Giovanni Pastrami - Restaurants On Oahu Honolulu, Hawaii

Giovanni Pastrami is located on the Waikiki Beach Walk and right next to Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center. It's larger inside than it would appear to be on the outside and offers an upscale sports bar atmosphere that I would say is even family friendly. If a sporting event is on and the place is crowded it's likely to be pretty loud in here so keep that in mind.

Their menu is huge and filled with tons of breakfast items (that are served all day long) as well as pizzas, pasta, salads, and tons of sandwich options.

I started with a cup of their chili just to try it out and it was excellent. For some reason, it came with my food rather than as an appetizer. It was also a ridiculous $7 for the cup size!

For my main meal I had the Time's Square sandwich which is turkey, bacon, lettuce, tomato, avocado, and mayonnaise on toasted sour dough bread. It's a huge sandwich and so tall it's hard to even eat. The ingredients were clearly higher quality, it was plenty of food, but at $19 with onion rings it was too pricey ($16 with fries).

Beyond the ridiculously high prices, the other complaint I have is with the service. I had heard complaints about the service here being and / or really slow and I was hoping things had gotten better here but they haven't. We stood by the hostess desk waiting to be seated for several minutes before anyone even realized we were there (at which point 2 other couples were waiting behind us).

I was originally torn between giving Giovanni Pastrami a 4 or 4.5 star rating overall. The food really is very good so I'd try it again, but the service is slow and our waitress didn't check up on us very often (and it wasn't at all crowded).

I was willing to let some of the service issue slide at first but towards the end of our meal the couple behind us (tourists that likely didn't speak English very well) asked a an employee walking by if they could place their order. That girl happened to be the hostess (dressed the same as the waitresses) and instead of saying "sure, let me go grab your waitress" she replied (sort of snotty) with a "I'm not your waitress", walked away, and rolled her eyes. Then she came back and said "Okay, what do you want" and proceeded to take their order.

Not sure what happened there but that's just unacceptable. Other issues include the entire staff disappearing for long periods of time in the back room or kitchen area, chatting each other up a lot, having a friend walk in and chatting them up (loudly), etc. Just not very professional.

We'll see if we have a better experience next time around.

• Food Types: American	• Food Types: Bar / Appetizers	• Food Types: Beer / Cocktails	• Food Types: Burger / Dog / Sandwich	• Food Types: Pizza
• Food Types: Seafood	• Payment: $$ - Average - $15 to $30	• Meals: Breakfast	• Meals: Dinner	• Meals: Lunch
• Service Type: Table