January 21, 2026 • 52 mins
Peter Merriman is one of 12 chef-pioneers of Hawaii regional cuisine, a movement which emphasizes locally sourced ingredients from farmers and fisherman throughout the islands and elevated the local dining scene. In 1988 he opened his signature restaurant, Merriman’s, in Waimea (Big Island). This acclaimed restaurant now has locations in Maui (Kapalua), Oahu and Kauai (Poipu). Merriman’s casual concepts include Monkeypod Kitchen, Ulu Kitchen, both in West Maui, and Moku Kitchen in Honolulu.
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The Connected Table is broadcast live Wednesdays at 2PM ET and Music on W4CY Radio (www.w4cy.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com).
The Connected Table Podcast is also available on Talk 4 Media (www.talk4media.com), Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-connected-table-live--1277037/support.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:20):
choosing W FOURCY Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Hello and welcome to the Connected Table Live. We're your hosts,
Melanie Young and David Ransom. You're in say She'll be curious,
culinary couple. We like to travel the world as much
as we can and eat, drink and explore with you
and us together and inspire you to get out there
and travel, taste, drink the sip, eat the cake, and
(01:05):
get out there and enjoy life. So we are broadcasting
from well, technically we're going taking you to Hawaii. We
go there a lot. If you follow us on our
Instagram at the Connected Table and on our blog by
the same name, you'll know we get to Hawaii almost
every year. Yeah. For Yeah, for theast twenty years. We
go to Maui and Kawhi a lot because we have
(01:27):
timeshares there, and we've been to almost all the islands
except Loni right and Molko. We stare at it a
lot from count of poly Beach, stare at the two
islands and go, when are we going to Linai in
in Bullaquoi? We will. So we're really excited about our
guests today. Who is someone we have been wanting to
have on the connected table for a really long time.
(01:49):
I'm going to set it up this way. If you
have gone to Hawaii and ever dined on walk charred
ahea maca Damian nut, local pacific Hawaiian fish which is amazing,
kollowa pig or Mary NUIs venison, or many other specialties
that spotlight the wonderful farmers, fishermen and bounty of the
(02:12):
Hawaiian Islands, you can thank Peter Merriman. Peter is He's
been called the pie piper Hawaiian regional cuisine. The Los
Angeles Times called them that. He owned several restaurants, notably
Merriman's his signature restaurants. The first he opened in the
Big Island and he is one of twelve notable chefs
(02:33):
in Hawaii who really are the pioneers behind the movement
called Hawaii Regional Cuisine, which started in the eighties and
really was part of the American culinary revolution. I rode
that wave because that's when I first came to New
York and got involved in the food and dining seed.
And it started in California and went coast to coast,
(02:53):
so many famous chefs and included every state just about.
And so we're joined by Peter. Love his food, we
love the restaurant. So it's just an honor to have
him join us early in the morning in Hawaii. So Aloha,
Peter Merrimant.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
Helloa Melanie David, and thank you for that great introduction.
I'm not sure it's deserving, but I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Oh it's deserving. It's all over. And you know, you
really are among some of the greats. Many of them,
we know, I think you. We've only had one of
these chefs on our show, bev Gannon was on our
show many many years ago. So you're our first of
the talented Hawaii twelve. Many are still in business. I
don't know of all, but It's just great to have you.
(03:39):
We love your restaurants, we love Hawaii, and any chance
we can go, we go.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
It's a good place to go when you gotta go.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Yeah, so this is interesting. We learned that you grew
up in Pittsburgh. I happened to know your mom. I
knew your mom when I was a publicist, Woody Merriman.
I picted her.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Oh cool, shemg.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
I'm sorry. The Postcasette just folded like everything else I know.
Tell us about your life and your family. You must
have had some amazing meals because your mom was probably
always testing recipes. She was the food editor for the
Pittsburgh Post Caasette. For anyone who didn't know Woody Merriman, it.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
Was yeah, she you know. As I was growing up,
she was working. First worked for a smaller regional newspaper
before she moved over to the Post Casette, and she
she was she retired as managing her, but she was
the food editor for many years prior to that, and
then she was in her retirement year. She was actually
a restaurant critic. Was really fun as a chef to
(04:43):
have a mom that was a restaurant critic because she
came to me for input on how to do it,
and so that was that was real pleasing that she
had done. One of the things that she did was,
for instance, that she would never write a negative review
that she hadn't visited the restaurant and lead three times.
And you know, because having a son as a restaurant
(05:04):
tour she realized that anybody can have a bad night,
right kind of thing. So should we give a positive review,
which you can do after one visit, but no negatives
unless you goun three times, and you always called the
shelf before you publish. So I thought that, you know,
I was really pleased to establish that sort of protocol
in that industry. But growing up, you know, my grandmother
(05:25):
was a great cook. My mom was a very very
good cook obviously too, and so we were exposed to
a lot. But I mean, when you think back to
those there's a lot of years ago. You know, I'm
talking about growing up in the nineteen sixties and seventies,
and the foods that were available to us. When you
look back at it now, it's kind of crazy.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
You know.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
I think I had my first avocado when I went
out Weston when I was eighteen years old. Yeah, like
there just weren't so many things available like there are today,
and so the cooking was different. But I did a
lot and since my I love to eat and I'm
a big guy my since my mom was working, it
felt naturally that I had to learn how to cook.
(06:05):
And often I was testing really simple recipes for her
in the kitchen. So that eventually led to working with
Ferdinand Metz ferinand Metz was the head chef for Heinz Corporation,
and my mother got to know him, and then he
had a cooking class that he taught at night, and
(06:26):
he needed a little sort of gopher boy, and so
I was when I was sixteen years old, I was
I call myself the gopher boy for Ferdinand mets So
that was my first exposure to professional chefs, one of
the greatest chefs in the world, and so it was
very that's the lasting impression on me.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
So I k I knew new Ferdinand because I worked
at the Culinary Institute of America. Was a client. I
had a million clients back then in my beer agency.
And he was a great guy. I mean, what an
honor to work with.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Oh yeah, he was. He was quite a guy who
was a great chef, great man, super intelligent. He just
had all the qualities that you want you're looking for
in a chef.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
So where did you end it? You didn't go to
the Culinary Institute of America, though, you you tell us
about your culinary education and how you got your start
in the professional restaurant world.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Okay, Yeah, So I was accepted coming out of high school.
I was accepted into the Culinarian Student of America. But
I played football and also got recruited to play football
at the University of Pennsylvania, and so I decided, well,
I'll go to I'll go to college first, and then
I'll go up to the Culinary Institute. So I did.
I went to penn and did graduate. But instead of
(07:42):
going to the Culinary Institute, I got offered a job
as briefly as an assistant manager in a restaurant in
New York City in the World Trade Center. So I
went there and stayed for a short while, and then
went to Vermont, where I did most of my apprenticeship
under Hans Schadler. He was the chef at the Woodstock
(08:03):
in a rock resort in Vermont, and a three year
apprenticeship and one of the great experiences of my life
because it's an old school European style apprenticeship where you
have to work in each section of the kitchen, but
six months in the big shop and three months in
the butcher shop and garmage, hotline, cold night everything. And
(08:24):
you know, I didn't realize it at the time how
unique that was. And today there's not many chefs, even
some of the great chefs in America aren't versed in
all aspects of the kitchen, and I feel so fortunate
to have been experiencing all the entire spectrum of what
goes on in a profession.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
I'm curious, Uh, you're you're a big guy. What position
did you play in football?
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Linebacker?
Speaker 2 (08:48):
You're a linebacker?
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Wow, I wasn't very good, but I did play.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
So who do you root for? Now?
Speaker 3 (08:56):
IM a Steelers man? You kid? We kind of figured.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Figure it as much. Those are powerful fans.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
After the after the Steelers in the NFL, then I
looked for the team with the most Hawaii players and
for them there and there's a lot of them too. Yeah,
there's a lot of Hawaii boys love to play football,
some good. Yes.
Speaker 5 (09:21):
So, so you did the apprenticeship, you learned the tricks
of the trade and whatnot. What what brought you originally
to Hawaii?
