Rigo — Where Italian meets Spanish

The best Italian x Spanish fusion spot in Honolulu

Located in Kapahulu lies Rigo — the newest Spanish and Italian fusion restaurant to replace the old Genki Sushi. The restaurant has been extremely retrofitted into a very hip and chic styled restaurant with a wall full of wine, a stylish bar, open concept style kitchen, and even a giant red bull emerging from the wall.

This restaurant is perfect in the sense that it can be used for business meetings, casual hangouts, intimate dates, or just a place for pau hana. The bar serves a variety of mixed drinks, wine, and non-alcoholic beverages to choose from. Below is Rigo’s signature Ginger cup with rum (on the left) and their house sangria (on the right).

There’s a wide variety of appetizers and smaller bites to choose from. The menu is broken down with Italian food on one side and Spanish food on the other. Below are some of my favorite small plate dishes. Going from top left to right is the Taco Pincho De Cerdo, Garlic Bread, Vongole, and Solomillo Con Foie. If you’re like me and don’t understand Italian or Spanish you’ll find the names tricky. The Taco Pincho De Cerdo is a pork belly with a radish taco shell and pickled onions. Vongole is clams with white wine and sherry topped with cherry tomatoes and sea asparagus. The Solomillo Con Foie is a grilled angus sirloin, foie gras, and braised daikon. These were all amazing and I highly recommend getting the garlic bread to soak up all that extra juice in the Vongole!

For the more hearty filling entree items you can choose from a variety of pizzas, rice dishes, pastas, as well as surf and turf items. Below I tried the Prosciutto and Rucola Pizza, the Seafood Paella, and the Colorado Lamp Chops. All were amazing and very savory. The winners were the Seafood Paella which used a variety of Manilla clams, Kauai prawns, shrimp, squid, and rice mixed with seafood stock. The Colorado lamb chops were also very good and cooked perfectly. The only thing that could have made the lamp chops better was if it came with more lamb!

Dessert was good but the portions were a bit smaller than I would have liked. The cashew ice cream was very tasty and uniquely different. The Tiramisu was very delicious and what you would expect from a home made recipe. If you like dessert, I would recommend getting several! All in all, Rigo is amazing. The service was a bit slower and the accommodations for the tables weren’t the most flexible, but I would definitely come again to try more of their amazing dishes!