Aloha

When I first booked a trip to Hawaii six months ago, my knowledge of it was limited to vague ideas of tropical beaches, hula dancing, ukulele and pineapples. While I was lucky enough to experience all of these things on my recent trip there, doing some research on the islands’ history and – of course – its food, was full of surprises…

The eight main islands that constitute Hawaii are the remnants of volcanos that sprung up hundreds of thousands of years ago in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Almost uniquely this means that (at least to begin with) there were no native people and hardly anything on the islands that would even have been edible; to this day Hawaii is the most isolated populated settlement in the world, meaning that everything now there had to be transported thousands of miles in one way or another. So… pineapples? Actually from South America. The ukelele? From Portugal. It turns out that exploring Hawaii’s (food) culture is really about exploring the waves of different peoples that came to the islands and what they brought with them.

Canoe foods

The first humans to arrive on the Hawaiian islands were Polynesian voyagers who, amazingly, made the 2,000+ mile journey by canoe in around 300CE. Ready to make a home in whatever lands they discovered, they brought a number of foods with them on the journey to raise and plant in Hawaii (so-called “canoe foods”), including some which are still widespread on the islands today such as chickens, pigs, bananas, coconuts and sugarcane. Before this all that would have been edible on Hawaii – besides fish – were some plants, such as ferns, that had also managed to make the immense journey from faraway lands (e.g. carried by birds or swept there by storm winds).

The most important plant the original voyagers brought with them was taro. The leaves are known as lū’au, which gives the traditional Hawaiian feast its name. I enjoyed these most in the form of laulau, which is where meat is wrapped with the taro leaves before being cooked, so that the meat inside steams and retains all its moisture. I had this at a luau we went to and it was incredible; the meat (in this case pork) was exquisitely tender, and the leaves themselves tasted a little like spinach but with a more earthy flavour. Beyond the leaves, the roots of the taro plant formed a staple part of the traditional diet when they were cooked and pounded down to made poi, a light purple mixture that was the main starch in the diet. Nowadays, while a lot of locals still love it, out-of-towners are recommended to eat it in small quantities as it’s a bit of an acquired taste (e.g. used as a dipping sauce, rather than as a side). This was demonstrated in quite a pointed way at the luau where there was a big vat of poi but the serving implement was a teeny little ladle (the size of a finger) and the container for it was the kind you would put ketchup in at a fast food place. I was relieved that I’d only taken a tiny bit when I tasted it, as to me it was pretty tasteless and a strange, pasty texture. From a tourist’s perspective I most commonly saw it in the form of sweet, soft bread rolls that are flavoured with poi (incidentally this style of roll is known as a Hawaiian roll today but was brought over by the Portuguese… more on that later). I had these poi rolls a few times but could never taste anything different about them – I suspect the purple colour is meant to give a nod to the traditional diet without using a lot of it for those that don’t really like it…

My best experience of something poi-related was when we visited a place called Hula Dog for Hawaiian-style hotdogs. With lots of nods to tropical flavours, the sausage was stuffed into one of those sweet, purple poi rolls and lathered in a passionfruit (or lilikoi) mustard, papaya relish, and roasted garlic and lemon sauce. It was absolutely gorgeous, all of the sweet flavours balancing out with the sharp tang of mustard and lemon, and the intense savouriness of the garlic and sausage. It was the best hotdog I’ve had by far (sorry, New York). But it’s interesting that none of the flavours – apart from the hidden poi – would have been tasted in Hawaii for over a thousand years after people first arrived there.

From poi to plantations

Captain Cook became the first documented European to arrive in Hawaii in the 1770s and he published the islands’ location for the first time, spelling the native name as Owyhee. From that point onwards the islands attracted various Europeans including whalers, missionaries, traders and explorers, each bringing their own food traditions with them. For example, a British Royal Navy captain was the first person to bring cattle to the island in 1793, when he presented some to the Hawaiian king. With no natural predators their numbers rose dramatically and the king therefore hired American ranchers to round up and domesticate them, giving birth to the beef industry in Hawaii. In a familiar pattern, these ranches have since declined and are now mainly used for tourism and filming (fun fact: Jurassic Park was filmed on one of these old ranches!)

The influx of settlers to the islands took advantage of the warm climate and the amount of space in Hawaii to establish other food industries in Hawaii, most notably in the form of sugar and pineapple plantations. For example, the American James Dole brought his eponymous company to the islands in 1902 and it became the largest pineapple company in the world, which helps explain the associations between Hawaii and the fruit, even though it’s a relatively recent visitor. Nowadays – as with cattle ranching – this seems to be more of a tourist industry, pineapples no longer being shipped beyond the islands (instead from countries in South America where production and labour costs are cheaper). I visited the Dole Plantation on my trip and it was a bit like one giant gift shop (somehow I resisted the pineapple cuddly toys and pineapple Christmas decorations) but it did have one thing worth sampling: Dole Whip, which is a dairy-free pineapple soft-serve, which is possibly the most refreshing thing I’ve ever tried, like the very essence of pineapple condensed down into something icy and sweet and delicious.

