Shave Ice Is Back at Monsarrat and Campbell, 20 Years After the Market Gave Up Its Coffee Bar

Until this summer, the corner room at Diamond Head Market & Grill held storage. In September, chef Kelvin Ro turned it into a shave-ice stand. He used a machine the business has owned for years, which he described to Aloha State Daily as "really expensive" and from Japan, with ice that comes out "really fine and fluffy."

The room has served shave ice before. Ro told the same outlet that the market ran a coffee bar with shave ice at that corner about 20 years ago. It closed the bar after a coffee shop opened across the street.

That history explains most of this year on Monsarrat Avenue. Much of what the market added in the past twelve months restarts something it used to do, in a space it already had, with a new partner in the kitchen and its own farm supplying ingredients.

What the Corner Serves Now

The menu has two tiers. Classic flavors such as blue vanilla, lychee and mango cost $7 for a keiki size and $9 for a regular, with up to three flavors per dessert. The signature desserts cost $12 to $15. They come in wide trays instead of mounded bowls, because, as Ro put it, the fine ice "will melt so fast."

The signature desserts are built from what the bakery already makes:

• Lemon crunch, $12: lemon curd from the market's lemon crunch cake thinned into a pourable sauce, with lemon icing used as the syrup, plus toffee crunch and vanilla ice cream
• Blueberry cream cheese crush, $12: a nod to the blueberry cream cheese scones
• Hawaiian Da Kine, $12: haupia cream and pineapple compote, which Ro named his personal favorite
• Strawberry daifuku, $15: strawberry compote, azuki beans and house-made butter mochi
• Pikake, $15: jasmine syrup made from flowers grown on the market's own farm, topped with fresh fruit

Ro builds each one in two layers, adding toppings twice so the bottom half has as much flavor as the top.

The lemon crunch and scone flavors have been bestsellers for years. The pikake flavor depends on something the market has had only for the last few years, which is where the rest of the market's year comes in.

A Farm Behind the Counter

About four years ago the market took on a farm in Maunalua. Ro told Aloha State Daily that the property came with pikake fields. The team started making lei and didn't want to throw away the flowers left over. HONOLULU Magazine described it in April as five acres in East Oahu that Ro began leasing about four years ago.

Ro lets some of the blooms open in the sun, where he says the oils get stronger, and he made the syrup together with his farmer. He has used pikake syrup before, in sorbet and in an intermezzo for finer dinners, so the shave ice is a new use for an ingredient that was already on hand. He told the outlet he hopes to make more syrups from the farm's guavas, mangoes, coconuts and bananas.

The lei are still sold too. The market's Farm Fresh Lei page says they are available in the market or by advance reservation, with selections that change daily. Ro summed up the setup simply. "You can get your cake, lei, ice cream and food, and while you're waiting for everything, you can order shave ice," he said. "In a little space like this, we have a bakery, the market, the grill, and now this."

The Year the Kitchen Got a Partner

The farm supplied the flowers. The pace of change came from a person. Jason Peel, the chef behind Nami Kaze, closed that restaurant at the end of October 2025 and joined Diamond Head Market & Grill as chef and partner alongside Ro, who launched the market in 2002. Peel told Aloha State Daily that Ro had "a lot of things that he wanted to do, but never had the support to do it."

The following timeline shows the year, and most of it consists of revivals:

• December 17, 2025: A Wednesday okazuya pop-up opened, bringing Nami Kaze favorites such as Grandma's potato salad and ginger fried chicken to Monsarrat. A January listing in HONOLULU Magazine gave its hours as Wednesdays, 7:30 to 9:30 a.m. or until sold out.
• December 2025: Weekend breakfast came back. It had stopped around the Covid-19 pandemic, Peel said, and at first it ran on Ro's classic dishes.
• April 4, 2026: The first new dishes in Peel's style appeared, a waffle topped with Mrs Cheng's Tofu and eggplant, and a Mountain View pork kim chee meatloaf loco moco.
• April 11 to May 31, 2026: Hale Pikake, the room upstairs, hosted an 11-course omakase built around Hokkaido-grown Nanatsuboshi rice. Sake from Tassho Pearce of World Sake was available to preorder. Aloha State Daily reported the price as $175 per person, with dinners from 6 to 8 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. The ticket page now marks the run as over.
• September 2026: The corner storage room reopened as the shave-ice stand.

Hale Pikake fits the pattern as well. In December, Peel described the upstairs indoor and outdoor area as a space that needed only "painting, cleaning and patching" before it could host occasional pop-ups. The room was already there. So was the shave-ice machine. Breakfast had been on the menu before, and Ro had run turkey dinners more than three years before Peel helped with this year's Thanksgiving plate.

Breakfast has grown since it returned. The market's website now lists it Thursday through Sunday, 7:30 to 11 a.m., which is double the original weekends-only schedule. Peel described his approach to HONOLULU Magazine this way: "I'm coming into their house. I want to take my shoes off and be polite."

Down the Block, a Shave Ice Address Became a Cafe

Other businesses on Monsarrat changed this year as well, and one change ran the opposite way.

In November 2024, KHON2 covered the opening of Gecko Girlz Shave Ice & Ice Cream Shop on Monsarrat Avenue. It was the first Oahu location for a Big Island shop that started about two decades earlier as Big Island Sweet Treats. The company's own site now lists Kona and Waikoloa.

On September 1, 2026, Ali'i Coffee Co. opened in that former Gecko Girlz space at 3045 Monsarrat Ave., Aloha State Daily reported. So within a few weeks, the shave-ice address on the strip became a coffee shop, and coffee came back to Monsarrat in the same month the market's corner went back to shave ice.

Owner James Webb told the outlet that the cafe has "a lot more seating than any of our other shops," and he invited people to "come hang out; do your work from our shop." The Diamond Head menu differs from the company's other stores. It brings back the roast beef sandwich, $17, and the prosciutto pear flatbread, $17, from Ali'i's closed downtown Honolulu store, and adds a brie and balsamic toast for $14. The taro ube latte and royal honey latte cost $7.25 to $7.75, and the breakfast burrito costs $16. Ice cream is on the menu too, and Webb suggested the pistachio affogato.

The hours matter for planning. During the soft opening, Webb said the cafe would eventually stay open until 6 p.m. Ali'i's own Diamond Head page still lists 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. daily, at Suite 6.

How the Posted Hours Fit Together

The two businesses currently cover different parts of the day. Ali'i's posted closing time is two hours after the shave-ice stand opens.

Treat the shave-ice closing time as approximate. The market's shave ice page says 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., while the September report listed 6 p.m., and the market notes that hours are subject to change without notice. On a weekend, the order works out like this. Coffee and a seat at Ali'i come first. Breakfast at the market runs until 11, and the corner stand opens that same hour. You can pick up a pikake tray or a box of lemon crunch cake on the way home, and lei if any are left.

Neighborhood rhythms like this one shape how a Diamond Head home lives day to day, and they are part of how we present a property in this part of Honolulu. If you're considering a move near Monsarrat or want to know how a home here fits into the neighborhood's daily routine, Tracy Allen would be glad to talk it through. Book an Appointment.