Speaker 3 (09:29):
Oh? That yeah, I had. When I left my apprenticeship,
I worked a couple of places, including Europe, and then
I had come back to d C Washington, d C.
And I was working at the Four Seasons in Washington,
d C. And I am, yeah, you went the long story.
The long story is that I didn't like my job
(09:50):
that much, and so I gave two weeks notice. And
the end of the two weeks came it's one hundred
percent true. And I come home on my last stay
at work. I'm living with my brother in law and
my sister, and so I guess I'm unemployed. And so
my brother in law was like, well, you can't have
any lazy unemployed people around here. You're going to go
(10:12):
out there looking for a job. And literally the phone
rang and it was a call with an offer to
come and be a cook in Hawaii. It was basically
a question of when do you need me, and they
said Monday, and I got there by Monday.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
That's great. Yeah, I read you had like seventy five
dollars in your pocket in a suitcase and you just
showed up I had.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Seventy dollars one bag, and I did blow that seventy
five dollars in the bar the first night.
Speaker 5 (10:40):
So it was a lean week until that first day.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
A lean week. Looking there his food in the kitchen.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
What was it like? I mean, you know, anyone who
hasn't been to why that first just even the smell
of the air, the flowers, the smell of those flowers.
There's a set, there's a breeze, there's a look. What
was it like to you when you first stepped in
and experienced that aloha spirit?
Speaker 3 (11:09):
It was just magical. You know, back in those days,
there was no jetway the airport. You had got walked
down and walked across the tarmac.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Right.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
You guys were probably coming there in those days too,
but this is nineteen eighty three, early eighty three, very
beginning eighty three, and you know, you then you just
get down and you just could smell those plumria, right,
it was like perfume in the air. And then I
really had that little tiny bar that outdoors. When you
walked in, right into that little tiny hangar that was
(11:39):
over there. It's hard to believe how little airport was
that small at the time, and there was a little
outdoor bar and you sit there and have really lousy
mi ties and you're just on Seventh Heaven and from there.
This shows how small it was back then. So I
called Hans Peter Hager was the chef at the Manolani
Bay Hotel where I was going to be a cook.
(12:02):
And I called him and said, hey, I'm here. I'll
be coming into ConA on this particular fight, the connecting
play and he said, okay, we'll pick you up. And
I said, okay, who's going to pick me up? He goes,
don't worry click, And I'm like, what the heck? You know,
how could I don't even know who's supposed to pick
me up? And sure enough, and ConA Airport was even
way small in those days, and I think it still is. Yeah, yeah,
(12:25):
well it's pretty big now. Yeah. But there was one guy.
You know, back then, they literally pulled on a wagon,
a hand pulled wagon. They pulled your luggage to the
curb and there and there's one guy leaning on the
side of an old beat up car drink and he
looks at me and says, hey, you must be the cook.
(12:47):
So they know it was me. And that was how
I got to That's how I got to Hawaii. But
it was I was really fortunate to be on the
Big Island in early nineteen eighty three, you know, because
that was still the old Hawaii, right. It was really
unique place. I mean, it was very expensive to live
here and there are very few products available, but just
(13:09):
it was like living outside the country, but still in
having all the benefits of the United States at the
same time. It's just a great, great place. And it
was you know, sugar was still the dominant industry, sugarcane,
and so it was this plantation culture, and it was
really a culture like nowhere else in the United States.
(13:30):
Of course, we're descended from a kingdom which is nowhere
else the United States as well. But then the input
of the of the Asian peoples who had brought had
come here to harvest sugar cane from the Japanese and
the Chinese, Portuguese and Filipinos just made a wonderful spectrum
of different cultural influences, especially on the food. And for me,
(13:53):
that's one of the reason I was so excited about
when when when Hunts Peter had called me and I
was a cookie back in ducd like two days to
get ready, but I dash over to the library because
we didn't have internet right and it was looking up
trying to figure out about Hawaii Fuld and I couldn't
figure it out at all. And it turned out that,
(14:13):
you know, really what was going on here was the
tourist industry, which wasn't nearly as big as it is today.
I was still trying to do continental cuisine, do European cuisine,
and they were totally overlooking what was going on in
the local culture. And so that created an opportunity for
me in there that I eventually dove into and enjoyed
(14:36):
quite a bit.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
How did you go about doing that? Because I mean
I thought about it because we didn't start going to
Way until early two thousands. Okay, okay, so but I
remember growing up in the South and traveling at continental cuisine?
Was it that was the fine dining term. It didn't
even have a regionality or assignment maybe, but there wasn't
(15:01):
Italian regional Italian like there is now. And then all
of a sudden, you know, things to people like you
Alice Waters and Jeremia Tower and Mary but Jenny and
many shifs. People started looking in their backyard local war.
You had to make those contacts because it was not
something that was done in Hawaii. And yet there was
(15:21):
an abundance of these people. I'm just trying to figure
out what these people have. Where were they selling their
products until people like you came around, and how did
you go aut establishing relationships?
Speaker 3 (15:31):
Yeah, there were not an abundance of people growing things
actually back then. Yeah, so it was it was really difficult.
And the first thing we did was we put classified
ads in the newspaper right that we wanted to buy
local products. And and you know, only in Hawaiian it
(15:51):
was so beautiful and people just had, you know, a
single tree of a mango or a starford or something
in their backyard, didn't pick it up, and many of
them and just come down and give it to us.
I didn't even want money for it, you know, it
was just like that's how they do. And so that
was one that that was the classified ads. We were
basically saying, if you grow it, we'll buy it. And
(16:11):
then real early on, one of the first farmers that
we dealt with was a guy named Tane Data and
he's an brilliant, brilliant man that's an organic farmer. Down
in the Kali Kekua district of a big island, and
we started talking with him, and he there was a
group of you know, alternative lifestyle people, some aka hippies
(16:37):
kind of guys that lived up and down this mountain
where he lived. And he realized that at different elevations,
different crops would grow well. And so he came to
me and said, look, I can organize the farmers down
there to grow the crops you need if you tell
me the crops you need. So he gave me a
seed cataline and took a highlighter and I just highlighted
the crops that we would use. Little tiny farmers we're
(17:01):
talking about now, who each bought, you know, one guy
volunteered in spinach, another guy volunteer means whatever it is.
And then that way they had enough and each person
was only growing really really small amounts. But tam and
put them all in the coolers and bring them up.
It was like an hour drive to where we were
and every week, and he became the intermediary between those
(17:26):
small farmers and Austin. That was one of the early
early things. We also did things like we planted a
garden outside the gallery restaurant where the first restaurant where
I first did Hawaii regional cuisine, just everything. You know.
I often called it gorilla purchasing because you had to
(17:46):
just think outside the box all the time. You know.
Sometimes we would go spear our own fish, or sometimes
we would go collect our own sea urchin. I did
that quite often actually, or whatever it was, just whatever
it took. I get one point, we noticed that that
the resort was trimming coconuts and throwing them away. So
we said, we'll take the coconuts, and we gave him
(18:08):
the tain for free, and he'd take them down to
Kalakku and somebody would grate it for for us, and
then he'd bring it back and we buy it from him.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
You know.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
Like but but that's what it needed to get the
pump primed so that they were because prior to that,
like I said, it was, it was sugarcane, right. It
was was plantation economy, single large crop meant for export,
not for local consumption.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Right.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
So we had to get over that particular hump, and
it took quite a bit of work. It took we're
still working on it, but it took years and years
of encouraging and going out to meet farmers and talking
with farmers, working closely with them. Monty Ridgeard's up at
the Cuckoua ranch, you know, he we pioneered the use
of the local lamb with him Aaron Lee to divine
(19:00):
and tomatoes for us, and but just it was really rewarding,
excitable time because we we what we were doing is
looking for fresh products. We had great flavor, right, and
that turned into being regional cuisine. We didn't know any
and we were doing farm the table before that out
of turn. But mostly what it was was just a
(19:21):
desire to have the best tasting food that we could have,
So that that was kind of the origins of how
that all got started.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Yeah, and then you opened Merriments in nineteen a. Still
we're still in the eight in nineteen eighty eight. Yeah,
nineteen eighty eight, right, mm hmm.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
So yeah, So I've been into hotel and after the hotel,
I went up to a place called the Gallery Resort,
which was on the same resort Manlani as the hotel,
but it was a different company doing a different thing.
