolulu's 143 verified sushi and Japanese restaurants in our listings, the largest share of any neighborhood, and it is where nearly every visitor eats their first plate. Residents mostly eat somewhere else. McCully - Moiliili has 21 listings, Ala Moana 18, Downtown 13, and the Diamond Head, Kapahulu and St. Louis Heights stretch another 13. Add Kaka'ako with 9 and Kalihi - Palama with 8 and the neighborhoods outside the tourist zone hold more than twice what Waikiki does.
Reviews follow the visitors. Of the 59,584 public reviews across the city, the biggest counts sit in Waikiki: Maguro Spot has 2,516 at 4.6, Doraku Sushi Waikiki 1,902 at 4.1, and Furusato Sushi 1,338 at 4.5. Big counts are honest about popularity, not about quality, and the 4.1 next to the 4.6 is the reminder.
- Waikiki2718% of listings
- McCully - Moiliili2114% of listings
- Ala Moana1812% of listings
- Diamond Head / Kapahulu / St. Louis Heights139% of listings
- Downtown139% of listings
- Kaka'ako96% of listings
- Kalihi - Palama85% of listings
- Makiki/Lower/ Punchbowl/Tantalus75% of listings
Waikiki, if that is where you are anyway
The good news is that the single highest weighted rating in the city is inside Waikiki. Sushi Spot Waikiki on Liliʻuokalani Ave holds a 4.8 across 2,145 reviews, a rare combination of volume and score in the top price tier. Wasabi Bistro on Beach Walk is 4.7 with 451 in the same tier. For a fast, cheap lunch between the beach and the hotel, Musubi Cafe IYASUME has 1,035 reviews at 4.6 in the single-dollar tier, and Maguro Spot is the same tier with more than twice the reviews.
King Street and Beretania: where the residents' ratings are
McCully - Moiliili is a short drive mauka of Waikiki, and the ratings there are the strongest concentration in the city. Kaiten Sushi Ginza Onodera on S King St is 4.8 with 516 reviews in the top price tier. TANE VEGAN IZAKAYA on S Beretania St is 4.8 with 827 reviews, mid-priced, and one of only fifteen izakaya listings in Honolulu. Kokoro-tei, also on S Beretania, is a 4.8 with 112 reviews in the cheapest tier, which makes it the highest-rated budget listing we have here.
One block over in Makiki, Sushi You on S Beretania St is 4.8 with 107 in the top tier. Down on Kapahulu Ave, Omakase By Aung is 4.8 with 128, and Ono Seafood on the same avenue is the most-reviewed listing in all of Honolulu, 2,519 reviews at 4.6, priced at a single dollar sign.
The twenty splurge rooms
Honolulu lists 20 restaurants in the top price tier, 16 in the tier below, 91 in the middle, and 16 at the bottom. The expensive rooms split cleanly: the Waikiki ones carry the review counts, the King Street ones carry the scores. Yanagi Sushi Downtown has 1,409 reviews at 4.4; Kaiten Sushi Ginza Onodera has a third as many reviews and a higher rating. If you are choosing on price alone, the mid-range tier is where two thirds of the city sits and where most of the high ratings live.
- $Budget · 16
- $$Mid-range · 91
- $$$Upscale · 16
- $$$$Splurge · 20
- 4 without a listed price
Poke is not sushi, and the city keeps them side by side
Eleven listings carry a poke bar category, and four of them are poke-only, labeled as such wherever they appear on this site. Paradise Poke Hawaii - Nuuanu is 4.7 with 185 reviews in the cheapest tier. In the Maunakea Market food court Downtown, Maguro Brothers Hawaii Chinatown is 4.7 with 723 reviews at a mid-range price. Out in Hawaii Kai, HanaPa'a Market is 4.8 with 178. None of these is a sushi bar in the Waikiki sense, and that is the point of listing them.
- 1Sushi Spot WaikikiWaikiki · $$$$4.82,145 reviews
- 2TANE VEGAN IZAKAYAMcCully - Moiliili · $$4.8827 reviews
- 3Kaiten Sushi Ginza OnoderaMcCully - Moiliili · $$$$4.8516 reviews
- 4HanaPa'a MarketHawaii Kai · $$4.8178 reviews
- 5Aloha ConesKalihi - Palama · $$4.8131 reviews
- 6Omakase By AungDiamond Head / Kapahulu / St. Louis Heights · $$$$4.8128 reviews
- 7Kokoro-teiMcCully - Moiliili · $4.8112 reviews
- 8Sushi YouMakiki/Lower/ Punchbowl/Tantalus · $$$$4.8107 reviews
Public ratings as listed, as of Oct 2025; ordered by rating weighted by review volume, minimum 30 reviews. Tap a card to find it below.
Eating well for less, and the two rooms that let you keep ordering
Sixteen of Honolulu's 143 listings price at a single dollar sign, and the top of that tier is not fast food. Maguro Spot in Waikiki has drawn 2,516 reviews at a 4.6 on a budget price, and Musubi Cafe IYASUME, a few blocks away, holds a 4.6 across 1,035. Add Kokoro-tei and Ono Seafood from the pages above and the cheap end of this city outperforms its middle.
Two rooms in our listings run all-you-can-eat. Kats Sushi downtown is a 4.3 from 347 reviews at a mid-range price, and Hatsuhana Japanese Restaurant in Waikiki is a 4.1 across 765, a tier up. Neither is the city's best fish, and neither pretends to be; they are where a hungry table eats until it stops.
What verified means on this page
A verified listing is a restaurant filed under a sushi or Japanese-restaurant category in our data, 143 of them in Honolulu, 106 with at least a hundred public reviews and 17 with more than a thousand. Ratings are each restaurant's own public rating, shown as listed. Our ordering weights a rating by its review count so a 4.9 with a handful of reviews does not outrank a 4.8 with two thousand. Neighborhood names come from the listing addresses, and every restaurant named above appears in our directory for this city.
See these 8 on the map
Every verified room in Honolulu, with the guide's picks marked.