Welcome to Oahu

Hawaii is a small, remote chain of islands, but its culinary culture has a lot of influence – and a lot of influences. To kick off this travel miniseries, we explore Hawaii’s history & foodways with people who helped shape what the food scene is today.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Yeah, the full gamut of the ethnic city, the cultural
presentations and all that, and then how has changed over
time because there will be correlation to what's happening here
as well in terms of the history of it. So
depending on how deep you want to get, ladies, I mean,
you know, just in terms of your first question again,

(00:29):
my first style was how many how many days do
you have? Hello and welcome to save our protection of
I heart radio and stuff media, I'm Any and I'm
Lauren voke obam and today we're talking about the cuisines
of Hawaii, um and more specifically those of the island
of Oahu. Yes, because you may have heard that Lauren
and I, along with our superproducers Dylan and Andrew recently

(00:51):
Ish went on a field trip to Hawaii. Yeah. Yeah,
we're still not sure how we got the company to
go along with that. Yeah, okay, we even got Lauren
and I even got to do some vacation vakay what
I know. I'm still confused about still confused. But yes,
these have been long awaited episodes, so we've been teasing them.

(01:12):
We have here they are. Yes, we are finally starting
our mini series. Indeed, because it was so lovely and
we spent about a week gathering about eighteen interviews with UM,
with food producers and mixologists and chefs and cultural practitioners
and politicians and ranchers. The quote that you heard at
the top there was from one Brooks Takanaka. He is

(01:34):
the assistant general manager of United Fishing Agency, and he's
not wrong. UM, there is a daunting breadth and depth
of food history and culture on Oahu. Yes, we had
a lot of ground to cover food wise, but we
did our best to eat all the things. Professionals were

(01:54):
very professional when it comes to eating everything the best.
We started as soon as we got there, and when
we got back to the studio here in Atlanta, we
the super producers and Laura and I talked through the experience.
In the studio, I went across to our first, our
first convenience store experience of the trip, and within like

(02:18):
so yeah, within like two hours of landing, I had
already purchased like a bunch of weird drinks like a
Yuzu soda and some um smelling gary and oh goodness.
And then I went back over the stud Wait a minute,
I missed. I missed the hot case the first time
through but then you told me about it. I said, well,
I didn't bring any sunscreen, so I'm just gonna go

(02:41):
back and remedy this problem. I think as soon as
I put my stuff down in the hotel, I was like, Okay,
I'm going to the beach. And I just walked down
to the beach and I didn't really know where I
was going, but I eventually reached the water and I
turned to my left and I could just see the
iconic Diamond Head monument and there were literally two full rainbows,

(03:03):
and like, it's the beach and everyone's happy. And I
was just like, but yeah, don't worry. It wasn't all
convenient store food, not all. No, we had quite the spread. Yes,
oh goodness, so much, so much pok every day. I
think we had at least once a day I would say, um,

(03:23):
so much other fresh fish, um, wonderful meats and pastries,
everything that I could possibly find with passion fruit, yes,
lily everywhere. So many donuts, so many donuts, and an
unfortunate doughnut mishap that we later rectified where we left
a precious bag of doughnuts in an interview room. We did.

(03:45):
I hope they got eaten. That's all I care about.
I hope that the very least they didn't get eaten
by ants. Yes, I hope not as well. And I
have to say I only saw one rainbow the whole
time I was there, and the three of you saw
a bunch of rainbows. So I don't know what was
going on with me. A little mad about it. You
were you were looking, you were looking firmly ahead and

(04:06):
not above. I guess that's maybe that's some kind of
psycho evaluation of me, But I don't know anyway. I
do think it's interesting that we've already done several big
Hawaii topics like pineapple spam make ties for a relatively small,
isolated island chain. Why he has a lot of influence,
a lot of influence and a lot of influences. Um,

(04:27):
but but yeah, it is so striking that these islands
are over two thousand, four hundred miles away from the
nearest land mass being California. That's almost four thousand kilometers.
And this mini series is going to be a bit
different than our past mini series, where we focused on
specific cities like Asheville or New Orleans. We were primarily
operating in Honolulu, which is the state capital and a
major metro area. But we ventured out into a wah

(04:49):
who at large as well. But okay, I suppose this
brings us to our question Hawaii. What is it? Oh? Gosh? Well? Um.
Hawaii is the most recent state to join the American Union,
just in nineteen fifty nine. It's an archipelago composed of

(05:10):
eight major islands and a number of smaller islands and
islets um uh. Those main ones are who okay, Hawaii
a k a. The Big Island, Maui, Oahu, Kauai, Malakai,
e Lena e ni How and cahol away Um, although
that last one is uninhabited. Yes uh. These islands are
the peaks of vast volcanic mountains under the Pacific, the

(05:33):
newest of which are still active um and they run
from oldest to youngest north to south. Over the millennia.
The the enormous eruptions that formed and re formed the
islands have in some places been been worn by rain
and waves into steep cliffs, grooved with waterfalls and deep valleys.
And these wide flat plains and beaches. Other areas boast

(05:56):
craters a mile high and just as wide. There are
places where you can drive ten thousand feet up a
mountain right through the cloud line, passing through four distinct
climate zones in an hour. We did that. Oh yes,
now it was great. Story for another day. UM. Hawaii
is also one of the smallest states. It's just around
six thousand, five d square miles of land, smaller than

(06:17):
New Jersey, and is one of the most densely populated,
with around one point for two million residents according to
the Census population estimate. Almost a million of those are
on Oahu. Mark Twain called Hawaii the loveliest fleet of
islands that lies anchored in any ocean. Several several people
we interviewed sided the weather as one of their reasons

(06:40):
for returning to Hawaii after a stint of living somewhere else.
Aside from the snow capped mountains, the coolest temperature is
usually somewhere in the upper sixties and the highest in
the lower eighties. So that's around twenty degrees celsius. Very nice,
Oh so pleasant. There's no mosquitoes there. Literal paradise, literal paradise.
UM chef Alan Wah spoke to that he is one

