Merriman’s Kapalua is the dinner people plan a Maui trip around: a dining room and lawn on a lava point above Kapalua Bay, run by Peter Merriman, one of the chefs who launched Hawai’i Regional Cuisine in the early 1990s. It is about 50 minutes from the bungalows, it is the most special-occasion meal on the island this side of Mama’s, and tables open 60 days out with sunset slots going first. Plan accordingly.
Why Merriman's Kapalua is worth the drive
Peter Merriman helped found the Hawai’i Regional Cuisine movement, the early-90s push by a dozen chefs to get island restaurants cooking with island ingredients instead of flown-in freight. Three decades later that philosophy runs the kitchen here: local line-caught fish, Maui Cattle Company beef, and produce from upcountry farms named on the menu.
Then there is the setting. The restaurant owns the tip of the lava point between Kapalua Bay and Namalu Bay, so the dining room and lawn look straight down the channel at Moloka’i and Lana’i. At sunset the whole room quietly rotates its chairs west; the staff has the timing of golden hour down to the minute.
It is a splurge, priced like the milestone dinner it usually is, and it earns the tab in a way resort dining rooms rarely do. If your trip has one anniversary, proposal or big-birthday meal in it, this is where we send people, with Mama’s Fish House as the north-shore alternative.