Waipahu was the center of Oʻahu's sugar industry for over a hundred years, and the food culture reflects that history directly. The Japanese, Filipino, Portuguese, and Korean plantation workers who built the town also built its food traditions — plate lunch, saimin, bento, Filipino adobo, all within blocks of each other.

The Highway Inn Waipahu location is here — one of Oʻahu's oldest Hawaiian food restaurants, opened by the same family since 1947. B & L Drive Inn and H C Drive Inn are the kind of spots where the parking lot fills at 11am on a weekday with people who have been coming for twenty years.