Walk from Kailua Shopping Center to Aikahi Park this month and you can trace a pattern in the storefronts. The businesses opening or expanding around town in 2026 are almost entirely local operators putting down deeper roots, not outside chains testing the Windward side. A sweets shop born from a 40-year-old Kailua restaurant. A coffee bar that graduated from a Kakaʻako farmers market trailer to a bigger footprint on Oneawa. A Honolulu Indian kitchen picking Kailua for its third address. If you live here, that's the story worth knowing, because it changes what you can walk to on a Tuesday night and who owns the counter when you get there.
Here is what has actually opened, where to find it, and what's on the community calendar between now and the holidays.
New places to eat and drink
Kailua Shopping Center: New Kamana Kitchen 3
The Indian restaurant with locations in downtown Honolulu and Kapahulu opened at Kailua Shopping Center earlier this year, taking over the former space of Himalayan Kitchen. The kitchen leans on traditional homemade recipes, with butter chicken, tandoori chicken, and mango lassi drawing the strongest regulars. You'll find it at 600 Kailua Road, open daily 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. for lunch and 4 to 9 p.m. for dinner. The number in the name is literal. This is the third location, and picking Kailua for it says something about how the operator reads the town.
Uluniu Street: Cinnamon's Sweet Shop
If you have lived in Kailua for any stretch of time, you already know Cinnamon's for guava chiffon pancakes and red velvet French toast. The family opened a companion concept on Monday, June 1, 2026: a small sweets shop a short walk from the original. The shop offers handcrafted confections, baked goods, prepackaged local products, soft serve, and specialty drinks. It is worth understanding whose name is on the door.
Cinnamon's Sweet Shop is inspired by and dedicated to the much-beloved Cricket "Bonnie" Nam, one of Cinnamon's three founders and mother of owner Alika Nam. Known for her warmth, creativity, and memorable recipes, Cricket helped shape the spirit of hospitality that has made Cinnamon's a cherished part of the Kailua community.
That kind of second-generation continuity is unusual in a food scene where storefronts turn over on five-year leases. The shop plans to collaborate with local brands on limited-edition offerings, with select items benefiting local charities. Address is 315 Uluniu St, Suite 102, open daily from 7:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., with possible extended hours on weekends or seasonally. Pair a stop here with a Cinnamon's breakfast down the block and you have covered a Saturday morning without moving your car.
Oneawa Street: Rise & Grind Coffee Bar
Rise & Grind's story is the neighborhood in miniature. Five years ago, the business opened its coffee trailer at the Kakaʻako farmers market with a small coffee menu. The trailer now shows up at the Kailua farmers market at Castle Hospital on Sundays, and the business opened its first brick and mortar three years ago on Oneawa Street in the space that used to hold 22 Kailua before that shop relocated to 326 Kuulei Road. This spring, the coffee bar expanded its space to include a larger kitchen and additional seating.
Owner Leah Garwood rotates seasonal syrups made in-house. Right now the featured pours include Hawaiian coconut-mac-nut-vanilla, wildflower with hibiscus and lavender, chocolate chip banana bread, and lavender honey lattes at $6.75, with an additional $1.50 for housemade syrup. Find it at 22 Oneawa St., open 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Mondays to Fridays and 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays.
Aikahi Park: Kizuna Japanese Steakhouse & Sushi
For the Aikahi and Kāneʻohe Bay Drive side of town, Kizuna Japanese Steakhouse & Sushi opened in Aikahi Park Shopping Center as the sister restaurant to a Kāneʻohe original. The menus mostly overlap, with one meaningful difference. The Kailua location has a dedicated space for teppanyaki tables, and each teppanyaki table can seat around 18 people, which makes it useful for family birthdays and team dinners without a long drive over the Pali. Teppanyaki lunch specials run $14 to $22.50, with choices including chicken, steak, salmon, shrimp, scallop, and filet mignon.