Although (mostly American) settlers owned and profited from these plantations, the labour came from elsewhere. Initially, many of the workers were Polynesian Hawaiians, but - due to poor conditions and pay - they began to protest and leave, prompting the landowners to look elsewhere for cheap labour. The first significant wave of immigration to Hawaii from Asia arrived in 1852 when Chinese workers were brought over to work on the sugar plantations; the scale of this is shown by the growth in the Chinese population in the next thirty years, from fewer then 400, to over 18,000 individuals. This influx was responsible for another important modern-day Hawaiian food staple: rice. The Chinese population preferred this to poi (which I empathise with) and many of the workers, at the end of their contracts with the plantations, leased abandoned taro fields to turn into rice fields. Nowadays, Hawaiians eat four times as much rice per person than in the rest of the US, and I noticed that you will still see rice options served for every meal alongside other more traditionally American carbs (more on this later).

This pattern continued throughout the 1800s with new workers being brought from different countries in waves as strikes or general discontent broke out among the former groups. After China were workers from Portugal (hence the ukulele and sweet bread rolls that I’ve already mentioned). These were followed by populations from Japan, Korea and the Philippines. Each group brought foods that contributed to the diverse mix that now makes up Hawaiian food, enduring as they stayed on the islands and became an important part of the population. In fact, Hawaii is the only US state where people who identify as “Asian American” are the largest ethnic group. A key example of the influence these groups have had on the local cuisine is the ubiquitous “lunch plate” that originated as a bento-box style lunch for plantation workers, and consists of a form of meat with two scoops of rice and one scoop of macaroni salad. This could be found on nearly every menu on my trip and the meat component was often Korean or Japanese in origin. In fact, one of the best meals I had on the trip was a no-frills lunch plate at a local Chinese takeaway where I chose (from the “local foods” section of the menu) a chicken katsu plate, a dish that highlights the important culinary legacies of both China and Japan on Hawaiian food habits. I had lunch plates a few times on the trip and, while often very tasty, it was a pretty stodgy meal overall – particularly given the climate – which I suppose attests to their original purpose as fuel for physical work. But I would have preferred to swap out the macaroni salad (really just overcooked macaroni pasta with mayonnaise) with some vegetables! But the inclusion of the macaroni does serve to highlight the final major food influence on modern Hawaii…

Stars and stripes and spam

While Americans have had a big influence on Hawaii since at least the 1800s, there was a particularly big influx of American servicemen in the 1940s during World War Two. In their ration boxes they brought one of the more bizarre ingredients to add to the Hawaiian food melting pot: Spam! Hawaiians are the second largest consumer of the stuff in the world (behind Guam) and part of its popularity is explained by the fact that it was an important source of protein when fishing was prohibited on the islands during the war. This led to one of the best mash-ups in history (in my humble opinion)… the glorious Spam musubi. Taste aside (for just a moment), it’s a great example of how different groups in Hawaii have created something unique to the islands. Musubi are Japanese rectangular slabs of rice and topping, all wrapped in a ribbon of nori seaweed, that plantation workers could conveniently keep in their pockets for sustenance. Slap a chunk of the popular Spam on top and the Spam musubi was born. This is one of those things that ahead of time I just wanted to try for the novelty of it but it was actually one of my favourite things I ate in Hawaii: intensely savoury and meaty Spam atop sticky rice that has absorbed some of the fat from the meat, all packaged up in the briny seaweed. Trust me: it’s better than it sounds.

American military preferences are also thought to be responsible for another crazy (by name) staple that I found on most local-style menus: the wonderfully stodgy loco moco. It starts off with two scoops of rice (remember the Chinese influence), usually a scoop of macaroni salad (the American influence helps explain this a bit more now), a beefy patty or two (remember when cattle were first brought over… and now you’ve got hungry American soldiers so the burger-style patty makes some sense). This concoction is then drowned in a pool of thick and shiny brown gravy that reminded me a bit of school dinners. For good measure, the whole thing is topped with two oozy, sunny-side-up eggs. I tried a version that had some Portuguese sausage in (called a Hawaiian-style loco moco as though loco moco was actually a thing anywhere else) … remember the Portuguese influence? This is one of those dishes that sounds odd at first but starts to make sense when you break down all those components knowing a bit more about the state’s history. Despite loving the background to this dish, it was another one that was a bit overwhelmingly stodgy in 30C heat… it makes more sense for a hungry soldier and less sense for a not-particularly-hungry Mary who has recently had a Spam musubi.

Despite the enduring influence of the US, it amazes me that Hawaii only became an American state in the 1960s, but it does help to explain why it’s such a unique place. Delving into its history allows you to understand why you’ll see things like a breakfast of eggs and rice with a choice of Spam or Portuguese sausage. Or a lunch plate option of Korean beef bulgogi with macaroni and mayonnaise, and a purple roll on the side. All washed down with some pineapple juice. And maybe a mai tai. And then maybe another mai tai. And then so many mai tais that you could actually justify a plate of loco moco the next morning.

Luau plate including laulau (top-centre) and poi (bottom-centre). Other items on plate include (on left) purple sweet potatoes, Hawaiian fried rice and slow-cooked pork, and (right) poke [octopus salad], lomi lomi salmon salad, and local crab salad.

Hula Dog with fresh-squeezed mango lemonade.

Chicken katsu lunch plate.

The wonderful spam musubi.

Hawaiian loco moco with Portuguese sausage.