Kaimuki: Baja Tacos & Tropicana

On Waialae Avenue across the street from City Mill, there's a tiny strip of restaurants including tacos, pizza, sushi and shave ice. I had to go try Baja Tacos as soon as I saw it (always craving a good taco or burrito) and while I was there I spotted amazing looking shave ice right next door.

Baja Tacos
3040 Waialae Av #A-1


Baja Tacos is located close to the University of Hawaii in a cluster of casual restaurants, next to a shave ice store, Boston’s pizza, a sushi place, and some other restaurants.

Here’s a photo of the order counter.


BT offers soft tacos and burritos. The soft tacos are ‘south american’ style: a small, warm corn tortilla topped with your choice of meat. (it reminded me of the tacos downtown at Just Tacos). The burrito, on the other hand, is more what Americans expect at a Mexican restaurant: beans, rice, veggies and meat.

There is a basic salsa bar with fixin’s for your taco/burrito. It has red & green salsas, onions, and some jalapeno peppers.

BT also has 3 fun Mexican drinks: tamarindo (tamarind juide), a hibiscus drink that supposedly tastes like cranberry juice, and horchata, rice milk. I ordered the horchata ($2.00), because I liked the counter staff’s description of the drink: ‘It tastes like the milk at the bottom of a bowl of cinnamon toast crunch.’ 

Here’s my order of chicken soft tacos ($3.75).


Tropicana
3040 Waialae Av #A-1


Tropicana is a cute shave ice stand by the University next to Baja Tacos, Boston Pizza, a sushi restaurant, and some other casual restaurants.

They have a huge shave ice menu: regular shave ice, ice cream, goodie goodie (shave ice, ice cream AND sweetened condensed milk), and then a long list of shave ice sundaes with mochi balls, azuki beans, and different flavors of ice cream/shave ice.

I ordered a regular shave ice (lychee & lilikoi flavors) and li hing mui powder on top. It rocked. The ice was so fine, just like at Waiola’s. Definitely going back to Tropicana again!