About The Pig & The Lady
Chef Andrew Le's story is the story of Honolulu's culinary evolution told from its most personal angle. The son of Vietnamese immigrants, he learned to cook from his mother — Mama Le, who remains a presence in the kitchen's philosophy if not always at its stoves. He trained seriously, developed his own voice, and opened the original Pig and the Lady in Chinatown in 2013 as a restaurant that would honour his family's food without being bound by it.
What followed was a decade of influence that changed how Honolulu thought about Vietnamese cuisine, street food culture, and what a restaurant in this city could do with a modest price point and an immodest ambition. Le received two James Beard semifinalist nominations. Gourmet Traveller wrote about him. Food writers from New York and London made the Chinatown address a required stop. The pho French dip banh mi — a 12-hour brisket, Thai basil-cilantro chimichurri, dipped in Mama Le's rich beef pho stock — became Honolulu's most photographed dish and one of the defining food experiences in the Pacific.
The restaurant relocated in 2025 to a larger space in Kaimuki — Honolulu's most creative dining neighbourhood — and the move improved rather than diluted what Le had built. The room is bigger, the kitchen has more room to breathe, and the Kaimuki dining community has welcomed the arrival of one of the city's most important chefs with the enthusiasm it deserves. The menu carries Le's signatures alongside new dishes that reflect what's possible in the expanded space.
The ulu stir-fry with shishito peppers is the vegetable dish that makes non-vegetarians rethink their ordering priorities. The Caesar-adjacent salad is the dish that makes people who normally skip salads order it. The rotating soft serve changes with the seasons and provides an ending that feels earned.
The Menu
The Pig and the Lady operates dinner Tuesday through Sunday, with lunch Wednesday through Thursday. The menu is designed for sharing — plates come in waves, the table builds a meal together rather than each person choosing in isolation. Prices run $15–$40 per dish, making a generous shared dinner for two around $60–$80 before drinks — extraordinary value for this quality and creative level. The drinks program reflects Le's sensibility: natural wines, craft beers, and cocktails that complement the Southeast Asian flavour profile without competing with it.
Best Occasion Fit
For a first date, The Pig and the Lady operates on a frequency that conversations move easily on: creative food that's accessible, a menu that rewards curiosity without penalising unfamiliarity, and a price point that says something about confidence rather than expenditure. The sharing format means the table is always mid-task in the best way — deciding what to try next, reacting to what just arrived. The pho French dip banh mi ordered for one person always becomes two people's meal.
For a team dinner, the sharing format is the proposition. A table of six or eight working through Le's menu together — the ulu stir-fry, the banh mi, the rotating soft serve appearing without warning at the end — is a meal that builds something. The Kaimuki location, removed from the tourist corridors, feels like an insider choice. Teams respond well to that.