(07:01):
of the founders of a culinary movement called Hawaiian Regional Cuisine.
More on that in the second and he has a
restaurateur in Hanolulu. We definitely don't have the four seasons,
so you don't got to worry about your anti freeze
or your your windows scraper from vice and the thing.
We've got two seasons, grain and sunshine, or we got

(07:24):
mango season and no mango. So if you look really good,
we got you have mangoes starting this month, you might
be able to find some other farmers market. And I
think we've got some of the best mangoes in the
entire world. We just missed mangoa season. I'm still thinking
about it. Oh I saw them growing everywhere, but they
were still green alas. But yes, thanks to Hawaii's temperatures

(07:53):
and rainfall, they grow all kinds of things. They're pineapples, sugarcane, banana, papaya, mango, light,
che guava, coconut, breadfruit, avocado, tarot, passion fruit, a k
a lily, kiu, tamarind, lime, coffee, ginger root, macadamia nuts.
Here's Dave Newman, the owner and operator of a couple

(08:13):
of posh drink spots at Pint and Jigger and Harry's
Hardware Emporia. Absolutely. I mean, I don't think that there's
any place I've ever been or ever seen that as
the wealth of local produce, especially for its seasonal fruits,
it's ridiculous. I mean, we can go hiking and get
fresh lily koy and mountain apples and light sheet and

(08:34):
the I mean just the list goes on, you know,
walk down the street, get your own high buscuess to
many high busuess, simple syrup. It's it's incredible. I can't
wait till we get to talk about his bar more.
It's awesome. But anyway, also thanks in part to the climate,
Hawaii's largest industry is tourism, even though it's a bit
of a hike to get to. Again, it's closest to California. Anchorge,

(08:55):
Alaska's about three thousand miles or four thousand six kilometers
away to the Tokyo is four thousand miles or six
thousand kilometers to the west. It's frequently called the crossroads
of the Pacific. This isolation has its pros and cons.
Here's the third generation restaurant owner Monica to Gucci Ryan
of Highway in an iconic Hawaii establishments serving traditional Hawaiian

(09:17):
and local food for more than seventy years. Because we
live in the middle of the Pacific, everything has to
be shipped in, and so what you find is you
find even your basic food products, for example, things that
you need for construction, everything has to be shipped in.
And there's a bit of a monopoly on shipping. And
there's also some federal laws called the Jones Act, which

(09:40):
requires any shipping boats that comes to our ports needs
to be um US. It cannot be foreign and so
and so that also drives up the cost here. And
so as residents and people that live here on this island,
we pay extra oil also gets shipped in, and so

(10:00):
we have one of the highest energy costs, one of
the highest cost of living. And also if you buy
like a gallon of milk, it's probably like seven or
eight bucks for a gallon of milk here in Hawaii.
If you look on the map and you look on
the globe, like what you really is isolated. It is
like this little tiny island in the middle of the
Pacific Ocean, which is like the largest body of water

(10:25):
on the planet, and we really are this amazing piece
of land. Um that's just the middle of nowhere, and
they've always been talking about how strategically we are positioned
because we are positioned between the west and the east,
and how that could be used in our interests for
our interests, that has never really materialized outside of the

(10:47):
military position and and tourism. That military position is an
issue will get into later, but more to the point,
right now, the tourism translates to about ten million visitors
a year, spending around sixteen billion dollars, and more and more.
Part of that tourism is starting to revolve around and
ever changing and diverse food and drink scene, which is

(11:09):
a big deal for a lot of reasons. For a
long time, Hawaii was known for overly sweet neon drinks
pumped out of those slush machines, and blandly inoffensive pan
European hotel food with some tiki flair. While there were
plenty of delicious and interesting things happening in the food world,
visitors just didn't know where to go to find it.

(11:29):
That has changed, though, partly thanks to the larger movement
of food oh you know, the interest in eating local
and seasonal and increasingly instagramm herble things um, which we've
seen happening all over the world, but when it comes
to Hawaii in particular, we can point to a specific
and purposeful movement that was designed to bring awareness to
local foods, Hawaii regional cuisine. It's not the be all

(11:53):
end all of what food is in Hawaii to day,
but it jumps started a sort of refocusing. Yeah, the
the HRC movement started almost thirty years ago, and it
was meant to be a way to fuse and celebrate
and elevate a whole lot of things going on in
the cultures around Hawaii. Um, you've got you've got native
Hawaiian cuisine developed by settlers from various parts of Polynesia

(12:14):
over a couple of thousand years, and then all these
waves of colonists and immigrants going back a couple of
hundred years, all of whom brought along some of their
cooking styles and sensibilities and ingredients. And this created, oh,
an absolute volcano of a melting pot. But but again,
that wasn't the food being served in the big, popular,

(12:36):
well funded restaurants for a long time on the islands.
And what's more, the ingredients for that, like flat inoffensive
hotel food often had to be shipped in at great expense.
Alan Wong spoke with us about how and why he
and eleven other chefs came together to found the movement.
Sure it was we were all guest shipping at each

(12:58):
other's restaurants. Then one day I said to one guy,
you know, it wouldn't it be nice to get together
and have some beers talk story. We have all the
same problems. So the first meeting was on Maui at
the Maui Prince Hotel, and so we just got together,
had fun, and then uh, we decided that we wanted

(13:22):
to meet again. So and in the process we had
we decided to form a nonprofit group called Hawaii Regional Cuisine.
And then besides the name, it took a long time
to get the name. You know, a long time ago.
These are called it Pacific rim Cuisine. And we didn't
want to call it Pacific Rim Cuisine because the California

