A popular Maui restaurant was just shut down due to a cockroach infestation. But what’s more troubling is how hard it is for visitors or residents to find this information, more than a year after Hawaii’s inspection site came back online. This isn’t just about one closure. It’s about a system that still leaves the public guessing.
A troubling infestation at Maui Marketplace.
The Hawaii Department of Health shut down an L&L Hawaiian Barbecue location at Maui Marketplace in Kahului on May 14. The restaurant received a red placard based on a follow-up inspection that revealed an active cockroach infestation. Inspectors found roaches nesting and laying egg cases in the walk-in refrigerator and freezer seals.
The restaurant was cited two days earlier and issued a yellow “conditional” placard. It was then instructed to bring in professional pest control and correct violations. Instead, the situation got worse.
DOH did what it was supposed to, but perhaps what occurred isn’t even the most disturbing part. The real question is how long the public was expected to stay in the dark, especially with an online inspection system that few can actually use.
Hawaii’s restaurant inspection site is still a mess.
The public is told they can check the safety of Hawaii restaurants by visiting inspections.myhealthdepartment.com/soh. That’s the official platform for finding red and yellow placards, violations, and inspection history.
But even now—long after DOH rolled out the new system following a long and frustrating outage—the experience remains confusing and limited.
Searching terms like “L&L Maui,” “Maui Marketplace,” or “Dairy Road” brings up nothing. The closed restaurant appears only under its exact listing: “Maui L & L Food.” Most users will never guess that. It took us repeated attempts to find out what would yield this restaurant’s results ourselves.
There’s no way to sort by the most recent closures. You can’t filter by island or region. There’s no easy way to see which businesses are currently shut down. And the mobile experience is just as difficult.
Visitors are being told the data is public. But unless they already know exactly what to look for, they’ll likely find nothing.
A wider problem for Hawaii travelers revealed.
This is not about a single restaurant or even one infestation. It’s about a system that doesn’t work for the people who depend on it the most.
Most Hawaii visitors have no idea there is even such a thing as a yellow placard. They assume a business is either open and safe or closed and unsafe. When something is shut down, they expect to be able to research it and get a clear answer. Instead, they are left to guess.
Greg H, a longtime visitor, shared that he tried to use the DOH website by entering a restaurant name and zip code, only to find the date range locked to three months. “Why not a yearlong range to encapsulate the big picture?” he asked.
Mary described seeing a live roach at a deli counter in a busy Maui grocery store. She reported it to the health department but never heard back. “I had no idea what to do,” she said.
And Debbie K., a former health inspector who lived in Hawaii for over a decade, added, “Hawaii restaurants are lucky if they see an inspector once every two or three years. Until the state hires more inspectors and increases frequency, the problems will continue.”
Even those who try to stay informed often end up frustrated, and many others may not even know there’s a problem.
When transparency doesn’t mean accessibility.
The DOH issued a press release confirming the shutdown of L&L and detailing the violations: live roaches, egg cases, and failure to comply with prior instructions. It also outlined the steps required for reopening, including sealing cracks, eradicating pests, and submitting a cleanup timeline.
But that press release didn’t show up in any casual search, so most visitors would never have known it existed.
While the DOH inspection site technically functions, it doesn’t offer the usability travelers need to make informed choices. Restaurant safety in Hawaii has become less about access and more about knowing where to dig.
Roaches are common—but not inevitable, even in Hawaii’s climate.
This isn’t about shaming Hawaii or pretending pests don’t exist elsewhere. Roaches are part of island life, and even well-maintained establishments can have problems from time to time. But that doesn’t mean it has to be this way.
Readers have told us they understand the climate, but they also expect a baseline level of cleanliness and accountability. The issue isn’t that a roach showed up. It’s when infestations go unaddressed, inspections are rare, and visitors have no idea what they’re walking into. What’s optional for the state becomes a liability for everyone else.
Are other places doing better?
In Seattle, restaurants are graded with terms like Excellent or Needs to Improve. Those ratings are posted on-site and searchable online. The inspection website allows filters by location, date, and violation level, and it works well on mobile.
Other places have adopted similar systems, giving diners quick access to food safety information without needing to guess or dig.
That kind of real-time access helps build trust. Hawaii’s system, by contrast, still assumes people will check signs at the door—or somehow type the correct phrase into its clunky DOH online portal.
With millions of annual visitors relying on food establishments, especially near airports, resorts, and shopping centers, this kind of approach isn’t acceptable.
What real access should look like.
Here’s what a modern Hawaii food safety system could offer:
- Visitors should be able to search by island, town, shopping center, or street.
- The site should highlight recent red and yellow placards.
- Establishments with serious violations should be flagged.
- Each listing should include plain language summaries and clear dates.
- A map view and mobile-friendly layout would make it more usable while traveling.
Instead, we have a system that claims to be transparent, but fails when it matters most.
This has happened before.
In 2024, Hawaii’s food inspection portal went offline entirely during a vendor transition. For months, the public could not look up restaurant violations. DOH said the system would return better than before, but it didn’t.
Even a year later, readers tell us they can’t find what they need. And when another restaurant is shut down—this time in a high-traffic Maui food court—visitors are once again left wondering how they were supposed to know.
Have you ever tried using the Hawaii food inspection site?
Were you able to find the information you needed, or did you give up? Have you ever noticed a red or yellow placard while visiting Hawaii? And if so, did it change your plans?