And that's where we first did Hawaiti Regional Cuisine's and
so forth, and what I you know, one of of
things than when we go then from there we go
(20:02):
up the hill to Waimea, which is like, you know,
twenty minutes away, right up the mountain the original merriments
and why Maya. So yeah, that's that's in eighty eight.
And it was, you know, really what I had hoped
to do. There was like a cafe like really accept
you know, accessible food is what I call it, and
(20:23):
just super high quality. And when we went up there,
it didn't work. We didn't have enough customers. We were
going broke. And but a lot of our customers had
had been people that had dined at the gallery when
I was chef down at the gallery, and so they
had followed us up to hill. And our customers kept
(20:44):
telling us, hey, you got to raise your prices. I
got to raise your prices, which is crazy, right, like
who owns a business did the customers tell them to
raise their prices? But but really, what the guest was
telling me. It took a while to figure this out
for me, but the guests were telling me we went
a little higher in cuisine than this. You know, we
don't want we don't want stew we want steak. And
(21:07):
so we gradually morphed into into that being a higher
end restaurant. So it was years and years before I
could get something that open again, that was more accessible,
you know, where we can have a burger pizza on
the menu. That was the original Merriments.
Speaker 5 (21:22):
Well, that was the That was the first Merriments we
went to.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
It was New Year's Eve. Actually we spent all years. Yeah,
we were did in New Year's in the Big Island
and we and here's what I remember. We had driven
all over you know, Big Islands, speaker driving this way
and this way, and I remember we had a change
of clothes in our frontal car and we little bit
changed into like finery to go have dinner New Year's
(21:45):
Eve dinner Merrimans. We were like in our short it
was cool. It was cool because there's elevations there. Right.
Speaker 5 (21:52):
We had driven from we had driven around the island
to Hilo and we stopped at Merriman's for dinner on
New Year's Eve on the way back to Kona, where yehs,
it's a long day, it was.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
It was a very long, very long day, but it
was so worth it, you know.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
It was a great experience.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
That was we've only been to the Big Island twice
once for that and then we did a cone of Coffee.
We actually went did a coffee show the Coffee Burner
uh one time. Yeah, it was a lot of fun.
So let's talk about some of your signature dishes, which
then you since have opened Merriman your city's restaurant in
other areas. One of the most beautiful ones and it's
kind of pictured behind us is in Coppolua in Maui,
(22:34):
we say in Connapoli at the Western Villa's which is
maybe fifteen to twelve minute drive to Coppolua. So we're
up in Coppolou a lot. We like to go hiking
on that cliff walk. Just stunning, Yeah, just stunning. And
we love that whole little area in Appeally, et cetera.
Just wonderful. So you've got that stunning location in Coppolua,
(22:59):
and then you have Merriments and now who were going
to go. We had to cancel the trip, but we're
going to go because we go to Kawai a lot,
uh and then Honolulu. Talk to us about this. It
is your namesake restaurants and with the name of the door,
you have to have those standards, share your philosophy and
(23:20):
some of your signature dishes that you can never take
up the menu.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Well ship signature editions. I mean you mentioned one earlier,
which was the walk chart, Audie. You know that's that's
just got to stay there forever. We did not invent that,
but we like we claim we discovered it because it's
really tataki in Japan, right, but back in when we
started serving it in eighty eight or whatever, nobody was
(23:48):
serving that sort of thing. That's so that's our bigie.
Speaker 6 (23:51):
I think you know nowadays are uh banana bread pudding
and uh it's a banana bread macan. They end up
putting as a fabulous we just can't seem to get
off the menu.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
But the other signatures for us are are a little
more difficult to explain because one of our signatures, for instance,
is the ccou a ranch lamb. But to get fresh lamb,
we have to buy the whole animal, So we butchered
that whole animal every week, and there's a different cut
available each day. So the lamb itself is a signature dish,
(24:28):
it's just not in any particular preparation. So really, what
Merriment's has come to be what we've evolved into and
it's the same basic tenets from when I thought we
were going to be a cafe, which is to use
good quality, fresh ingredients, and we morphed into super high quality,
(24:49):
locally produced organic whenever possible. We don't lead with organic,
but we do organic when we can, and we always sustainable.
That's our really big on that. So that and also,
you know, something that seldom gets mentioned but which we're
really proud of is the service in our restaurant. We
have just in Merriments has just the greatest crop of
(25:13):
waiters and waitresses that you could ever have, and we
have so many professionals that people are dedicated and they
learn and they know their food and they enhance the
guest experience. So we tell our tell our managers and
all our people that we're not in the food business.
We're in the guest experience business. And that's too many
(25:36):
chefs overlook the importance of the front of the house.
You know, yeah, yeah we're smart, and yeah we're cool
because we can come up with these dishes, but if
you don't have somebody on the front of it that's
delivering improperly, they're going to ruin that whole experience, and conversely,
they can heighten and elevate that experience just with their
knowledge and their ability to read the guests and get
(25:58):
the guests what they want. It's a really big part
of what we do.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Well, you you are very under the motto do the
right thing. Yeah, explain other than you know, we know
that term from a rapper. Tell us what that means
to you and your team?
Speaker 7 (26:19):
Well, yeah, that's so that a few years quite a
few years back, we were trying to come up with
our you know, our motto for our company or you know,
what's our essence, but what's our driving force?
Speaker 3 (26:30):
And we kept all these different things that we try
to do and all our different managers and and finally
it just came down to, like, you know, it's weird.
It's hard to describe what we do, but we just
do the right thing. It came accidentally to us, if
you will. But so what that means is that we
want to do right by the guest obviously, but then
(26:53):
we want to do right by our employees, and we
want to do right by the farmers and all the
people we purchased from. And then we want to right
but the community that we're in we feel we are
forever indebted to Hawaii and the local culture of Hawaii,
and and then last, but I guess not in any
way at least would be you know, we're committed to
(27:15):
doing the right thing for the environment, to make sure
that there's a place for regionally grown food for my
great grandchildren some day.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
You know, whenever we go to Hawaii, we sense that
the respect for history and culture number one, respect for
the land and the stea and the environment and the reefs,
and everybody is very concerned because it is like everywhere
constantly battering the elements, the natural elements, and then the
(27:45):
human waste and pollution as well. So and when you
live on islands, you feel you feel that isolation. There's
only so much you can do. And food is when
you bring food in from the outside, it's expensive. So
many opal whye is so expensive. And you're gonna pay
a lot when you go to Hawai. You're gonna pay
a lot to get there, or you're gonna pay a
(28:06):
lot for your hotel. You may pay, but your own islands,
it is what it is. You're paying for that uniqueness, right, Oh, yeah.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
That's that's so true. Yes, it is expensive. And things
are different here, and that's why I live here, you know.
And by the way, we're there the furthest from any
major land mass of any place in the world. Right, So,
and we have more we've lost, we have more endangered
species than North America but together, so it's a super
(28:40):
unique place. And we only had one mammal prior to humans,
which was the monk seal. Right, there was no mammals
because we're so far away from from major land masks.
So it's a really interesting place. And you talk about
being part of the environment. You know, we have tsunamis,
we have earthquake, we have volcanoes, so we kind of
(29:04):
get you know, every type hurricane I name you mentioned.
I mean, we have every type of you know, you
just really feel in touch with nature in your hair.
And then I think true that to the host culture,
the Hawaiian culture, culture of the Hawaiian people, they they
are about the land and they're about the environment. And
(29:25):
so it's it's got a really good seed for germination
amongst the whole community here, I think many people feel.
And plus it's so incredibly beautiful you don't want to
get right, it really is beautiful.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
I mean yea, our whole, our whole demeanor change. You know,
when we go to Hawaii, we are on you know,
we travel a lot for wine and food and you know,
I say, as soon as we start writing notes, we're working.