(13:43):
guys are doing that. So we wanted our own identity.
So when we did that, we had two goals. In
my The first one helped develop an agriculture network in
the state of Hawaii. So we all gave up our
names of our vendors. Emails, no, no, no, emails back
there in facts. Okay, that's true, and then the Department

(14:09):
of Egg put together a smaller the directory with all
of those contacts. So when you fast forward that goal
to two thousand and nineteen, we have the most amount
of farmers markets than ever before in Hawaii. Almost every
day that we can go to a farmer's market, all
across the island, all across the state. The the cooks

(14:30):
today and the chefs have the most amount of local
products that ever before to cook with. So that was
part of the first goal. The second goal was to
help spread the word that there was a new cuisine
in Hawaii. So we we all pitched in one chapter.
We created a book called the New Cuisine of Hawaii.
So the joke used to be in Hawaii that the

(14:52):
best food in Hawaii was on the plane over right,
everybody knows that one. And so finally now this book
became like a thing. We gave a way two people
so they can see that it's it's changed. So you
know how like New Velle Cuisine changed the cooking across
America or across the globe. It was basically what New

(15:14):
York Cuisine did to classical cuisine was signal a change.
This was different. Now we didn't have to do classical cooking,
wouldn't rely on escoffier. Okay. Uh, the food was very different.
It was lighter, it was more fresh, it looked different,
the portions chain and whatnot. That if you went to

(15:35):
a restaurant back in the day at that time, you'd
find a lot of hotels with continental menus, and a
continental menu in Chicago, New York. Honolulu would be the same.
You would get your duck Colorado and would you get
your Chateaubrian, you get you know, those kinds of dishes.
And so the same thing happened in Hawaii. So in uh,

(15:57):
Hawaii regional cuisine was born and they kind of changed
their way Hawaii at forever. So be careful at not
to say Hawaiian regional cuisine, okay, because because one of
the biggest misconceptions about Hawaii is when you go to
a restaurant in Hawaii, you think you're going to a

(16:20):
Hawaiian restaurant, or you know, you meet some money from Hawaii,
a local person. They might not have any Hawaiian blood
in there. It's its own ethnicity. Hawaiians have their own food.
So the the Hawaiians were the first wave of people
that came to Hawaii and on the on the boat,
they brought things with them, but things like khlo pig,

(16:45):
the food in the emu. We eat a lot of
raw things back then. We ate poke or raw fish, um,
things like that. So that's that's Hawaii. That's Hawaiian versus Hawaii.
The a misconception about Hawaii is that that everybody thinks
that when you put a pineapple on a burger or

(17:05):
pineapple at a pizza, that's Hawaiian burger, that's Hawaiian pizza. Well,
we don't need like that, not at all. So if
you get a chance to go on the beach and
just listen to this. Okay. A couple is telling the
other couple asking what should we go to eat diner
for dinner tonight, And so the couple replies, we just
went to a great Hawaiian restaurant, okay, and we went

(17:29):
to Alan Walks. Well, I'm not a Hawaiian restaurant who
don't serve Hawaiian food. We serve the things like our
own style of poke. We take colu a pig and
we put it in a dish with clams. But we're
not We're not going to serve food that it is
right out of the Hawaiian cookbook, you know what I mean.

(17:52):
And now that this is a very important point that
that due to my ignorance, I didn't really fully understand
when we were going into this trip um, but that
our interviewees were were kind enough to explain. One of
those was Chandra Lucariello, a cocktail expert who's currently the
director of Mixology and spirits Education for the distribution company

(18:14):
Southern Glazers Wine and Spirits of Hawaii. Here, Schandra, I
think that we we've all just growing up here. You know,
you embraced everyone's culture. I think the most misunderstood part
about Hawaiian culture per se, like quote unquote Hawaiian is
that on the Hawaiians were here first and then all
of like like for me, I'm Asian and I come

(18:34):
from a Chinese, Japanese, Korean background, and we all all
of my ancestors came because of the plantation. But the
native Hawaiians were here first, and so they are the
ones that really have the authority on the true Hawaiian
culture and like what is like really Hawaii everything else
that we've brought here is just adds to the melting

(18:55):
pot of Hawaii. But um, I think that the Hawaiian
culture gets misunderstood a lot because people think, oh, you're
from Hawaii, you must be Hawaiian, which isn't true. I'm Chinese, Japanese,
screen I live in Hawaii, grew up here. But those
people that are actually from here in their ancestors, were
her first. Those are the Hawaiians. Clearly, to understand where
Hawaiians cuisine is now, you need to understand at least

(19:17):
a little bit about its history. And we'll get into
that as soon as we get back from a quick break.
For word from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you sponsoring, Yes,
thank you. So when we asked chefs and restauranturs and

(19:38):
bartenders and lift drivers about the foods that they grew
up with and or that they eat now in Hawaii,
just about everyone talked about the island's history. Here's Alan again. Okay,
the Hawaiians came by canoe, they discovered Hawaii. The second
wave of people that came to Hawaii, or I'm going

(19:59):
to call the tall ship okay, the same tall ships
that the pilgrims came over Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, Okay.
And many things happened. So on one of the ships
came disease. Well, first of all, on one ship they
brought sugarcane first, then pineapple was born the plantation, Okay.

(20:25):
The workers were Hawaiian blood. And so on, one of
the ships came disease. The cock aproached, the rat was
it was never here, and so six of the native
Hawaiians died testiment. So when that's your workforce, what do
you do? So the first place they went to was China.

