Walking into King’s Hawaiian Bakery & Restaurant in Torrance is an instant reminder of Hawaii. The suburban restaurant, just south of downtown Los Angeles, sports a large lanai (patio) and palm trees, as well as island music that plays endlessly through the restaurant speakers. At the entrance, a wall of packaged sweet bread in the form of dinner rolls, buns and slices greets customers, alongside a large bakery case filled with cream puffs, turnovers, cakes, pies and mochi doughnuts.

But the air here carries more than just the scent of baked goods and sweet bread that have made the King’s Hawaiian brand a household name. This one-off restaurant serves a full menu of comfort dishes that Hawaii food lovers crave, such as kalua pork, loco moco, Spam musubi, chicken katsu and oxtail soup.

On the morning I arrive in November, the restaurant is packed with people, some large groups clearly celebrating an occasion, while others are just there for the breakfast grinds. It’s not my first time at the restaurant. In the past, I’ve ordered the kalua pork sandwich with its tangy BBQ sauce — a satisfying and flavorful dish that’s always worth a repeat — but today, I’m going with the Big Island Breakfast. The hearty morning meal includes two eggs, Portuguese sausage and French toast, using King’s Hawaiian bread, of course.

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King’s Hawaiian Bakery & Restaurant signage in Torrance, Calif., on Nov. 10, 2025.

The Big Island Breakfast at King’s Hawaiian Bakery & Restaurant in Torrance, Calif., on Nov. 10, 2025.

The interior of King’s Hawaiian Bakery & Restaurant in Torrance, Calif., on Nov. 10, 2025.

The appeal of the restaurant is closely tied to its location and the community it serves. Los Angeles County has the largest Native Hawaiian population in California, many of them concentrated in this broad, semicoastal South Bay part of town. And so, for former Hawaii residents like myself, going to King’s Hawaiian restaurant is about much more than just the food. It feels like going home. It’s a place where you meet people who know people you know. It’s where you end up talking with someone who graduated from the same high school and where the Hawaiian Pidgin English flows freely.

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Though known widely as a bakery, King’s Hawaiian has been in the restaurant business for decades, too. “It started just because, you know, we needed someone to cook for the family so my great-grandmother wouldn’t have to every day,” Courtney Taira, whose family founded the company, told SFGATE. King’s Hawaiian restaurants are also a way for the family to be engaged with the community, which they are passionate about. “We can’t do that through factories, so we do that through restaurants,” she said.

Taira is the president of IFG Restaurant Group, which oversees her family’s three restaurants: the flagship King’s........

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