Two rolls are only made here. The Hulk roll at $19.95 features deep-fried eel, cucumber, and avocado inside, topped with seaweed salad, eel sauce, spicy mayo, and garlic crunch. The river rock roll at $17.95 includes shrimp tempura, avocado, fresh tuna, and a crab stick inside, with fresh salmon, tempura flakes, masago, eel sauce, and spicy mayo on top.
Address is 25 Kāneʻohe Bay Drive, and the kitchen keeps late hours by Kailua standards, closing at 10 p.m. most weeknights.
Kailua Road: Lilikoi Kitchen
Lilikoi Kitchen recently added a Kailua Road storefront to its footprint. The chef-driven café serves artisanal cafe items from locally roasted coffee to hand crafted paninis, duck fat fried rice loco moco, garlic shrimp, salads, lilikoi pancakes, acai bowls, desserts, and now dinner. The new location runs 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily, which is longer than most Kailua cafés stay open and closes a real gap in the town's early-evening options.
The pattern beneath the openings
Look at the five listings above in one glance. New Kamana Kitchen was already operating in Honolulu. Cinnamon's has been on Kailua Road since 1985. Rise & Grind grew inside Kailua's own farmers market ecosystem. Kizuna is a Kāneʻohe operator extending its reach one shopping center over. Lilikoi Kitchen expanded rather than franchised. None of these are outside chains parachuting in.
That matters if you own a home here. When new tenants have existing customer bases and community ties, the storefronts they take over tend to keep their lights on through slower quarters. It is a quieter form of stability than a splashy chain announcement, and it usually outlasts one.
What is on the calendar
If you want the town at its most itself, the community events do more work than the restaurant openings.
- Aloha Salads 20th Anniversary, Sunday, August 2, 2026, 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. at 600 Kailua Road, Unit 103, with live music, per the Kailua Town events listing.
- Club Pilates Kailua Grand Opening, also on the Kailua Town calendar this season for anyone tracking new fitness options in walking distance of the shopping center.
- Kokua Kailua Market style monthly strolls have their Kona counterpart, but locally the equivalent is the annual "I Love Kailua" Town Party presented by the Lanikai Kailua Outdoor Circle. Since 1993, LKOC has been presenting its annual "I Love Kailua" Town Party in downtown Kailua, an all-day street fair featuring artisans, crafters and community organizations, plant sales, delicious food samplings from local vendors, and lots of entertainment for all ages.
- Town Party logistics worth planning around: the event is held on Kailua Road from 11 to 4, and closes all traffic lanes and sidewalk areas on Kailua Road from Hahani Street to Kuulei Road, fronting Whole Foods, Longs and Kailua Shopping Center, with traffic diverted from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Three floors of free parking are available in the lot fronting Longs, entering from Hahani Street near Teddy's Bigger Burgers, or Hekili Street. Additional parking is at Kailua Elementary School, gates open at 10:30 and close at 4:30, cost is $10 cash only as a fundraiser for the 4th graders.
- Kailua Water Lantern Festival by Light The Night, per the community events calendar, returned in May and is worth watching for a repeat in the same window next year if you missed it.
A note on the shape of the summer
Kailua has spent the past few years being talked about as either overrun or over. Neither reading holds up on the sidewalk. What is actually happening is smaller and more interesting. A sweets shop is opening a block from its parent restaurant and naming itself after a co-founder's mother. A coffee trailer that started at a Honolulu farmers market has grown into a bigger Kailua kitchen. A Kāneʻohe steakhouse thought the Aikahi side had room for a second address. The town is not being replaced. It is being extended by the people who were already here.
Keep an eye on Oneawa, Uluniu, and the Aikahi Park corner over the next two quarters. That is where the next round of turnover is most likely, and where the most local operators seem to be looking.
If you own a home in Kailua and are thinking about what all this means for your block, whether you plan to stay put or eventually move within the neighborhood, Jennifer Lucien offers a locally grounded read on how tenant mix, foot traffic patterns, and community anchors shape home values across the Windward side. Request your Neighborhood Market Review to see how your street reads in the current market.