But when we go to Hawaii, we don't do any
of that. We've done show, we have done shops, we
have dune shows. We actually we even stop doing that
(30:02):
when we're out there. We do the when we get
back because we just want to be in the moment
and totally unwind. And each island is so different and special,
and likewise, your concepts are different. I mean, Merriman's is
fine dining and elegant, and you know what I love
about it is the menu has you know, takes advantage
(30:23):
of the lamb, the amazing cattle. There's a lot of
ranching in White people don't think about that. They think
it's water. You fish. The beef and the lamb is amazing.
The pork, uh, the you know, if you're a vegetarian,
there's taro and there's amazing vegetables and fruits. There's it's
an abundance like no one that we live in Louisiana,
(30:45):
and there's a lot of pork and be similar. We
were battered a lot by the elements and we have it.
But weeople have the vegetables white as we missed vegetables.
We have a lot of sugar cane. You know, there's
a little we don't have the veget We have great
strawberry and so Hawaii. But there are other things. When
(31:05):
we go out there, we go to the farm markets
and shop and we're just like blown away by some
of the ingredients out there.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
If you if you go to the Helo's farmers Market,
you could swear you were in Southeast Asia. There's just
so many items. You go, I have no idea what
that thing is you're selling exactly. It's really fun. It's
really a fun fun thing to do. Yeah, so there's
a lot of a lot of unique and interesting ingredientstory.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
We like, Yeah, we have to go back to the
Big Island. We did to go to Maui and we
stay up in Princeville, so that's like our base. But
the Big Island is beyond anything. For anyone who is
watching and listening to the Big Island is very big,
and you've got this big volcano. There can be snow.
You can actually see the volcano will Rock. We walked
(31:55):
the law and there was like, you know, fire underneath
the law. You know, you had to be really careful,
and the lava flows you. It is a long drive
some of the stariest skies in the night I've ever seen.
When we go, we just stopped the car and looked
up and went, oh my god. In the middle of
it is this coffee belt where they make some of
(32:17):
the great coffee. He Lo is one end. It's more
it's way out there, and you're right, you feel like
you're almost in Asia in terms of the ingredients. It's
very small town. The other side you've got the fancy resorts,
but still not like now we were you know, Coppolo
or kind of Holywrid resort, resort resort. It really is.
(32:38):
I mean hopefully we haven't been there well, but just
it's a stunning place. The Big island.
Speaker 4 (32:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
So you know, the easy way to understand is geologically,
and it goes the oldest part of the Hawaiian Archipelago
is in the northwest and the youngest in the southeast.
So the island is the youngest, right, So the further
like when you're up on Kowaiti, then you get really
carved extinct volcanoes. Right now, you get dormant volcanoes. The
(33:08):
West Malay is carved, and like the alcohol is not
carved because it's dormant. It's not extinct yet. And then
when you get to the Big Island you get active volcanoes.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Yeah, you sure do.
Speaker 5 (33:21):
I have to say it was pretty fascinating when we
when we hiked into Volcanoes National Park and hiked up
to where the lava was still flowing past us, literally
two feet from where we were standing. Was amazing to see,
just incredible and at the birth of the earth.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
Yeah, the birth of the Earth. So tell us about
some of your other condoms. So when we're in Maui,
we go to Monkey Pot, a lot that's like our
because what we'll do is even we'll walk. There's a
boardwalk on con of Poly. You can walk from where
we if we feel like it, where we stay in
the western conn of Poly, you walk down this board
walk all the way to where Monkey Pot is in
(33:59):
this little shop area. And then we don't have like
an early early early supper back.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
So yeah, as I was mentioning earlier, like really, my
heart is always in casual bistro cafe type food, right,
and so I had always wanted to do that place.
You know, we could serve burgers and pizzas and and
so that's what that's what Monkey Pot is. It's it's
(34:26):
it's much more accessible. You know, we wanted to do pizzas,
but do pizzas right. So we put a pizza oven
or real pizza oven in each in each Monkey Pot,
and we buy the zero zero flour from from Italy
to have the right proper crust, and we all our
fish are fresh, and we we make everything on site,
(34:48):
from the hamburger buns to the desserts that everything is
made on. So that was the idea we could we
could serve simple food in a super high co quality. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
I love those pieces. By the way, there's a truffle
one I think. Yeah, the mushroom tuffle pizza. Oh my god,
Oh my god, oh my god. And then we always
get the fresh catch sandwich. We love, love, love, and
you have really good French fries. And the wine's by
the glass with the beverage perform is really great. We
always get we're kind of like regulars. We go there
(35:23):
and we love the wine by the glass. I think
there's a chocolate always get. I mean, we just it's
like a place we love to go and it's casual,
no reservations, you just show up, right.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
We take a few reservations, but not many and they're
hard to get. But yeah, that's exactly what it is.
And you know, and we decided like we're an expensive place,
but we don't have to put the wine in inexpensive glass.
We put it in a nice glass, you know, that
type of thing. But you know, the this is a
(35:57):
little bit off the point, but so proud of our
wines about our glass because we've been working with five
wineries on the mainland, high quality of wineries to get
rid of so many glass bottles that are being shipped
to Hawaii. So we worked with with Obsidian Ridge and
(36:21):
Melville Matthias in Leaning, Colodo and Frogs Leap and developed
a program to put super quality wines, really good quality
wines into a box and serve that for our Wine
by the Glass program. So that's what we have at
All Merriment's All Monkeys. That's great and yeah, it's it's fabulous,
(36:42):
and you know, we we put twenty thousand less bottles
in the landfill every year because of this program.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
How long have you been doing that?
Speaker 3 (36:53):
This is I think our second year. Yeah, so where
you know, there's some some kinks to work out in
the system and so forth, but it's it's really cool.
I mean, we get to work with these really cool
owners of these wineries and winemakers, and these are all
people who are ecologically minded. That's why they joined the program.
It's really scary for a wine maker right to take
(37:15):
his high his or her high quality wine and put
it in a box. Yeah yeah, dad, you're a wine guy.
Then it's interesting. You know.
Speaker 5 (37:24):
I actually interviewed Matt Trevison from lenn Kelodo. He's a
great guy, and he's a very private guy and he
doesn't do a lot of interviews, but he felt like
doing it with me, so he sat in his in
his wine cellar into the live radio show. It wasn't
this one, sorry, Melanie, but it was a it was
a while back, but he was really fun. I'm surprised
he actually went for that, but it's interesting to see.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
That he did. Matt Trevison is like my hero, so dedicated.
I mean, I met that. I wish you had a
recording that show. I'm sure it was super interesting that
things he's doing on his winery that you know, and
I know. And just one point about him is that
we're sitting there in the bottom of his one of
his vineyards and there's a giant old oak tree, two
(38:05):
hundred year old oak tree. He said, the thing takes
like thirty gallons a day from this this particular vineyard.
And I said, well, cut the thing down, you know,
and he goes, well, I thought he wanted to kill me.
You don't cut down a tree, you know. And what
he's really interested in is making that land still usable
two hundred years from Yeah, it's just such a philosophy
(38:27):
for people.
Speaker 5 (38:28):
Yeah, he's a unique guy in the wine world.
Speaker 3 (38:30):
I think, really great guy. Yeah, well there's there's yeah,
there's some there are other you know, John Williams of
a Frog's Leap, he's been organic for like thirty five years,
you know. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of cool people
in that industry, including you did.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
Well. We we think that you know, the wineless, that
monkey pot is really exceptional for a casual concepts, exceptional
for the depth and breadth of it and the approachability
of it as well. We wist one we tried another concept,
the newer one Ulu Kitchen. Mm hmmm, yeah resort. It
(39:08):
was amazing. We ate right, we were literally ocean side.
Speaker 3 (39:13):
Yeah, thank you. So Ulu is the Hawaiian word for
bread fruit, so so that that Hulu Kitchen is is
named for breadfruit. And Lahaina Uh pre contact was an
errand known for its breadfruit. It was plentiful and breadfruit.
