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This Review of Spago at the Four Seasons Maui at Wailea (aka the hotel in White Lotus) is from our 2021 site inspection visit.
Spago Restaurant Location and Hours
Spago is located on the lobby level of the Four Seasons Maui at Wailea at 3900 Wailea Alanui Drive, about a 30 minute drive from Kahului Airport. The restaurant exclusively serves dinner nightly, from 5:30-8:30pm, although its hours expand slightly during the peak holiday season, from 5-9pm from December 18, 2021-January 10, 2022. As with all Hawaii restaurants these days, we recommend that guests make their dinner reservations well in advance of their stay.
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Spago Check-in and Service
We reserved Spago months in advance of our stay and mentioned that we were celebrating a birthday and would like one of the tables closest to the balcony and ocean. After checking in on time, however, we were led to an interior table that wasn't anywhere close to the edge of the balcony. Needless to say, we weren't happy about that and asked to be moved. Neither the hostess nor our server was helpful, pointing out that other tables were already seated in these more desirable locations. There was no explanation of why our special occasion and view request, made so many months prior, weren't honored.
Due to the lack of server and even management attention, it fell to us to notice when parties finished dining and proactively point it out so that we could move. We ended up moving twice in order to finally secure the type of table and view we wanted and had expected given our early booking, celebration, and request.
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Spago Restaurant Dinner Menu and Food
Here's the Spago dinner menu:
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We also were given a kid's menu (keiki menu), with main course choices for $15, or with the addition of salad and ice cream sandwich for $21:
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By far the highlight of our meal, apart from dessert, was the complimentary bread basket, particularly the delicious focaccia it came with. Our experience was that portion sizes were on the meager side, so if you're hungry, either count on ordering more than usual, or request more focaccia.
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We shared the Japanese Hamachi appetizer, which was good but pricey, at $24 for five small pieces of hamachi.
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We also shared the housemade Tagliatelle with bolognese ragu and parmesan, which our son requested. Again, good, but not great.
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For his main, our son had the Catch of the Day from the kids' menu, some mahi mahi, which turned out to be a very small end portion of overcooked fish, with a large portion of rice.
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My husband ordered the Pineapple Coconut Red Curry with Kauai prawn and mahi mahi for his main. The sauce was delicious, but there wasn't nearly enough prawn or mahi mahi in it to justify the $49 cost. Notice a trend?
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For my main I chose the Hawaiian Seafood Risotto from the appetizers. The portion was reasonable for an appetizer, and it wasn't a bad dish, but it was mediocre as risottos go.
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The dessert menu is short. While I would have liked to have ordered the Valrhona Chocolate Souffle, neither of our two servers told us that it was on the dessert menu, and the associated 25 minute wait time. A good server would have mentioned it, so that we could have decided earlier in the meal if we wanted to order it so as to avoid such a long wait between dinner and dessert, especially since we were with our son and needed to get him to bed.
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Fortunately, the Basque Cheesecake, which we amended to come with Lilikoi Sauce and Chocolate Sauce (from the souffle) was superb. It was the saving grace of an otherwise frustrating and very lackluster meal. We'd come back for the cheesecake, but not for any of the other dishes we tried.
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The Verdict
Spago at Four Seasons Maui was one of the few restaurant disappointments of our site inspection trip. It has potential, with an excellent bread and focaccia basket and wonderful cheesecake dessert, but our appetizers and main courses ranged from mediocre to good, but not great. What most detracted from the experience was the poor service, from reception to servers, with the exception of our last server. As a third party restaurant, Spago isn't run by the Four Seasons, but we wish it was–it could use a Four Seasons makeover, both with its savory dishes but particularly in the service arena. If you're craving Italian while staying at the Four Seasons, we'd recommend the nearby Matteo's Osteria instead, which is popular with locals and was a much better experience for us.
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