Highway Inn, SALT Bay 1, 680 Ala Moana Blvd #105. The Toguchi family opened the first one on Farrington Highway in Waipahū in September 1947, and the grandkids run it now. Pau hana runs from 3:00 to 6:00 p.m. on weekdays, which is the window locals use. Sunday, it closes at 3:00 p.m.

Don Quijote, 801 Kaheka St, right behind Ala Moana. Open 24 hours, which makes it the late-night food run for this whole side of town. Skip the aisles and go to the prepared food counters for poke and bento. Locals watch for the evening markdowns, though that is lore rather than posted policy.

The poke counter at Foodland Farms Ala Moana, 1450 Ala Moana Blvd. This store won Foodland's 2026 Poke Bowl championship across the whole chain. Ask what got cut that morning, rather than taking what is already packed in the case.

Liliha Bakery, third floor of Macy's at Ala Moana. It opens at 7:00 a.m., hours before the mall does, and you walk in through Macy's own street doors. Sit at the counter and order breakfast. The coco puffs are what you carry out.

The Imperial Plaza at 725 Kapiʻolani Blvd has two restaurants and no street frontage. The daytime half is Cooke Street Market, in the lobby at #C122. Two hours of validated parking, and the kitchen runs from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

The night half is La Cucina, same building, #C112. Seven of us ate there family style, appetizers through dessert, and nothing was missed. Dinner was divine. The company was delightful. Small room, so call ahead with a group that size. Street parking out front, Tuesday through Saturday, 5:30 to 9:00 p.m., last order at 8:30.

Yanagi Sushi, 762 Kapiʻolani Blvd, right across from the Imperial Plaza. The food is superb, and the reason locals come is the hour. Dinner runs to 1:00 a.m. Monday through Saturday, with a late-night menu from 9:00 p.m. until close. Closed Sundays.

Side Street Inn, 1225 Hopaka St. Skip the $8 valet and self-park at the Blackfield Building directly across the street for $3 an hour. Hours have tightened to 4:00 to 8:00 p.m. on weekdays, noon to 8:00 p.m. on weekends, so the old late-night reputation is out of date.

Before any of this, it was wetland. Taro, salt pans, and fishponds, fed by two inland freshwater springs called Kewalo and Kawaiahaʻo. The salt pans were at Kaʻākaukukui, which is roughly where the Kewalo waterfront sits today.

Incinerator Number One still stands at 121 Ahui Street. The city built it in 1930 for $140,000 to burn eighty tons of rubbish a day. Workers dumped trash on the second floor and pushed it through a trap door into the furnace below.

The ash from that incinerator is the ground. Crews used the residue as fill, and by 1956, roughly twenty-nine acres of new land had been added to the shoreline behind a seawall built in 1948 and 1949. When you walk Kakaʻako Makai, you are walking on burned rubbish.

The dump next to it was nicknamed Swillauea. That was 1930. The joke was that it smoked like the volcano. The incinerator itself went out of service in 1945, became a kamaboko factory in the 1950s, and has been storage for the United Fishing Agency since 1978.

Ala Moana Beach Park is dredge spoil. It sits on fill created by dredging the Ala Wai Canal and the reef fronting the old beach road, which is now Ala Moana Boulevard. Hawaiian Dredging finished the fill in October 1930. The park itself was then built by Depression relief labor, with 800 to 900 people working it on peak days. The Roosevelt Portals went up in 1934, the banyan court in 1937, and the lawn bowling green in 1939.

The murals at SALT are no longer on a festival cycle. POW! WOW! became Hawaiʻi Walls and moved to Kalihi. So the walls here are now commissioned, not an annual repaint, and the guidebook's advice about catching them before February is out of date.

Hungry Ear Records, 675 Auahi St Ste E3-200. Open daily 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Go for the local pressings, the Hawaiian records that never made it to streaming.

Paiko, 547 Halekauwila St #106. Plant shop and florist, and here is the quirk nobody warns you about: it is closed on Sundays and Mondays from May through November. Tuesday to Saturday, 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Everyone goes to the Lonohana tasting bar at SALT. Go to the factory instead. 711 Queen Street, Tuesday through Sunday, 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., where the Hawaiʻi-grown bars come off the line. Tours are by appointment, last about 90 minutes, and are capped at 12 people.

Point Panic is bodysurfing by law, not by custom. State rule 13-254-14 allows only handboards without skegs in those waters. Bring a surfboard, and you are breaking an actual regulation, which is why the crew out there takes it personally.

Kakaʻako Farmers Market, 919 Ala Moana Blvd, Saturdays 8:00 a.m. to noon. Farm Lovers runs it. Go early. By ten, the good produce is picked over, and the parking is gone.

Hawaiʻi Children's Discovery Center, 111 ʻOhe St., Kamaʻāina, admission is $12 instead of $15; seniors are $8, and children under one are free. The catch is the weekday window: Tuesday through Friday, it closes at 1:00 p.m.