I lose the right to talk about my Hawaii trip at the end of this month so I’d better hop to it! I continue with my presentation of Kauai in categories. Today we talk about an exciting one: fooood.

If you forget the overpriced Mexican food our hungry souls settled for as a first meal and the cheese and cracker supper later, our first real Hawaiian meal was pineapple for breakfast:


(…and mini wheats with soy milk.)

All winter we looked forward to fresh tropical fruit and we were not disappointed. We found fruit stands on country roads operating on the honour system and masking tape prices:

I learned how to eat lychee (not whole like below):

and was astounded by how bananas grow:

We went to the Kauai Coffee Company to buy green beans for friends that roast their own. The samples we tried were good. Surprising given the coffee served by cafés on the island. It was pretty bad and made us proud of what we could produce with store-bought grinds and a coffee filter held over a travel mug.

On to cooked food…

The first distinctively Hawaii meal we had was the teriyaki burger from Duane’s Ono-Char Burger. Note: when I say Hawaiian in reference to food I don’t mean Hawaiian as was originally on the island but Hawaiian mixed with Japanese and American. Hence the teriyaki burger. We waited for 20, maybe even 30 minutes at the small road-side kitchen with order window. It wasn’t waiting in a line-up, just for a delicious burger to cook so it was worth every minute.

That would have been my fill of burger for the trip but I had promised myself that I would try the loco moco. Oh boy. Rice topped with two hamburger patties, gravy, and two friend eggs. It came in a plate lunch so there was the traditional side of macaroni salad (I substituted a regular salad that was essentially iceberg lettuce swimming in macaroni salad mayo-dressing) and a side of noodles. I ate wondering what people on the island do to burn these calories. Probably something that I wouldn’t be doing that day so I saved half for dinner. My conclusion was that loco moco was tasty and satisfying in a carb-meat-fried-sauce way but I felt really out of character eating it. Like I do if I eat chicken pot pie or other meat and pastry combinations.

Later in the trip we tried plate lunches from Fish Express (a place you have to try if you go to Kauai). I had the kalua pig:

Kalua means to cook in an underground oven and Kalua pig is shredded pork from a salted pig cooked underground all day long (think luau pig). To me Kalua now means the best pig you will ever ever eat.

Faron had the Laulau. This is pork wrapped in taro leaves and cooked in the underground oven. It was tasty but if you try it, don’t eat kalua pig first because the laulau will not compare.

The pink cubes on the side are salmon and tuna poke: an appetizer of marinated cubes of raw fish. Common marinade ingredients are salt, soy sauce, nori, and sesame. Another must try in Hawaii.

A final dish of note was the saimin, a noodle soup dish much like ramen. We had it at Hamura’s Saimin Stand so I assumed it was mostly from the Japanese but it did have wontons in it. Wikipedia: “The dish is composed of elements taken from each of the original sugarcane and pineapple plantation laborer ethnicities of the early 20th century: Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Hawaiian, Portuguese” Ahh. I was worried that I’d compare saimin to ramen but it stood strong as a noodle soup of its own. Plus the atmosphere at Hamura’s was great. U-shaped counters and closely packed stools always occupied by tourists like us or locals.

Okay! That was a lot of post. I guess we ate a lot of food in a week. And still made room for dessert:

Shaved ice. I think this is the Japanese kakigori but in Hawaii, particularly at JoJo’s Shaved Ice in Waimea (not the newer one run by the punk white guy but the one around the corner), they have perfected ice shaving so that the treat melts in your mouth (of course) but like butter. I can’t remember the name of this combination but it had vanilla ice cream on the button, strawberry cheesecake, vanilla, and banana syrups, and sweetened condensed milk drizzled on top.

I’m waiting for a plane in Calgary. Michael Jackson died and when they show news reports everyone watches. That’s impact.