So that's that's the reason. It's an homage to the
to the traditional uh Hawaii And what we tried to
(39:37):
do there is try to get a spot somewhere in
between you know, Merriman's and monkey Pots on a really
big gap in there, a little gap. We try to
fit right in there, and you know, a lot of seafood,
definitely the Hawaii influences. We're definitely using breadfruit. We I
think by the way we were serving the it's an
(39:58):
exotic but thenis and the.
Speaker 5 (40:01):
Ordered it I actually had that I was actually I
was going to bring it up later, but I'm going
to bring it up now. It was That's where farm
to Table and your philosophy hit home for me because
we had been up the mountain that day and passed
the Venison farm where you got that venison from Yeah, yeah,
And I asked the I asked our server, who was amazing,
(40:22):
by the way, and she's from Lehina. I can't remember
what her name was.
Speaker 3 (40:26):
We'll figure it out.
Speaker 5 (40:28):
And she said, yeah, we get it from that farm
up on the side of the on the side of
the volcano.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
And I said, I knew it because we passed that farm.
Speaker 3 (40:34):
And I was like, so this is the venicon. I
hatic very interesting.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
And I ordered something really interesting and it was a
VegT a vegetable pot pie. You also have no merriments
from time to time, and it was it just you know,
it's hard to get really good vegetable foot I eat fish,
but I was so intrigued by it. And it was
just incredible because you've got the mushrooms and the cabbage
(40:58):
and the you have it was amazing puff pastry and
bread food and it was just filmed and there's such
an abundance of wonderful vegetables in Waii. It's a great presentations.
Just fabulous. Yeah. We had a great meal that night
and it was we had the best table. We were
sitting like right there with the boardwalk and it was
a beautiful night and we wandered a lot of food.
(41:20):
We had the smashed cucumber salad which was great, and
the Waiapoli farms mixed screens. Again you acknowledged the farmers
and a lot of your dishes, and I think we
had a river bottle of wine. It was a great night.
It was a definitely and we've never been there, so
it was fabulous. And to walk home and we walked home.
I think we took a cab, but anyway, it was
(41:42):
it was a beautiful setting and that was a new
one for us. Are you working on any other new concepts?
Are you doing other?
Speaker 3 (41:50):
Yeah, well not not concept but we're going in the
fall this year, probably around November. We'll be being the
Beach House Wild Wailea Maui and that'll be very similar
to the kitchen, respects a little bit step up in
(42:11):
pricing quality from Monkey pot. Shouldn't say quality, it's really
just price because it's just different items that costs more
kind of thing. So yeah, that's exciting. And you know,
Monkey Potiki was our first dventure into the breakfast business.
And we have breakfast and we'll have breakfast at Monkey
(42:32):
at the Beach House and we have we have just
we have wonderful breakfast. I'm so proud of our breakfast.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
We do meceadamia pancakes, yeah, we do, but we do
what we do.
Speaker 3 (42:46):
Our favorite one is the my type pancake, which which
we we serve a lillokoy lilo. It's passion fruit, so
we serve a likoy foam on top of the pancake
and and we serve it with a rum butter maple syrup.
It's like they're great and we and we make our
(43:07):
by the way, and it doesn't mean much to people
that aren't in restaurant business, but we make our hamburger
I mean hamburger pancake batter every twenty minutes.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
Wow. The only place I eat pancakes isn't Hawaii.
Speaker 3 (43:22):
Well you gotta try them at our place the next time. Yeah,
So it's it's uh, I'm really proud of the breakfast.
And Hulu has you know, they're making their own sausage
for breakfast and then and then then of course we
have Simon noodle soup for breakfast too, and it's it's
a great sigment. Really.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
Oh that just sounds fabulous. I love Asian breakfast. You know,
we have to mention the monkey pot By tie, which
is like everywhere and everybody's coughing your mind tie. You
know Culu organic silver and dark RUMs Kula limehouse made
Macadamian at Orgia and the orange curroso and this Lillkoy
honey Lilla cooy. It is the best my tie period
(44:05):
in Hawaiian probably anywhere, and is often coffee. I mean
you have it everywhere, but I've seen it other places
really do with the imitation. It is fabulous. It is
you know, your cocktail. Your beverage program is terrific. But
that that my tie.
Speaker 3 (44:22):
Then yeah, we love that my tie, and it's super
popular and even people who don't like my ties like
that my ty kind of thing. Jason Vandrels are mixologist
and director of beverage and he uses the same philosophy
on the on the drinks that we use on the food,
(44:44):
which is used super high quality ingredients. Don't make over
complicate them, keep them simple. Almost all of our drinks
will have five ingredients are less right, so you can
really taste what the thing was supposed to taste. Like
with food, that's my philosophy on food is do high
quality ingredient perfectly executed, and then get out of the way.
(45:08):
As the cook or the chef, you got to get
out of the way. Not too many sauces and too
many garnishes and so forth, just enough to highlight and
elevate the flavor a little bit.
Speaker 2 (45:18):
Let the ingredients be the store and not the shock.
Speaker 3 (45:21):
Absolutely absolutely, and put all that effort into chasing down
those farmers and developing those contacts and let people when
you when you hopefully when you had your venison, you
could chase venicin right.
Speaker 4 (45:32):
It was.
Speaker 2 (45:32):
It was delicious, I mean really exceptionally. I normally don't
even eat meat, and I was like, give me some
more debt.
Speaker 3 (45:37):
So, you know, like like growing up in Pittsburgh, we
had lots of venison around and stuff. You know, my
grandfather's big time hunter here and all. But this venison
out here is by far the best there is. It's
pretty amazing.
Speaker 5 (45:49):
I've had New Zealand venison and I've had American venis,
and I've had all kinds of difference. And I used
to hunt myself when I lived in upstate New York,
and I supply a leg of venison for Chris was
dinner every year for the family, and you know, I
do it from from bullet bullet to reppt so I
do myself. Wow, do all the butchering myself. I'd skin it,
(46:13):
marinated all that stuff. And I always love venison and
this was just your venison. And the now we knew
he venison, which is where the farm that it comes from,
is really just fabulous.
Speaker 3 (46:22):
It's it's a it's an access to year. It's a
much smaller creature than what you probably had. Not you
probably have white tail, and upstairs we have a white tail. Yeah,
it's much smaller animal than that, so the yield is
smaller and and the harvest of it is difficult because
you need to have a USDA inspector out in the field.
(46:42):
You kill the animal, and I don't want to get
two graphics. But they do it at night and they
got to kill it with a single shot. So yeah,
so that some pretty good shots out there.
Speaker 2 (46:54):
Less struggle. So there's less struggle, you know, Peter, before
we wrap up, tell us about you do have some
wonderful film thropic initiatives to give back and we want
to make sure we share that with our followers.
Speaker 3 (47:08):
Oh boy, yeah, so philanthropic and we have all sorts
of different things.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
And then we're to start I say, the scholarships.
Speaker 3 (47:16):
Yeah, the Merriment's Color Culinary Scholarship is it's a five
oh one c three nonprofit and we pay for four
young people per year to go to culinary school. And
those people are from Hawaii. They're people they don't even
can't come from the mainland right now. So that's that's
one of our biggest ones. But we also support Pukui,
(47:40):
which is the mountain in the mountain, the top of
the mountain in West Malay. The water shed up there.
So people this is a kind of a big issue worldwide.
People don't fully and a lot of people don't fully
understand that watersheds are super important and they need to
be protected. Right. We're deeply, deeply involved with that. Then
(48:01):
after that, a lot of our initiatives are not technically nonprofit.
We can't take a tax break on them, but we
do them anyway. Like Merryman'sli Maya became the first restaurant
in Hawaii to be carbon neutral. Took a lot of
great great that we like I said, with the Wine
Box program, what I'm missing nonprofits and I do a
(48:27):
lot of work on you know, I'm on the board
at Hawaii Public Radio, and you know I work with
the Hawaii Land Trusts, so helped them get a huge
piece of land protected forever on the Big Island. So
I think that's in general, that's.
