Fruity fish and local grinds on Kauai

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"Hawaiians don't eat until they're full, they eat until they're tired."
-Local saying

Although this approach definitely violates my own personal code of ingestion (a surprisingly puritanical system of moderation developed after spending too many late nights flipping through Newsweek while waiting for my dinner to stop backing up on me), I certainly respect any cultural group that embraces gluttony to such an advanced degree. Over the past ten days, I tried to do my part to live up to this standard as best I could, and I have the tight jeans to prove it.


Local organic fruit from Banana Joe's fruit stand near Hanalei.

I returned from Kauai yesterday. This was my second time visiting Hawaii, which meant I was better prepared to sniff out the island’s more elusive culinary delights instead of resigning myself to the standard, horrifyingly-priced tourist fare. But I ate plenty of that stuff anyway, since this was a family trip and sometimes it’s just easier to pay $25 for extremely marginal pasta than it is to demand that your sunbaked parents circle endlessly around an abandoned industrial park searching for that authentic Hawaiian hole-in-the-wall that serves tender kalua pork and homemade liliko'i pie.

Tourist food in Hawaii is pretty limited in scope, and is generally outrageously expensive. I guess that’s the definition of tourist food: a set list of dishes which are meant to inspire a sense of comfort and familiarity in the weary traveler while managing to extract a maximum amount of her money. On the islands, this takes shape in an unlimited number of rotating fresh fish dishes which are typically available grilled or, for those who wish to suppress any evidence of the fact that they’re eating seafood, blackened. Whether the fish is ahi, opah, opakapaka or mahimahi, it is always accompanied by a sauce, a salsa, a relish or a chutney that utilizes mango, papaya, pineapple, passion fruit or some combination of the above. Obviously unlimited permutations are possible here, but there is also the high probability of monotony after the fourth night of pineapple-encrusted ono or mango-soaked monchong. Add to this the fact that you will pay upwards of $25 for each fillet and you can see how a person might go a little loco moco.

Which is what I did, when I sought out Mark’s Place in the aforementioned industrial park in Puhi and placed my lunch order. It was hard to find, but I was determined to eat as much local food as I could and nothing would stop me from obtaining the beef and sugar that is my right. Contemporary Hawaiian food is a fascinating hodgepodge of Asian cuisines with a little (okay, a lot) of good old-fashioned American grease thrown in. Unfortunately this combination has resulted in epidemic levels of obesity and heart disease, and there are major initiatives afoot to encourage locals to improve their diets. Even more unfortunately, this combination of Asian austerity and American overindulgence tastes really good.

At least, this is the conclusion that I arrived at after sampling my loco moco plate lunch, comprised of a fried egg perched atop a peppery hamburger resting on sticky rice. The whole mess is then served drowned in thick, rich gravy.

I thought I would take a few bites for the sake of experience and then toss the rest (remember my code of puritanical restraint?). Instead I took two bites and polished off the remainder in five minutes flat. It was sublime: salty, greasy and meaty, with the rice acting as a kind of sponge to soak up the excess gravy and the egg yolk. Ono, indeed.

Since I was on a quest of sorts, I managed to squeeze in as many local dishes and products as I could during my vacation. Eventually I had to steal the rental car away from my parents for the day in order to pursue my island food survey unfettered. A quick summary of my experiences are available below; one of the standouts was a chocolate chip and arare cookie from a local grinds place in Puhi. I just grabbed it off the counter because it said “arare” and I didn’t know what that was, and I generally like to eat anything that I don’t recognize. Arare turns out to be a kind of crack seed, which isn’t nearly as exciting as it sounds but sure tastes good (“Of course it does,” you’re thinking, “because it’s CRACK!” You’re so immature.). I would never guess that sweet soy crackers would make a nice addition to a chocolate chip cookie, but it really does work, probably succeeding on the same principles that make chocolate-covered pretzels so addictive.

The worst meal of the trip, I am sorry to say, came from Sabella’s Restaurant near our condo in Princeville. We had eaten there the first night we arrived and had been stunned into silence at just how expensive everything was, but to their credit I had a fruity fish dish that wasn’t bad. Later in the week, it was growing late and we had nothing in our fridge, so my mom and I decided in desperation to get take-out from Sabella’s once again. We ordered lasagna (around $20) and a tomato salad with Maui onions and Kauai goat cheese ($12). One and a half hours later it was ready, and it wasn’t lasagna, because they ran out. Instead it was a stingy handful of spaghetti cloaked in an amazingly mediocre tomato sauce. The grossest insult of all was the salad, which consisted of six razor-thin slices of unripe tomato, a few daubs of lovely goat cheese, and a scattering of microscopic slivers of onion. There may have been some pepper sprinkled about as well, but my memory grows hazy with the tragedy of it all. My mom and I were so hungry by this point that we were reduced to scraping individual tomato molecules off the Styrofoam containers in order to make sure we had eaten every last bit of food Sabella’s had sent our way. My dad, who had made himself a peanut butter, jelly and onion sandwich (!) hours earlier, sat on the couch contentedly watching a tape of South Pacific while we divvied up our meager yet pricey portions of tourist scraps. Serves us right, I guess.

Local Foods Sampled:
Note: The fruity fish is so ubiquitous that I didn’t even bother to record it.
Spam musubi from Pono Market in Kapa’a

Chocolate chip and arare cookies, butter mochi from Joni Hana in Puhi
Sunrise papaya and pineapple from Foodland Market in Princeville
Portuguese sausage from the Hanalei Wake-Up Café
Apple bananas from the Hanalei Farmer’s Market
Hanalei Sunset (guava, passion fruit, pineapple and strawberry) shave ice atop mac nut ice cream from Wishing Well Shave Ice in Hanalei

Kauai Gold beer
Organic fruit smoothie from Banana Joe's near Hanalei
Lilikoi mousse from Princeville Resort
Taro fritters from Postcards Café in Hanalei
Ahi tacos from Tropical Taco in Hanalei
Thai sweet chili and garlic shrimp from Shrimp Station in Waimea
Maui Wowie Kona coffee and caramel chocolate bar
Hawaiian Sun strawberry and guava jam

Plate Lunches:
Ginger-shoyu chicken, kalua pork and sweet chili chicken wings from Hanalei Mixed Plate
Kalua pork, ahi poke and lomilomi salmon from Polynesia Café
Loco moco from Mark’s Place