(20:46):
So they hired these men. They left their families back
home three year contract. Some got paid six bucks a month,
and back then there was enough money for them. They
lived on the plantation and to send some going back
to their family. Then the next were the Portuguese. Difference
with the Portuguese they brought their families. Then the Puerto Ricans,

(21:08):
then the Japanese, Koreans, the Okinawans, and the Filipinos. Those
were the first immigrants. So imagine that besides the Hawaiian's okay,
and besides the Caucasians, you had these immigrants. Now, so
this was the beginning for me, the beginning of Hawaii
regional cuisine, which is the borrowing of all the ethnic

(21:30):
influences you find in Hawaiian. So we we talked about Escoufier.
So if you're in France and you're a young culinary,
so you might say go look into the Scaufier. But
if you grew up here, um, you you need to
have some background. You you're cooking base or your foundation
is probably going to be rooted in some European cuisine

(21:52):
or French cooking. But go look into the the ethnic cookbooks,
the Japanese cookbook, the Chinese cookbook, the Korean cook book,
and look for ideas from there. So that's what I
tell the cooks who do here. That was a lot
very quickly. Let's let's let's unpack some of that. Yes,

(22:13):
all right, so brief history, lesson? Oh so brief, so
briefe okay. Polynesians were the first to arrive to the archipelago,
landing on the Big Island some fift hundred years ago
in big canoes with only the stars as their guide.
Small communities formed of fishermen and farmers, ruled by chieftains
and some fault over land. The first European to make

(22:34):
contact was probably Captain James Cook in seventeen seventy eight
on the island of Kawaii. Cook dubbed the archipelago the
Sandwich Islands for the Earl of Sandwich. Cook was killed
in a skirmish with Hawaiians the following year on the
island of Hawaii. Then, amidst further European exploration and incursion,
along comes King Kameya. Though he was only the nephew

(22:58):
of the former king of the Island of Hawaii. Kamea
rested control of the island from its contenders, and over
the next couple of decades conquered the rulers of the
other islands with the help of European weapons, and united
the chiefdoms and people's into a singular kingdom of Hawaii.
Mostly it's it's a long and complicated story. Indeed, he

(23:21):
died in nineteen but to this day he is celebrated.
June eleven is King kama Day. We were there. Oh,
we had no idea how many parades there would be.
Um but through all of this that there were already
changes happening in Hawaii's food ways. Monica talked about it.
If you think about pre contact, when Hawaiian's arrived. They

(23:42):
had to mean migrations, the first one from the Marquises
and the second one from Tahiti. And this is all
pre contact seventeen seventy and what they brought with them
on their or their canoe, we're seeings like taro, which
we call calo in Hawaiian banana which is maya coconut
new um. They also brought um bread fruit ulu um.

(24:07):
And they brought dog illegal chicken moa. And they brought
one more animal that I can pigs poa um and so.
And they brought things like even like our root which
we call pia. But then you you see what happens
in seventeen seventy eight and the early eighteen hundreds is

(24:27):
you start to see whalers and merchants starting to arrive
here in Hawaii, and what they start bringing with them
is salted fish. And they start seeing that also Hawaiians
have salts that you know around the world, Um salt
is a very valuable commodity. Salt became, you know, I
would assume sounder would actually was at one time something
that Hawaiians actually treated as well sandal would before the

(24:52):
pineapple and sugar cane industry came about. But you know
in seventeen seventy eight early eighteen hundreds. UM, now you
see salted fish. So that's how you see um lomi salmon.
We have this dish called Pipikala. Captain George Vancouver actually
gifted King Kamehameha the first cattle. UM. This eventually created

(25:13):
the Paniola history, which is the Hawaiian cowboy. Um. They
had a cow pool on it, which cop kind of
means like forbidden, so can come in with the first
and you know, nobody could touch this animal that they've
never came across, which is a cattle. And they had
to bring the Mexican wakados, which I believe means yep, cowboy.

(25:37):
That second voice there was Monica's husband and a Highway
in Chief Operating Officer Russell Ryan, and uh yeah, so
that's how beef became part of Hawaii's cuisines. We actually
went to a working cattle ranch on Awah who called
Koloa Ranch. UM. It's also a nature reserve in a
film location. You might recognize it from things like Jurassic
Park or Jumanji or Lost or the big footprint from

(26:03):
Godzilla that I've somehow managed to bring up in this
show probably eleven times. Lauren and I got a very
goofy dinosaur picture that went we were we were working,
and that was our vacation time. Although it is within
the realm of possibility, we would have done that during
work as well. I want that picture, by the way,
Oh yeah, send it over to you. Thank you. It's

(26:23):
a gorgeous place. And I'd go out on a lamb
and say, the most beautiful backdrop we've ever had for
an interview. Oh, we have been lucky to report in
some really amazing locations in our day. But but yes,
that's it's sort of uncontested. Um. But yeah, So we
got to speak there to Taylor Kellerman, who is the

(26:43):
director of agriculture and land Stewardship at kolow A Ranch.
Taylor gave us a brief rundown of Hawaii's cowboys. So, um,
it's actually incredibly ingrained in our history because you know,
the first cattle were brought to Hawaii by Captain George
Vancouver and late seventeen hundreds as a gift to you know,

(27:07):
one of our first monarchs that you know was able
to get everybody together. So comma the first and they
actually put a capu or m like a taboo I
guess is a like English word on it um and
they were let to roam free. And then, you know,
fifty years later, all of a sudden, the impact of
the environment was quite clear. So they brought in um

(27:30):
Spanish backheados, which was mispronounced and what eventually became paniolo,
which is the term for Hawaiian cowboy, to teach Hawaiian's
how to handle cattle and horsemen, horsemanship and things like that.
And by the late eighteen hundreds, Um Hawaiians had become
so adept at it and so good at it that
they were going to Wyoming. And there's there's um stories

(27:53):
of um Mr Purdy going to the Wyoming Rodeo in
nineteen o six and winning the whole thing. You know,
so there's a huge history behind it. And you know,
ranching has become part of the landscape back to Monica,
and so now we have peepecola peepi meaning beef like
strips or jerked beef. They would salted to you know,

(28:14):
they cut up the animal they could preserve as much
meats by making it into like salted or jerky Um.
And so you have this story of Pepecola now in
the Paniola Hawaiian cowboy history and different people throughout, different
groups of people throughout you know, the decades, Um brought
over different types of products. So like which you find

