"Mom definitely lives on. It feels like we're channeling her," Alika Nam told HONOLULU Magazine in early June. He was talking about Cinnamon's Sweet Shop, the dessert counter he had just opened across the atrium from the breakfast restaurant his mother helped found.
The shop opened on Monday, June 1, 2026, at 315 Uluniu Street. That same month, Mānoa Chocolate opened an expanded café two doors down at 333 Uluniu. At about the same time, Himalayan Kitchen moved its Kailua restaurant off Kailua Road and into 442 Uluniu.
None of the three is a newcomer to town. Each is a Kailua business that already had customers here and took on more space, a bigger kitchen or a second counter on the same street. Because they did it within a few weeks of each other, Uluniu now runs from a 7 a.m. coffee to a made-to-order dinner without a drive.
The Block, Hour by Hour
| Address | Business | What changed in 2026 | Posted hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| 315 Uluniu St. | Cinnamon's Sweet Shop | New dessert counter from the Cinnamon's family, opened June 1 | Daily, 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. |
| 333 Uluniu St. | Mānoa Café by Mānoa Chocolate | Expanded café next to the in-store coffee roaster | Daily, 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. |
| 340 Uluniu St. | Lōkahi Kailua Market | Sunday market, normal venue | Sundays, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. |
| 407 Uluniu St. #101 | Perfect Day Real Fruit Ice Cream | Operating in The Collective's kitchen area since at least October 2025 | Check before visiting |
| 442 Uluniu St. | Himalayan Kitchen | Moved from 600 Kailua Road into a larger kitchen | Check before visiting |
The two morning counters keep the same hours as their parent businesses. Cinnamon's Sweet Shop opens and closes with Cinnamon's Restaurant. Mānoa's café stays open two hours longer, until 4 p.m. That leaves the afternoon to the café and the evening to Himalayan Kitchen.
7 a.m. at 333 Uluniu, a Few Feet From the Roaster
Mānoa Chocolate has long been one of Kailua's own. HONOLULU Magazine calls it "the Kailua-based chocolate company," and its store already handed out free tastes of homegrown chocolate before the café arrived. The expansion lets the roasting and the drinks share one room. Coffee is now poured a few feet from where the beans are roasted, and the magazine's July 29 feature notes that much of it is grown on Oʻahu.
Owner Dylan Butterbaugh built the menu so the house chocolate and the coffee meet in the same cup. There are mochas in salted caramel, coconut and honey cinnamon, all $8, served hot or iced with whole, oat or almond milk and syrups from Pono Potions. Hot chocolate and chocolate milk, also $8, sit at the top of the menu.
The drink the magazine wrote about at length is the chocolate cortado. Veteran roaster Danny McCall, often at the copper-colored Slayer espresso machine, drops bits of Mānoa milk chocolate into a small glass, melts them with hot espresso and then adds steamed milk.
Midday Across the Atrium at 315 Uluniu
Cinnamon's Sweet Shop is a takeout counter in the same building as Cinnamon's Restaurant. It sells cookies, coffee, specialty drinks and soft serve in rotating flavors.
The menu traces back to Cricket Nam, also known as Bonnie, one of Cinnamon's three founders. She died in 2022. HONOLULU Magazine says she created many of the restaurant's best-known sweets while working alongside her husband, Puna Nam, also known as Norman, and chef Carsie Green. Her chocolate chip cookies with macadamia nuts are here. So are her spicy Ginger Crack cookies, sold in bags for $6.50 to $8.99. Peanut Buttah Fingahz started as her peanut butter cookie with Butterfinger mixed in.
The early soft serve mixes her recipes with new ones. The magazine's opening-week list included black sesame soft serve topped with crumbled ginger cookies and a peanut butter banana pudding parfait with bacon bits. It also reported that kalo and haupia flavors were coming. Those were June plans, so the flavor board today may look different.
The address has seen turnover too. Gnarwall Surf Shop, owned by John Ingari, planned to close at 315 Uluniu when its lease ended in August 2025. Ingari said he had outgrown the space. Kailua Square's online directory still lists the shop, so that page is a few seasons behind.
Dinner at 442 Uluniu, With More Kitchen to Work With
Chef-owner Suman Basnet told Aloha State Daily that Himalayan Kitchen has been in Kailua for about six years. As of the paper's August 26 report, it had been at its new Uluniu address for about two months. More room is what made the move worth it. The new space has a bigger kitchen, so the menu is longer than it was at 600 Kailua Road, and everything is still made to order. "It's Indian-style cooking and Nepali-style cooking blended together," Basnet said. The new location also offers lunch specials.
Himalayan Kitchen took over the former Tokoname Sushi Bar & Restaurant space. Tokoname had served Kailua for 17 years. Aloha State Daily wrote about its weekday curry takeout menu as recently as November 2025.
The Kailua Road space Himalayan Kitchen left did not sit empty. Aloha State Daily reported in February 2026 that New Kamana Kitchen 3 had opened at 600 Kailua Road. Kailua Road still has a South Asian kitchen at that address, and Uluniu gained a second one in a larger space.
The Same Street Has Been Growing for Two Years
The summer moves follow a run of smaller changes on this stretch. Naji Baba, a food trailer owned by Naji Salahaldin and a partner, opened on March 23, 2025, at the corner of Uluniu and Aulike. Its address is 45 Aulike Street. By October 2025, Zach and Emile Englert's Perfect Day Real Fruit Ice Cream was serving from the kitchen area of The Collective at 407 Uluniu.
With Perfect Day a short walk from Cinnamon's soft serve, the block now has two frozen-dessert counters. Both are small businesses run by named local owners who built their menus around their own recipes.
The Sunday Shift and the Two Weekdays to Watch
On Sundays, 340 Uluniu hosts Lōkahi Kailua Market from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. The market says it serves more than 110 vendors a year, with more than 60 on site each week. Its lineup covers food vendors, artisans, farmed goods, live music and keiki activities, and the market is pet-friendly. It also notes that street parking is free on Sundays. KHON2 included the market in its September 18 weekend listings.
The holidays move the market. Its location page lists relocation dates of November 29 and December 6, 13 and 20, 2026. The alternate venues are 419 Uluniu Street and 25 Maluniu Avenue, and the market says the dates may change.
Weekday parking comes with a rule worth putting on the calendar. Under the city's April 2025 street-sweeping notice, all of Uluniu Street is on Kailua's restricted list. On the first Monday and first Thursday of each month, parking is banned from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., on one side of the street on Monday and the other side on Thursday. HPD can issue citations. If the posted rule still holds, the first two sweeping mornings this fall are Thursday, October 1, and Monday, October 5. Those windows overlap the morning hours at both new counters.
The city chose those two days after a 12-month study by the Department of Facility Maintenance. The study found that the first Monday and first Thursday had the fewest parked cars, and the schedule also avoids refuse collection days. The streets on the list have storm drain screens that keep debris out of nearby streams.
The Kailua Municipal Parking Lot, which is bordered in part by Uluniu, is also in line for changes. Hawaii News Now reported in March that an archaeological survey was scheduled for April 6 to 30 ahead of a parking-lot improvement project, with about eight spaces closed at a time. Since then, we have not found a published construction schedule.
For more of town beyond this block, our Kailua neighborhood guide covers the wider area, and our earlier piece on Kailua's July evenings covers the parking-garage concerts a few streets over.
If you own near Uluniu Street and wonder how a stronger walkable block like this one figures into value, Beth Chang is glad to walk through it with you, quietly and in detail. Let's Connect.