Please share your experiences in the comments. What’s working—and what’s not—regarding Hawaii restaurant safety.
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Every establishment , every hotel ,every home in the Hawaiian Islands have cockroach issues . The cockroach is not a native species in Hawaii , but it is there now and it thrives . Hawaii will never eradicate that species , so it’s best to just use hyper vigilance and maintain sanitation as best as one can . I stayed at the most posh resort on the Naapali coast and it had cockroach issues , saw quite a few . Will that deter me from future visits to Beautiful Hawaii? Absolutely not . Aloha and Mahalo )
I have witnessed many outbreaks of bed bug infestation where people had to quit their jobs, leave hotels, or pay for their own pest control Ans suffer the nightmare of the bites – DOH just swept it under the carpet! HCP’s should be able to verify these skin conditions and report them so that the sites of infestation are covering the cost of control and human suffering.
Well…. It really isn’t to difficult for tourists or anyone to find out.
The Red, Yellow, or Green placards are prominently displayed right at the entrance!
Huge fines if they are removed!
The Red placard is also accompanied with the door being locked.
@Rob and Jeff: I don’t actually remember how I blundered into your site. I find the articles you publish and the comments from others insightfull. As a long time resident, I find the health placard system difficult to navigate. I have no idea how visitors deal with it. I think you guys do a great job bringing up real issues.
Another inexcusable and thoroughly disgusting example of the totally corrupt and incompetent government at all levels in the state of Hawaii. Nothing will change until voting citizens of Hawaii vote these clowns out of office, all of them. We all know that tropical climate locations have unique circumstances that require significant health department oversight. But this is ridiculous, and it has been going on for decades! It’s incomprehensible that such conditions and government bureaucratic incompetence exists in a state of a modern first world nation!
I follow the reports. But, I am not a diner. I dont travel to Hawaii for dining, so it is important for me to prepare our own foods and clean everything. I have never stayed at a condo that had roaches and would not stay there again, should I find one. I stayed at the Masters in K. for years, and it depended on the cleanliness of the owners, whether they were there. Companies can spray for these pests especially in restaurants.
Lee M, you have hit the nail on the head. And the restaruant health safety issue is just the tip of the iceberg. Hawaii is way behind in this and some many other areas!
As someone who experienced bacteriological food poisoning from a Hilo restaurant, I feel it is very important to ensure that health inspection information is readily and easily accessible to the public. If I had been able to review restaurant ratings, I could have saved thousands of dollars in medical treatment plus the inconvenience of being ill for three weeks. Food safety is serious – people have died from bad actors.
Inspect restaurants, fine. Put up a card or grade. DoH should have no authority to mandate anything. It’s a personal choice to eat at a restaurant and perform your own choices. I want to eat there regardless of any infestation. The choice should not be removed from the individual customer.
The problem in Hawaii is that the entire government is about 20-30 years behind on the technology. And for some reason that can’t seem to find the people and systems to join the 21st century. It is very sad.
Did you expect a anything different?
Bugs are simply a part of island life. In Costa Rica, big spiders (some dangerous) all around in restaurants. In Mexico, roaches are a regular sight. Point is: pests exist everywhere, and the type you see depends on the region and climate. That said, if an establishment is genuinely unsafe for human health, the government should shut it down until the issue is resolved, not just issue a citation because a mainlander complained. Give the business a week to address the problem, then follow up with another inspection. If more time is needed, let the business request an extension, and the government should commit to revisiting. The real issue isn’t a lack of transparency, it’s the inefficiency of a bloated government that doesn’t operate with the accountability or urgency of a business. We are taxed a lot to keep the system running, and it’s frustrating when that system doesn’t do its job.
Anyone who’s spent any time on the Islands will know this to be true. There are some very sketch restaurants out there. Off Ali’i Drive in Kona, some of the dingy places near Makena in Maui. Oahu, you better be careful even in the popular spots.
Also beware some of these popups using this “Broke” riff in the name, it’s been so overused; some look very questionable when it comes to sanitation. You can feel the grease on the tables when you sit down.
Anyway, please continue to report on this. It’s very important. Sorry to say, out of all our travels in the United States, we’ve had our worst bouts of food borne illness on Hawaii. Many places are great. But an appreciable minority are not, and unquestionably the sanitation is not even close to the uniformity on the mainland.
Sounds like another opportunity for Governor Green to place the onus of guilt on the Tourist, and add a Culinary Tax, to fund the failure in Hawaiian Food and Dining Inspections, and their lack of Staff. To date, I’ve never referenced a Web Site to question Sanitary Conditions, Word of Mouth, Magazine Reviews and Personal Experience take me to their door, but every Window or Door of Entry should have minimally an ‘A-B-C’ on a different color noting the year and Status, no decal, the store is Closed.
I’ve tried to use the inspection site even after reading a restaurant had been cited and couldn’t find information. I go to Hawaii a couple of times a year. My solution is to eat most meals in the condo. I can’t depend on health and safety in restaurants. I don’t think the state wants us to know.
I concur wholeheartedly. As I said in another post, most places are sanitary. But some definitely are not. And the uniformity of sanitation on Hawaii is not close to the sanitation on the mainland.
This doesn’t apply to the major grocery stores, where the cleanliness appears to be on par with the mainland.
We’ve had a few bouts of illness with restaurants in Hawaii, to a degree we have not experienced in the lower 48.