Speaker 2 (48:45):
A that's a lot, but it's a it's a community.
You know, once you're there, and you've been there a London,
you have to be part of the community, and you
clearly are. One lot of question. Are you in touch
with some of your fellow Are you all still in
touch the chefs who were like the twelve Pioneer.
Speaker 3 (49:01):
Not as much, very infrequently. A couple of them have
passed away. A couple of them I have totally lost
contact with. But I'll run into Alan here and there.
And actually three of our chess have passed away. That stinks.
(49:21):
And I see Roy once in a while, and oh damn,
of course. And you know, folks that are still in
Hawaiian kicking around, but the ones that have moved away
from Hawaiian. Roger Daikon is still here, but he's not
active right now.
Speaker 2 (49:35):
He's I think beverleygan and sold her restaurant.
Speaker 3 (49:38):
Yeah, that's right, I think she's I think she's still
I haven't seen her, but she sold her restaurant and
she's probably done a lot of traveling, probably worked your
ass off for well.
Speaker 2 (49:49):
I just say that. The James Spear Foundation announced the
semi finalists today and there were a few in Hawaii.
I don't know it, you may, I don't know if
any of them have ever worked for you. Mikaela de Bardi,
Sally Peppi.
Speaker 3 (50:02):
And the Heina Oh wow, great love that.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
Yeah. Ed Kenny of mud hen Water in Honolulu.
Speaker 3 (50:09):
Oh, he's a great guy too.
Speaker 2 (50:10):
Andrew Lay the Pig and the Lady in Honolulu. Good picks,
and one more, two more Sheldon Simeon Tiffany's Restaurant and
Bar in Walla Way Luku right and last So it
was a good representation.
Speaker 4 (50:26):
You ya Yama yamanaka ya yamanaka, Paris, Hawaii, Honolulu. Oh,
I don't know you you yeah u ya yamanaka Yeah, Paris, Parris, Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii.
Speaker 3 (50:41):
I gotta go check that out.
Speaker 2 (50:43):
So these are just for These are the semi finalists,
so they're you know, they'll whittle it down to five,
as you know. But good to see, you know, good
to see the next generation.
Speaker 3 (50:52):
Yeah, that's great. There's a bunch of good cooks in
that outfit there, so happy to see that selection.
Speaker 2 (50:59):
Well, we want to thank you for joining us today,
Peter Meriman. It's amazing you're still out there, You're still
making waves, You're still doing it, and we can't wait
to come out out to Hawaii and hopefully see you
as well. But we love in your restaurant and thank
you for all you do and all you have done
to put Hawaii regional cuisine on the map. It is
(51:20):
important that we honor and respect the culture and tradition
and farmers and fishermen and people who make Hawaii so
special and that we keep it that way.
Speaker 3 (51:29):
Right, that's right, Thank you very much. It has been
a lot of fun. I really enjoyed talking going for
a couple.
Speaker 2 (51:35):
More hours, I know, and as we like to say,
mahalo and Hui ho, Hui ho that reason, until we
meet again. For anyone who doesn't know the Hawaiian you've
been listening to the Connected Table Live, we hope you
enjoyed the show. You can see it on YouTube on
the Connected Table TV channel and I hear it on
(51:56):
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in the industry with you. We love exploring, and we
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with us. Always stay instatiably curious. Thank you,
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(00:20):
choosing W FOURCY Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Hello and welcome to the Connected Table Live. We're your hosts,
Melanie Young and David Ransom. You're in say She'll be curious,
culinary couple. We like to travel the world as much
as we can and eat, drink and explore with you
and us together and inspire you to get out there
and travel, taste, drink the sip, eat the cake, and
(01:05):
get out there and enjoy life. So we are broadcasting
from well, technically we're going taking you to Hawaii. We
go there a lot. If you follow us on our
Instagram at the Connected Table and on our blog by
the same name, you'll know we get to Hawaii almost
every year. Yeah. For Yeah, for theast twenty years. We
go to Maui and Kawhi a lot because we have
(01:27):
timeshares there, and we've been to almost all the islands
except Loni right and Molko. We stare at it a
lot from count of poly Beach, stare at the two
islands and go, when are we going to Linai in
in Bullaquoi? We will. So we're really excited about our
guests today. Who is someone we have been wanting to
have on the connected table for a really long time.
(01:49):
I'm going to set it up this way. If you
have gone to Hawaii and ever dined on walk charred
ahea maca Damian nut, local pacific Hawaiian fish which is amazing,
kollowa pig or Mary NUIs venison, or many other specialties
that spotlight the wonderful farmers, fishermen and bounty of the
(02:12):
Hawaiian Islands, you can thank Peter Merriman. Peter is He's
been called the pie piper Hawaiian regional cuisine. The Los
Angeles Times called them that. He owned several restaurants, notably
Merriman's his signature restaurants. The first he opened in the
Big Island and he is one of twelve notable chefs
(02:33):
in Hawaii who really are the pioneers behind the movement
called Hawaii Regional Cuisine, which started in the eighties and
really was part of the American culinary revolution. I rode
that wave because that's when I first came to New
York and got involved in the food and dining seed.
And it started in California and went coast to coast,
(02:53):
so many famous chefs and included every state just about.
And so we're joined by Peter. Love his food, we
love the restaurant. So it's just an honor to have
him join us early in the morning in Hawaii. So Aloha,
Peter Merrimant.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
Helloa Melanie David, and thank you for that great introduction.
I'm not sure it's deserving, but I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Oh it's deserving. It's all over. And you know, you
really are among some of the greats. Many of them,
we know, I think you. We've only had one of
these chefs on our show, bev Gannon was on our
show many many years ago. So you're our first of
the talented Hawaii twelve. Many are still in business. I
don't know of all, but It's just great to have you.
(03:39):
We love your restaurants, we love Hawaii, and any chance
we can go, we go.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
It's a good place to go when you gotta go.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Yeah, so this is interesting. We learned that you grew
up in Pittsburgh. I happened to know your mom. I
knew your mom when I was a publicist, Woody Merriman.
I picted her.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Oh cool, shemg.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
I'm sorry. The Postcasette just folded like everything else I know.
Tell us about your life and your family. You must
have had some amazing meals because your mom was probably
always testing recipes. She was the food editor for the
Pittsburgh Post Caasette. For anyone who didn't know Woody Merriman, it.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
Was yeah, she you know. As I was growing up,
she was working. First worked for a smaller regional newspaper
before she moved over to the Post Casette, and she
she was she retired as managing her, but she was
the food editor for many years prior to that, and
then she was in her retirement year. She was actually
a restaurant critic. Was really fun as a chef to
(04:43):
have a mom that was a restaurant critic because she
came to me for input on how to do it,
and so that was that was real pleasing that she
had done. One of the things that she did was,
for instance, that she would never write a negative review
that she hadn't visited the restaurant and lead three times.
And you know, because having a son as a restaurant
(05:04):
tour she realized that anybody can have a bad night,
right kind of thing. So should we give a positive review,
which you can do after one visit, but no negatives
unless you goun three times, and you always called the
shelf before you publish. So I thought that, you know,
I was really pleased to establish that sort of protocol
in that industry. But growing up, you know, my grandmother
(05:25):
was a great cook. My mom was a very very
good cook obviously too, and so we were exposed to
a lot. But I mean, when you think back to
those there's a lot of years ago. You know, I'm
talking about growing up in the nineteen sixties and seventies,
and the foods that were available to us. When you
look back at it now, it's kind of crazy.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
You know.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
I think I had my first avocado when I went
out Weston when I was eighteen years old. Yeah, like
there just weren't so many things available like there are today,
and so the cooking was different. But I did a
lot and since my I love to eat and I'm
a big guy my since my mom was working, it
felt naturally that I had to learn how to cook.
