A $9.99 katsudon is the kind of number that makes us look up an address. Tonkatsu Sakazaki opened on Keʻeaumoku Street on September 8 with a pork loin cutlet rice bowl at $9.99 — regularly $19 — for what the news report calls about three weeks. Then we read the fine print, and the whole thing sorted itself out: the $9.99 bowl is dine-in only, and a week after opening the restaurant moved weekdays to dinner only, starting at 4 p.m. — the part of the afternoon when we are back in the room with the windows open and a cold beer.
What happened
Aloha State Daily reported on September 9 that Tonkatsu Sakazaki has opened in Sam Sung Plaza, at 655 Keʻeaumoku St. No. 109, in the former space of Sushi ii, which closed in July. According to the same report it is the sister restaurant of Ramen Nakamura in Waikīkī, which explains the one item on the menu you would not expect at a katsu shop: a Nakamura oxtail curry at $14, built on Ramen Nakamura’s oxtail soup and served as a thinner, soup-style broth rather than a thick curry.
The restaurant’s own Instagram account — the only online home the article lists, and the only one we could find — dates the grand opening to September 8, 2026 and posts the special as $19.00 marked down to $9.99, which it calls 47% off. The account also carries the details the news write-up leaves out, and they turn out to be the ones that matter. The opening-special flyer says the $9.99 bowl is dine-in only. At opening, the bio listed lunch 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. (last order 2 p.m.) and dinner 5 to 9 p.m. (last order 8:30 p.m.). Then the restaurant posted a business-hours update starting the following week: Monday to Friday, dinner only, 4 to 10 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, lunch 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and dinner 5 to 10 p.m. That is what the bio shows now (checked Sept. 26).
Here is the price list as published. Sets come with rice, shredded cabbage and miso soup, and the miso soup and cabbage are free refills.
| Dish | Price |
|---|---|
| Pork loin tonkatsu, 130 g | $21 |
| Pork loin tonkatsu, 180 g | $25 |
| Pork tenderloin tonkatsu, four pieces | $25 |
| Chicken katsu set | $21 |
| Fried shrimp set, five pieces | $25 |
| Chicken katsu-don | $23 |
| Pork katsu sandwich | $13 |
| Fried oysters | $15 |
| Nakamura oxtail curry | $14 |
| Pork loin cutlet rice bowl | $19, currently $9.99 |
| Miso soup upgraded to pork soup | add $5 |
One honest wrinkle about that last line: Aloha State Daily prints the regular price twice and the two do not agree — $19 in the opening paragraph, $19.99 further down. The Instagram posts settle it well enough for us. The restaurant shows $19.00 crossed out and calls $9.99 a 47% discount; 47% off $19.00 lands on $9.99, while off $19.99 it would be a straight 50%. So we are going with $19.
What it changes for a Waikiki stay
Three things move: what sit-down katsu costs right now, what time you can get it, and how far you have to go.
The price, for about three weeks. A few days ago we wrote about $9.99 chicken katsu plates at Don Quijote Kāheka on Fridays — a supermarket okazuya plate, in a box, until sold out. The same $9.99 now buys a bowl at a table in the same neighborhood, with refillable cabbage and miso soup and someone else carrying it over. Not the same product — but for a few weeks, the sit-down version costs what the takeout version costs.
The comparison next door. Katsu Zen, the other new katsu restaurant in the same Keʻeaumoku pocket, over on Sheridan Street, had its soft-opening prices published by Honolulu Magazine on August 26. Lining the two up is the cleanest way to see where Sakazaki sits.
| Tonkatsu Sakazaki | Katsu Zen | |
|---|---|---|
| Address | 655 Keʻeaumoku St. No. 109 | 808 Sheridan St. |
| Chicken katsu set | $21 | $19 |
| Tonkatsu set, 180 g | $25 | $25 |
| Pork loin katsudon | $19, currently $9.99 | $24 for 180 g |
| Pork soup upgrade | add $5 | add $1.50 |
| Hours | Mon–Fri 4–10 p.m.; Sat–Sun 11 a.m.–2 p.m., 5–10 p.m. | Tue–Sun, 11 a.m.–8 p.m. |
Katsu Zen’s column is soft-opening pricing from late August and may have moved since; Sakazaki’s is days old. Two things jump out anyway. The headline plates sit within a couple of dollars of each other, so the $9.99 bowl is the outlier, not a sign that this place is cheap. And the pork soup upgrade is $5 here against $1.50 there.
The clock and the walk. Keʻeaumoku Street is not Waikiki. It runs mauka from Ala Moana Center, and the Instagram posts put the restaurant right across from Walmart — the same pocket of streets as the Don Quijote trip above. With no car that is the Pink Line trolley or TheBus to Ala Moana Center and then a walk, both ways. Add the new hours — nothing before 4 p.m. on weekdays, and a weekend lunch that ends at 2 — and the whole trip has to be aimed at a narrow window.
What we would do — and what we wouldn’t
We would not build a day around the $9.99 bowl. Not because of the distance, and not because of the price. It is the clock. We do not eat lunch — coffee and fruit in the morning, then nothing until the afternoon gets going — so a weekend 11-to-2 sitting means rearranging the one part of the day we actually protect.
The 4 p.m. weekday opening is not our answer either. By four we are a beer or two into the afternoon with dinner already decided by whatever is in the refrigerator. Putting real clothes on and riding out to Keʻeaumoku at that hour is the specific kind of effort we plan trips to avoid.
The flyer answered the one question we had. We wanted to know whether the bowl travels, because that is the only way this fits our days: fold it into an Ala Moana errand and carry it back. The $9.99 bowl is dine-in only, so for us it stays a restaurant we read about.
The free cabbage refill is the line we kept rereading. Our eating in Waikiki slides toward fried and salty without any help, which is why we buy actual vegetables at Longs and Waikiki Market. A plate that hands back shredded cabbage until you stop asking does part of that work for you.
If you drive, or you are staying near Ala Moana, or you eat dinner out — go soon. At $9.99 the bowl is under every sit-down katsu price on either menu above, and the discount is the whole reason to hurry.
We have not eaten here. The place opened on September 8, and everything above is reported rather than field-tested.
Before you plan around this
- Nobody has published an end date. “About three weeks” comes from the news report, not from an announcement by the restaurant. Counted from the September 8 opening, three weeks lands around September 29 — our arithmetic, not a date anyone has committed to.
- There is no official website we could find. Aloha State Daily lists an Instagram account and nothing else, so a message there or a walk-in is how you confirm anything.
- The $9.99 bowl is dine-in only, per the restaurant’s opening-special flyer. Whether the regular menu goes out as takeout, we did not find stated anywhere.
- The hours changed about a week after opening, and last-order times for the new hours are not posted.
- Prices and hours change, and opening specials end. Prices were checked on September 11, 2026; the hours and the dine-in rule on September 26, 2026.
Details
Tonkatsu Sakazaki — 655 Keʻeaumoku St. No. 109, Honolulu, in Sam Sung Plaza. Monday to Friday, dinner only, 4–10 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, lunch 11 a.m.–2 p.m. and dinner 5–10 p.m., per the restaurant’s Instagram bio as of September 26, 2026.
If the regular katsudon turns out to travel, we will be writing a different article about this place.