(28:40):
is um Don Francisco Marin Arizon, Honolulu, and he starts
bringing tomatoes. So now we have the Hawaiian sevich, which
is lomi salmon. You get the salted fish and now
you get this tomato. That's all bye stuff and you
have Lomi salmon. Now it is a it's a food
item that comes post Western World contact. But because it's

(29:03):
been around since late seventeen hundreds, early in eighteen hundreds,
people have now adopted it as part of the Hawaiian
food culture. And so you see let me salmon. And
now Monica's mentioned the dish Loami salmon a couple of times.
Um that this dish is interesting in that it is
indeed now a part of the traditional Hawaiian plate lunch,

(29:25):
which is a popular type of meal involving a small
portion of a main dish and a few sides, sort
of like the Southern meet in three um. And and
let me Salmon is a cured salmon served with like
a tomato and onion dressing like a salsa, almost except
like there are no salmon in the waters around Hawaii.
Tomato is not a native fruit. It's just an excellent
example of a dish that was created by this melding

(29:47):
of cultures. Whalers started coming through Hawaii in eighteen nineteen,
and the first Christian missionaries in Hawaiian sandalwood was a
hot commodity. All of this brought lots of new trade
and industry just apport it and new agriculture to support
the diets of the growing population of Westerners involved. But
it also brought new diseases and pest as Alan said.

(30:09):
The indigenous population dropped from around three hundred thousand people
when Cook arrived in seventeen seventy eight to about seventy
thousand people in eighteen fifty three UM, plus a lot
of political and social changes were occurring. In eighteen nineteen,
after Kama's death, just a whole bunch of cultural stuff
went down that the culminated in the overturning of the

(30:30):
traditional kapu system. Monic and Taylor both mentioned that there
was a kapu on beef yeah. Uh. Kupu was a
system of sacred, religious, political, cultural, and agricultural rules that
laid out what jobs could be done by whom and
how and um. It codified a number of differences between

(30:51):
the classes and the sexes. The word kapu, by the way,
is related to other Polynesians concept of tabu, which is
where we get the English word taboo. Um. Cook wrote
down taboo as taboo um during his explorations. Anyway, um So,
how how this system was dismantled is a more complex

(31:12):
story than we have time for, but one particularly fascinating
part is that the turning point seems to have been dinner. Um.
Men and women weren't supposed to eat meals together under
the system, and women weren't supposed to eat certain foods.
But Lejo Lejo, a son of Kama and the new
ruler after his death, staged a dinner with his mother Kiopolani,

(31:34):
and another one of his father's wives. And it was
a cultural revolution, and it caused, or maybe indicated, a
loss of faith, largely replaced with Christianity. There was a
continued influx of Americans and Europeans. Sandalwood was over harvested,
and the trade collapsed to be replaced by lucrative sugarcane

(31:55):
and pineapple plantations, but with a decreased native pop relation,
those plantations needed workers. Monica expounded on this period of
rapid cultural transformation like California gold restpire the demand for
Hawaiian sugar. So now we see in the eighteen fifties
of first laborers that came to work on the plantations
where Chinese labors, and they did not bring their wives

(32:18):
with them, So today you see a lot of Chinese
Hawaiian ethnic mixes. Then the Civil War in eighteen sixty
and also continue to increase the demand for sugar. And
so now you have these business people that have this
very profitable business and I think can commitment the first Actually,
if you take a look at the Hawaiian flag, the

(32:40):
Hawaiian flag has a Union Jack on it, and um,
from my understanding, can commitment the first understood how the
Western world was going to significantly impact the Hawaiian culture
and perhaps wanted to have relationships more with with England
than this when the from the United States and so

(33:01):
adopted some of the parts of the British flag and
the Union jack, and so you see in the Hawaiian
fly the Union Jack, which is our state flag. UM.
You then find UM in eighteen sixty Japanese labors coming
on board. UM. The Japanese labors were perhaps the largest
group of immigrants, about two hundred thousand Japanese immigrants came.

(33:23):
I believe they all believed that at one time they
would go back to Japan and they would make whatever
money they could and then go back to Japan. But
they found out very quickly when they worked on the
plantation how hard life was on the plantation. And they
were very much like indentured servants, and so it's really
tough to get out of that life. And then in

(33:44):
eighteen seventy eight you find the Portuguese. Now, the Portuguese,
being at their fair skinned, were an ethnic group that
were typically, if anything, promoted to what they call lunas
or supervisors on the plantation. So now in Hawaii you
also see a lot of Portuguese, Chinese, Hawaiian ethnic mixes
because of all these different ethnic groups coming on board.

(34:06):
Hawaiian history also has Puerto Ricans, and so we also
have some food influences from from Puerto Ricans and green
bananas for example, Pteli Stu. I'm not sure. I always
get confused if it's Patel Pastel. I'm not really quite sure.
How you know, different people have different ways here pronouncing it.
And then you also have like the Koreans coming on

(34:28):
board in the early nineteen hundreds, um, and then also
Filipinos arriving. And so what you find in hawaiis food
culture now is you have this very diverse hodgepodge of
foods on our table today. Meanwhile, all of this money
and the influence that goes along with that, we're changing

(34:49):
the politics in Hawaii. Just as quickly, a powerful, growing
white minority coerced the Hawaiian monarchy into a number of
declarations and treaties that mainly benefited those white people, and
specifically Americans. It granted them economic bonuses and gave the U.
S Military soul rights to set up a base on
the islands at Pearl Harbor. This culminated in eighteen eighty seven,

(35:11):
when the last king of Hawaii, Collaqua, was forced at
gunpoint into signing a new constitution afterwards nicknamed the Bayonet Constitution,
a document which put a massive dnt in his powers
while simultaneously granting suffrage to the rich, mostly white landowners.
That's not all, it excluded Asians from voting and those
who did not meet the income requirements as well. After

(35:34):
Kluck was death in his sister was crowned Queen Lily Kolani.
When she tried to reverse the Bayonet constitution. Things escalated
UM in three coup designed by businessmen and backed by
the U. S Marines over through the monarchy UM, primarily
so that they could control the islands sugarcane based economy.

