Denizens of large metropolises on the mainland love to use OpenTable.com. It's a free online restaurant reservation service that lets you pick a restaurant by cuisine, region, and price range and then tells you which ones have online availability. There's no phone calls, no trying to remember whether the confirmation number is the same as the reservation number, no headaches. In New York, I got addicted to OpenTable. In Hawaii, OpenTable has long been an afterthought with few restaurants signed up -- so few that it was pretty much useless. Thankfully, that's changed.

The site now will let you book tables online at a bunch of notable dining establishments including, on Oahu, Bali by the Sea at the Hilton Hawaiian Village, Chef Mavro, Ruth's Chris, and Town and, on Maui, Son'z, Casanova, and Spago at the Four Seasons. There are only a handful of restaurants in the system now -- something like 50 statewide -- but a good percentage of them are good places. So now its finally worth checking out OpenTable.com.

—Alex, 03/07/07