(06:05):
And often I was testing really simple recipes for her
in the kitchen. So that eventually led to working with
Ferdinand Metz ferinand Metz was the head chef for Heinz Corporation,
and my mother got to know him, and then he
had a cooking class that he taught at night, and
(06:26):
he needed a little sort of gopher boy, and so
I was when I was sixteen years old, I was
I call myself the gopher boy for Ferdinand mets So
that was my first exposure to professional chefs, one of
the greatest chefs in the world, and so it was
very that's the lasting impression on me.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
So I k I knew new Ferdinand because I worked
at the Culinary Institute of America. Was a client. I
had a million clients back then in my beer agency.
And he was a great guy. I mean, what an
honor to work with.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Oh yeah, he was. He was quite a guy who
was a great chef, great man, super intelligent. He just
had all the qualities that you want you're looking for
in a chef.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
So where did you end it? You didn't go to
the Culinary Institute of America, though, you you tell us
about your culinary education and how you got your start
in the professional restaurant world.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Okay, Yeah, So I was accepted coming out of high school.
I was accepted into the Culinarian Student of America. But
I played football and also got recruited to play football
at the University of Pennsylvania, and so I decided, well,
I'll go to I'll go to college first, and then
I'll go up to the Culinary Institute. So I did.
I went to penn and did graduate. But instead of
(07:42):
going to the Culinary Institute, I got offered a job
as briefly as an assistant manager in a restaurant in
New York City in the World Trade Center. So I
went there and stayed for a short while, and then
went to Vermont, where I did most of my apprenticeship
under Hans Schadler. He was the chef at the Woodstock
(08:03):
in a rock resort in Vermont, and a three year
apprenticeship and one of the great experiences of my life
because it's an old school European style apprenticeship where you
have to work in each section of the kitchen, but
six months in the big shop and three months in
the butcher shop and garmage, hotline, cold night everything. And
(08:24):
you know, I didn't realize it at the time how
unique that was. And today there's not many chefs, even
some of the great chefs in America aren't versed in
all aspects of the kitchen, and I feel so fortunate
to have been experiencing all the entire spectrum of what
goes on in a profession.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
I'm curious, Uh, you're you're a big guy. What position
did you play in football?
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Linebacker?
Speaker 2 (08:48):
You're a linebacker?
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Wow, I wasn't very good, but I did play.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
So who do you root for? Now?
Speaker 3 (08:56):
IM a Steelers man? You kid? We kind of figured.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Figure it as much. Those are powerful fans.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
After the after the Steelers in the NFL, then I
looked for the team with the most Hawaii players and
for them there and there's a lot of them too. Yeah,
there's a lot of Hawaii boys love to play football,
some good. Yes.
Speaker 5 (09:21):
So, so you did the apprenticeship, you learned the tricks
of the trade and whatnot. What what brought you originally
to Hawaii?
Speaker 3 (09:29):
Oh? That yeah, I had. When I left my apprenticeship,
I worked a couple of places, including Europe, and then
I had come back to d C Washington, d C.
And I was working at the Four Seasons in Washington,
d C. And I am, yeah, you went the long story.
The long story is that I didn't like my job
(09:50):
that much, and so I gave two weeks notice. And
the end of the two weeks came it's one hundred
percent true. And I come home on my last stay
at work. I'm living with my brother in law and
my sister, and so I guess I'm unemployed. And so
my brother in law was like, well, you can't have
any lazy unemployed people around here. You're going to go
(10:12):
out there looking for a job. And literally the phone
rang and it was a call with an offer to
come and be a cook in Hawaii. It was basically
a question of when do you need me, and they
said Monday, and I got there by Monday.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
That's great. Yeah, I read you had like seventy five
dollars in your pocket in a suitcase and you just
showed up I had.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Seventy dollars one bag, and I did blow that seventy
five dollars in the bar the first night.
Speaker 5 (10:40):
So it was a lean week until that first day.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
A lean week. Looking there his food in the kitchen.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
What was it like? I mean, you know, anyone who
hasn't been to why that first just even the smell
of the air, the flowers, the smell of those flowers.
There's a set, there's a breeze, there's a look. What
was it like to you when you first stepped in
and experienced that aloha spirit?
Speaker 3 (11:09):
It was just magical. You know, back in those days,
there was no jetway the airport. You had got walked
down and walked across the tarmac.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Right.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
You guys were probably coming there in those days too,
but this is nineteen eighty three, early eighty three, very
beginning eighty three, and you know, you then you just
get down and you just could smell those plumria, right,
it was like perfume in the air. And then I
really had that little tiny bar that outdoors. When you
walked in, right into that little tiny hangar that was
(11:39):
over there. It's hard to believe how little airport was
that small at the time, and there was a little
outdoor bar and you sit there and have really lousy
mi ties and you're just on Seventh Heaven and from there.
This shows how small it was back then. So I
called Hans Peter Hager was the chef at the Manolani
Bay Hotel where I was going to be a cook.
(12:02):
And I called him and said, hey, I'm here. I'll
be coming into ConA on this particular fight, the connecting
play and he said, okay, we'll pick you up. And
I said, okay, who's going to pick me up? He goes,
don't worry click, And I'm like, what the heck? You know,
how could I don't even know who's supposed to pick
me up? And sure enough, and ConA Airport was even
way small in those days, and I think it still is. Yeah, yeah,
(12:25):
well it's pretty big now. Yeah. But there was one guy.
You know, back then, they literally pulled on a wagon,
a hand pulled wagon. They pulled your luggage to the
curb and there and there's one guy leaning on the
side of an old beat up car drink and he
looks at me and says, hey, you must be the cook.
(12:47):
So they know it was me. And that was how
I got to That's how I got to Hawaii. But
it was I was really fortunate to be on the
Big Island in early nineteen eighty three, you know, because
that was still the old Hawaii, right. It was really
unique place. I mean, it was very expensive to live
here and there are very few products available, but just
(13:09):
it was like living outside the country, but still in
having all the benefits of the United States at the
same time. It's just a great, great place. And it
was you know, sugar was still the dominant industry, sugarcane,
and so it was this plantation culture, and it was
really a culture like nowhere else in the United States.
(13:30):
Of course, we're descended from a kingdom which is nowhere
else the United States as well. But then the input
of the of the Asian peoples who had brought had
come here to harvest sugar cane from the Japanese and
the Chinese, Portuguese and Filipinos just made a wonderful spectrum
of different cultural influences, especially on the food. And for me,
(13:53):
that's one of the reason I was so excited about
when when when Hunts Peter had called me and I
was a cookie back in ducd like two days to
get ready, but I dash over to the library because
we didn't have internet right and it was looking up
trying to figure out about Hawaii Fuld and I couldn't
figure it out at all. And it turned out that,
(14:13):
you know, really what was going on here was the
tourist industry, which wasn't nearly as big as it is today.
I was still trying to do continental cuisine, do European cuisine,
and they were totally overlooking what was going on in
the local culture. And so that created an opportunity for
me in there that I eventually dove into and enjoyed
(14:36):
quite a bit.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
How did you go about doing that? Because I mean
I thought about it because we didn't start going to
Way until early two thousands. Okay, okay, so but I
remember growing up in the South and traveling at continental cuisine?
Was it that was the fine dining term. It didn't
even have a regionality or assignment maybe, but there wasn't
(15:01):
Italian regional Italian like there is now. And then all
of a sudden, you know, things to people like you
Alice Waters and Jeremia Tower and Mary but Jenny and
many shifs. People started looking in their backyard local war.
You had to make those contacts because it was not
something that was done in Hawaii. And yet there was
(15:21):
an abundance of these people. I'm just trying to figure
out what these people have. Where were they selling their
products until people like you came around, and how did
you go aut establishing relationships?
Speaker 3 (15:31):
Yeah, there were not an abundance of people growing things
actually back then. Yeah, so it was it was really difficult.
And the first thing we did was we put classified
ads in the newspaper right that we wanted to buy
local products. And and you know, only in Hawaiian it
(15:51):
was so beautiful and people just had, you know, a
single tree of a mango or a starford or something
in their backyard, didn't pick it up, and many of
them and just come down and give it to us.