(35:57):
Lily O Kolani and her supporters fought for their kingdom,
but she was eventually placed under house arrest and in
eighteen yielded under protest to avoid further loss of life.
The US government annexed Hawaii in eight UM, but she
continued to appeal for free Hawaii until her death in
nineteen seventeen. The song Aloha Oi she wrote it Iolani Palace,

(36:21):
where she ruled and later was imprisoned, was restored and
reopened in the nineteen seventies UM, but so under American rule,
the Hawaiian language was banned from being taught in schools UM,
though a pigeon that's sometimes called Hawaii Creole English was
developed by plantation workers and passed down to their children.
They also developed stuff like like local iterations of dim

(36:43):
sum and noodle soups. Businessmen in Hawaii started pushing to
create a tourism industry. In nineteen o one, businessmen from
Honolulu paid for a promotional mainland tour to drum up
interest to visit, and two years later, in nineteen o three,
over two thousand people a year, we're making the five
day trip. By the time World War two was just
getting underway, that number was thirty thousand. Resource were popping up,

(37:05):
all the celebrities were going, and surfing was taking off,
thanks in no small part to Olympic swimmer Duke Kahana Muku.
Another change due to American rule was who was allowed
to come work in Hawaii. With restrictions on Japanese and
Chinese immigration, plantation owners started hiring um Uh, Puerto Ricans, Filipinos,
and Koreans, and, as Monica said, all of these folks

(37:28):
brought with them their customs, their beliefs, their languages, and
their foods. But of course there were some racial tensions,
especially heading into World War Two. After the bombing in
Pearl Harbor, the US declared martial law and a suspension
of a lot of civil rights. Nearly forty of Hawaii's
population at the time where first generation Japanese immigrants. They

(37:50):
faced a lot of discrimination, and the United States interred
some one thousand, two hundred and fifty citizens in camps
on Oahu alone, um though intense local resistance prevented more
widespread incarceration. These were the lean times when spam entered
the scene. Yes. Hawaii became the fiftieth state on August one,

(38:12):
nineteen fifty nine. During the sixties and seventies, Hawaii saw
another major shift as the sugarcane and pineapple businesses scaled
back and huge hotels and apartments and shopping centers were erected,
changing the layout of entire towns. Honolulu saw the biggest transformation.
This is when we see wai Kiki and this is
where the famous beaches are in Honolulu become basically a

(38:35):
large resort, one big one. Yes. By the nineteen seventies,
tourism was raking in one billion dollars for the state.
Uh The Hawaiian language almost died out during this time.
By the nineteen seventies, it's estimated that only around two
thousand people grew up speaking it at home. But thanks
to a rebellious Waikiki radio station and these emergent schools

(38:58):
that were developed in the nine teen eighties with no
help from the government. UM, some eighteen thousand people now
speak Hawaiian at home and the state's official languages are
English and Hawaiian. And that pigeon that I mentioned earlier
never went away. Um. Part of the Hawaii Regional Cuisine
movement involved purposefully using pigeon and Hawaiian vocabulary to describe
local foods and dishes, even those that are being sold,

(39:22):
most mostly to tourists. President Clinton apologized for America's part
and overthrowing Hawaii's at monarchy in century century later, it's
just fine, um, and yeah, that that more or less
brings us to today. But first it brings us to
one more quick break for a word from our sponsor,

(39:51):
and we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you. Let's
talk about Hawaii today because we're talking about a state
that is still changing rapidly. Another person that we got
to speak with is roy Yamaguchi. UM. He's one of
the founders of Hawaiian Regional Cuisine and the founder and
master chef of Roy's restaurants and a number of other concepts.
Um We interviewed him at a poke battle. More on

(40:13):
that in a future episode for sure. But like picture
six of Hawaii's preeminent chefs serving tiny free plates of
fancy raw fish. Two hundreds upon hundreds of excited people
in an underground supermarket on a Saturday, with a lot
of bills, so so much shouting and chiming and free
alcohol and free yes, gosh, um this is part of

(40:35):
what it means to cook and eat ottawahu um. But
but yeah, Roy talked about what the food scene is like, Well,
things changing a lot. I think, you know, a lot
of it had to do with I think it's kind
of like this natural progression, the natural flow, you know,
with the Royan regional cuisine movement which started, um, you know,

(40:57):
getting to farmers and ranchers, getting the shift together with growers,
and then that kind of involved and with with a
lot of great things happening in the agricultural world, and
then for instance, like food land here, you know, the
the markets started to bring in a lot of great products,

(41:17):
a lot of local products for the consumers that live here.
So with that transition, you know, the restaurants scene started
to get more involved in working with farmers and ranchers.
So now today these restaurants are able to you know,
work with a lot of ranchers and farmers um and

(41:38):
provide better quality food. So I think it's a national transition,
natural progression of of all these different things happening in
the state, which makes the opportunity for more chefs, the
younger chefs to come in and open restaurants. So so,

(42:01):
you know, back in the old days thirty years ago,
there was a lot of um hotel chefs that started
to open up restaurants. So he had hotel chefs, he
had restaurants and hotels, and that was that was the
primary places where people would go out and eat and

(42:22):
eat good food. But but then those chefs started to
leave and started to open up their own restaurants, independent
established restaurants throughout the community, but they were basically kind
of continental, you know, kind of like a European influence.
And then you know, later on guys like us came
in started opening independent restaurants, utilizing our background, you know,

(42:47):
the uh the you know, the great products that Hawaii
to offer and infusing all our style of cooking Mike
style of you know my childhood you know, Japanese Chinese
for uh fusion. And then now we have another generation
of chefs where you know, these younger chefs UM that

(43:08):
are kind of exploring and and and kind of taking
whatever influences that they've had in the past, but yet
opening these smaller restaurants, these smaller footprint restaurants UM utilizing
you know, the Hawaiian culture as a background. This is

(43:28):
what we saw everywhere on the island. So many amazing
chefs who either immigrated to Hawaii or are the children
or grandchildren of immigrants, who are taking these disparate cooking
styles and ingredients and making them deliciously their own. UM.
But also amazing Hawaiian chefs who are reaching back into
native Hawaii's cooking styles and ingredients and presenting those two

(43:50):
to great success. A common thread, the through line really
through all of this is a conversation about sustainability, which
is a conversation everywhere right now, but even more so
for a group of islands that thousands of miles away
from anything. In a little ways. All of the problems
that we see throughout the United States and a lot
of other places in the world with with income, inequality

(44:11):
and access to an education about fresh affordable foods are
exacerbated because of that distance UM and because of the
tourism industry, land and housing and water and food are
expensive there. Here's Alan the Department of that came up
with the story and says, we import our food into
Hawaii and if we can move that diot So ten

(44:35):
percent has become important to us that that that number
ten percent. So if we did that, we would be
generating like two thousands three jobs, generates six million dollars
in taxes. The farming community is n million dollars or economy.
But the whole thing about that is if if we
had the same UH tidal wave that happened in Japan

(44:59):
or in Thailand, we would not be able to recover
as fast as they did. So the idea of being
self sufficient, you know that ten percent thing UH comes
into play here. So the farmer is going to tell
you if if the farmer's farm, we farm more, that
is food security. Farmers will farm it to make one dollar.

(45:24):
Farmers will not farm if they lose money. In fact,
nobody goes into business. They're canna lose money anyway, right,
the average age of a farmer is six or five
years old. All across America. The kids are watching their
parents farm and making less money and less money because
the cost of doing business is rising all across America.
So our small part is to buy their product. Now,

(45:46):
you might say, some restaurants don't buy local products because
a tomato will cost four fifty pound and the important
one that the pink one that's real hard, the one
that only McDonald's wise is a dollar fifty cents powder.
So sometimes people with budgets and restaurants and budgets, they
can't do it. But if if every restaurant did their
part and bought local, supported to local farmer, we could

(46:08):
move that dial back ten percent, okay, to keep Hawaii
more not only self sufficient, but more sustainable. You know
right now, it's not a good blueprint right now, so
you know that kind of deal. They figured it out
that it's a seven seven when we had a plane
coming over, produces enough gas emissions the equivalent to like

(46:33):
five thousand corner cars on the road at the same time.
So another reason the carbon footprint too, to help spawn
more farmers, grow more local, move that dial bath. You know,
we're in Island State were requiring the barge. See that
the barge is the plane that brings food over. I

(46:55):
think a lot of it is awareness. There's still a
lot of people that don't know what's being limberle in Hawaii.
And then after that is education, you know, what do
you do with this product? You know, like for example,
one year of all the star food went to Canada.
But imagine if the supermarket didn't have the cantelope and

(47:16):
honeydew that was like rock hard anyway, and it was
replaced with all of the ripe star froot. Initially they're
gonna say, well, what is that? How are you going
to use that? How do we eat that? You know?
But if that's all you had, it was in season
and it was right, and it was juicy and it
was sweet okay, and it was good for you, uh,

(47:38):
and you learn how to use it, then all of
a sudden we get to keep that crop that goes
outside in Hawaii, you know, I mean, then we don't
need to import as much. There's awareness and education. We
also got to speak with Hawaii State Senator Donovan Dela
Cruz about this. He's chaired the Senate Committee on Ways

(47:58):
and means and a member of the Committee on Vacation
among other projects. We caught up with him in the
aftermath of the pok battle. We had this word in
hole in Hawaii. It's a Hawaiian word called kuliana. And
if anybody that mean, I'm sure a lot of people
talking about aloha maybe hole PuO kona, but I mean
one of my favorite Hawaian words is actually cooliana. And
that's what's your obligation, what's your responsibility? What's your commitment

(48:22):
to either your family, to your community, to your to
your neighbors. And I feel like that's my my kuliana
instu turn my community um into a better place for
the future, so that people can have a better quality
of life, not just young people, but people aging your
place too, you know, because food is evolving so much.

(48:43):
Where with a with a large geriatric population, even food
has to kind of change a little bit to match that.
And Hawaii has a has a high percentage of an
aging population, so to Japan, so as the US, so
they were like a good gateway for that kind of
in a nation. You know, we just have to own
that space. I mean, there's so many opportunities with energy, food, aging.

(49:09):
We just have to be a lot more aggressive in
in these ideas of how we're going to become globally
comparative or relevant. For as many upscale and sustainability focused
dining experiences as there are, there's also a huge demand
and and honestly need for inexpensive quick food on the

(49:29):
go um from convenience stores and takeout restaurants. Those takeout
spots called drive ins are incredibly tasty. Oh gosh, I'm
still dreaming about some chart suite UM. But they're also
kind of difficult to make healthy UM. And part of
the trade off for the lower cost to the creator
and the consumer is that they produce a lot of
plastic and styrofoam waste. UM. We'll have to do whole

(49:52):
episode episodes plural, possibly on some of these sustainability issues. Absolutely,
it's all part of what makes Hawaii unique. One of
the other cultural standouts, as cliche and trustified as it sounds,
is aloha. We heard it from everyone we spoke to.
Here's Chandra. It's really a sense of aloha. It's so

(50:14):
hard to summarize that and just like a word, but
it's more the feeling that you get from the people
that live here, the sense of ohana or family, that
everyone's so interconnected, and even in the bar scene, like
everyone's encouraging one another to get better, to do more,
to challenge themselves. It's never about like jealousy or oh

(50:34):
I want to be the best bar and you know,
we want to be super competitive. It's never like that,
like everyone's sharing their secrets and open doors and it's
really like a brotherhood, which is awesome. And here's Monica.
The restaurant industry is unique in the sense that it's
one of those industries where, for the most part, not always,
I mean, you get those customers that you really prefer

(50:56):
not to have, but you know, it's it's to make
people happy. You're you're we're in an industry that you
can make people happy. You know. Unlike doctors and lawyers
you know e m t s right there, they're always
in difficult situations that are not either people are fighting,
or people are sick, or you know, there's it's an

(51:16):
emergency situation. Um, there's a lot of pressure in the kitchen,
but ultimately we aren't in a position to be a
positive experience in people's lives. And I think oftentimes restaurant
people forget this because it is very there's a lot
of pressure, and you know, our servers. I always like
to share with our servers that it's kind of like

(51:37):
having a hundred bosses every day. Get me this, I
want this. This is not good, you know. And and
it's stressful for our servers just as much as it's
stressful for our kitchen staff try to get the food out.
But the one thing here and what you think that
makes us quite unique and quite fortunate is the sense
of aloha. And and not to sound cliche about it,

(52:00):
we do have this overarching um cultural value of aloha
which anybody who is born and raised or moved to
the islands would be very aware of and like allow
you know, like forward or presence ha meaning breath, you know,
the presence of life um to to be compassionate, to

(52:23):
show kindness, to show grace. You know. These these are
things that are just very much a part of the
Hawaiian culture, the host culture, and and so it's much
easier to try to train people because they fundamentally understand
this idea of aloha is like southern hospitality, I guess

(52:45):
would be a bit similar. They have a very unique
type of hospitality perspective. I think that's what's really great
about just food in general. It is such a universal language.
I'm sure many people have said this or shared this
with you before, but it truly is a universal language.
When you sit down and you offer food or you

(53:05):
make food for someone, it truly is an act of love.
And and so you know, I tell all my staff that,
and I'm sure every chef, every cook knows this. The
secret ingredient is always going to be aloha. It's always
going to be love. Um, because if you don't have
the feeling of aloha when you're cooking, or the feeling
of love, that's the mana or the spiritualness of that

(53:30):
process is what makes you care about it. And that's
why grandma's food is always the best, right, I mean,
anybody's grandfather, well in my case it was my grandpa.
But you know that's why grandma's and grandpa's you know,
cook the best because when they cook for for their
children and their grandchildren is always infused with aloha. And
chef and Hawaiian cultural practitioner Kia Looha Domingo also spoke

(53:54):
to this, It's just like it's just a whole another level,
you know, I mean, you know, Hawaii people, I mean,
I'm sure it's unlike other cultures, but we connect to
our food and in a little higher level, a lot
higher level than most people, you know, we have. You know,
in traditional times, food was was even more taboo than

(54:18):
My wife hates when I say this, but it was
more taboo than sex. And and that's that's the truth,
because um sustenance, you know, sustenance is it's imperative. And
the Hawaiian people, we truly did worship our food. We
view our food as a physical manifestation of of our

(54:43):
ancestral deities and traditional gods, you know, the Tarot, the
Tarot planet itself, that's for us. You know, I'll tell
you the truth. In my day, I grew up eating
poi out of a plastic bag, and I'm totally fine
with that. But as time went on, you know, I

(55:04):
learned more about traditional history and culture and beliefs. And
with this cultural renaissance, um, we're teaching our children what
we've learned from the history books that Carol is our ancestor,
the Tarot planet is literally related to us. Yeah, we're

(55:25):
descending from a taro plant. So we treat it as
as our elder brother, as our as our ancestor, as
our kupuna. And when the tarot is on the table,
whether in the form of bowl of poi or whatever
else it is, um, we behave accordingly. You know, you

(55:46):
wouldn't speak harshly over it. You wouldn't be scolding their kids.
You wouldn't be saying, you know, how terrible what day
you had? Um. And then that really that really lends
to that whole family UM, that that positive vibe. You know,
when you're around food, it's about being grateful for what

(56:07):
you have and about sustenance and about you know, so
I always say, we Hawians we love our food. We
love our food. So it's not just about sticking into
your mouth and and enjoying the flavor, you know, which
don't get me wrong, you know it's um definitely something

(56:27):
that I love, but just the fact that when you
consume this food, it's really partaking of the gods. We're
teaching our children this, this respect for food, you know,
and it's very important for us to set the example
for them. You know, we didn't grow up with it
came out of a plastic bag. Today we pounded fresh.

(56:50):
You know they know where it comes from from. You know,
they know the varieties, they know the different meanings. So
I mean this on another level of understanding. So so
we come to the conclusion of the first of our
Hawaii mini series. We have so many exciting episodes coming
your way. The long requested coffee episode, Passion for Cocktails,

(57:14):
Poke Poi, Slash Tarot, the fishing industry, so much stuff.
Oh yeah. In the meantime, we'd love to hear from you.
I know a lot of you have been to Hawaii,
sent some pictures, keep those coming. Yes, oh absolutely, yes.
You can contact us via email at hello at saver
pod dot com and tell us where we should go next. Yes,
you can also find us on social media. We are

(57:35):
at saber Pod on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Thanks to
our super producers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard, our executive
producer Christopher hasciotas our interviewees, and also to um to
a number of humans who helped us find those interviewees.
Michelle McGowan, Rice of the Hawaii and Wine Festival, Don
Sakamotapaiva of Put It on My Plate and Enjoy Goto,

(57:57):
and Maria Hartfield of the Hawaii Visitors and Convention euro
Sabor is a production of I heart Radio and Stuff Media.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, you can visit
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to your favorite shows. Thank you so much to you
for listening, and we hope that lots more good things
are coming your way.