I didn't even want money for it, you know, it
was just like that's how they do. And so that
was one that that was the classified ads. We were
basically saying, if you grow it, we'll buy it. And
(16:11):
then real early on, one of the first farmers that
we dealt with was a guy named Tane Data and
he's an brilliant, brilliant man that's an organic farmer. Down
in the Kali Kekua district of a big island, and
we started talking with him, and he there was a
group of you know, alternative lifestyle people, some aka hippies
(16:37):
kind of guys that lived up and down this mountain
where he lived. And he realized that at different elevations,
different crops would grow well. And so he came to
me and said, look, I can organize the farmers down
there to grow the crops you need if you tell
me the crops you need. So he gave me a
seed cataline and took a highlighter and I just highlighted
the crops that we would use. Little tiny farmers we're
(17:01):
talking about now, who each bought, you know, one guy
volunteered in spinach, another guy volunteer means whatever it is.
And then that way they had enough and each person
was only growing really really small amounts. But tam and
put them all in the coolers and bring them up.
It was like an hour drive to where we were
and every week, and he became the intermediary between those
(17:26):
small farmers and Austin. That was one of the early
early things. We also did things like we planted a
garden outside the gallery restaurant where the first restaurant where
I first did Hawaii regional cuisine, just everything. You know.
I often called it gorilla purchasing because you had to
(17:46):
just think outside the box all the time. You know.
Sometimes we would go spear our own fish, or sometimes
we would go collect our own sea urchin. I did
that quite often actually, or whatever it was, just whatever
it took. I get one point, we noticed that that
the resort was trimming coconuts and throwing them away. So
we said, we'll take the coconuts, and we gave him
(18:08):
the tain for free, and he'd take them down to
Kalakku and somebody would grate it for for us, and
then he'd bring it back and we buy it from him.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
You know.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
Like but but that's what it needed to get the
pump primed so that they were because prior to that,
like I said, it was, it was sugarcane, right. It
was was plantation economy, single large crop meant for export,
not for local consumption.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Right.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
So we had to get over that particular hump, and
it took quite a bit of work. It took we're
still working on it, but it took years and years
of encouraging and going out to meet farmers and talking
with farmers, working closely with them. Monty Ridgeard's up at
the Cuckoua ranch, you know, he we pioneered the use
of the local lamb with him Aaron Lee to divine
(19:00):
and tomatoes for us, and but just it was really rewarding,
excitable time because we we what we were doing is
looking for fresh products. We had great flavor, right, and
that turned into being regional cuisine. We didn't know any
and we were doing farm the table before that out
of turn. But mostly what it was was just a
(19:21):
desire to have the best tasting food that we could have,
So that that was kind of the origins of how
that all got started.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Yeah, and then you opened Merriments in nineteen a. Still
we're still in the eight in nineteen eighty eight. Yeah,
nineteen eighty eight, right, mm hmm.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
So yeah, So I've been into hotel and after the hotel,
I went up to a place called the Gallery Resort,
which was on the same resort Manlani as the hotel,
but it was a different company doing a different thing.
And that's where we first did Hawaiti Regional Cuisine's and
so forth, and what I you know, one of of
things than when we go then from there we go
(20:02):
up the hill to Waimea, which is like, you know,
twenty minutes away, right up the mountain the original merriments
and why Maya. So yeah, that's that's in eighty eight.
And it was, you know, really what I had hoped
to do. There was like a cafe like really accept
you know, accessible food is what I call it, and
(20:23):
just super high quality. And when we went up there,
it didn't work. We didn't have enough customers. We were
going broke. And but a lot of our customers had
had been people that had dined at the gallery when
I was chef down at the gallery, and so they
had followed us up to hill. And our customers kept
(20:44):
telling us, hey, you got to raise your prices. I
got to raise your prices, which is crazy, right, like
who owns a business did the customers tell them to
raise their prices? But but really, what the guest was
telling me. It took a while to figure this out
for me, but the guests were telling me we went
a little higher in cuisine than this. You know, we
don't want we don't want stew we want steak. And
(21:07):
so we gradually morphed into into that being a higher
end restaurant. So it was years and years before I
could get something that open again, that was more accessible,
you know, where we can have a burger pizza on
the menu. That was the original Merriments.
Speaker 5 (21:22):
Well, that was the That was the first Merriments we
went to.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
It was New Year's Eve. Actually we spent all years. Yeah,
we were did in New Year's in the Big Island
and we and here's what I remember. We had driven
all over you know, Big Islands, speaker driving this way
and this way, and I remember we had a change
of clothes in our frontal car and we little bit
changed into like finery to go have dinner New Year's
(21:45):
Eve dinner Merrimans. We were like in our short it
was cool. It was cool because there's elevations there. Right.
Speaker 5 (21:52):
We had driven from we had driven around the island
to Hilo and we stopped at Merriman's for dinner on
New Year's Eve on the way back to Kona, where yehs,
it's a long day, it was.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
It was a very long, very long day, but it
was so worth it, you know.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
It was a great experience.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
That was we've only been to the Big Island twice
once for that and then we did a cone of Coffee.
We actually went did a coffee show the Coffee Burner
uh one time. Yeah, it was a lot of fun.
So let's talk about some of your signature dishes, which
then you since have opened Merriman your city's restaurant in
other areas. One of the most beautiful ones and it's
kind of pictured behind us is in Coppolua in Maui,
(22:34):
we say in Connapoli at the Western Villa's which is
maybe fifteen to twelve minute drive to Coppolua. So we're
up in Coppolou a lot. We like to go hiking
on that cliff walk. Just stunning, Yeah, just stunning. And
we love that whole little area in Appeally, et cetera.
Just wonderful. So you've got that stunning location in Coppolua,
(22:59):
and then you have Merriments and now who were going
to go. We had to cancel the trip, but we're
going to go because we go to Kawai a lot,
uh and then Honolulu. Talk to us about this. It
is your namesake restaurants and with the name of the door,
you have to have those standards, share your philosophy and
(23:20):
some of your signature dishes that you can never take
up the menu.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Well ship signature editions. I mean you mentioned one earlier,
which was the walk chart, Audie. You know that's that's
just got to stay there forever. We did not invent that,
but we like we claim we discovered it because it's
really tataki in Japan, right, but back in when we
started serving it in eighty eight or whatever, nobody was
(23:48):
serving that sort of thing. That's so that's our bigie.
Speaker 6 (23:51):
I think you know nowadays are uh banana bread pudding
and uh it's a banana bread macan. They end up
putting as a fabulous we just can't seem to get
off the menu.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
But the other signatures for us are are a little
more difficult to explain because one of our signatures, for instance,
is the ccou a ranch lamb. But to get fresh lamb,
we have to buy the whole animal, So we butchered
that whole animal every week, and there's a different cut
available each day. So the lamb itself is a signature dish,
(24:28):
it's just not in any particular preparation. So really, what
Merriment's has come to be what we've evolved into and
it's the same basic tenets from when I thought we
were going to be a cafe, which is to use
good quality, fresh ingredients, and we morphed into super high quality,
(24:49):
locally produced organic whenever possible. We don't lead with organic,
but we do organic when we can, and we always sustainable.
That's our really big on that. So that and also,
you know, something that seldom gets mentioned but which we're
really proud of is the service in our restaurant. We
have just in Merriments has just the greatest crop of
(25:13):
waiters and waitresses that you could ever have, and we
have so many professionals that people are dedicated and they
learn and they know their food and they enhance the
guest experience. So we tell our tell our managers and
all our people that we're not in the food business.
We're in the guest experience business. And that's too many
(25:36):
chefs overlook the importance of the front of the house.
You know, yeah, yeah we're smart, and yeah we're cool
because we can come up with these dishes, but if
you don't have somebody on the front of it that's
delivering improperly, they're going to ruin that whole experience, and conversely,
they can heighten and elevate that experience just with their
knowledge and their ability to read the guests and get
(25:58):
the guests what they want. It's a really big part
of what we do.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Well, you you are very under the motto do the
right thing. Yeah, explain other than you know, we know
that term from a rapper. Tell us what that means
to you and your team?
Speaker 7 (26:19):
Well, yeah, that's so that a few years quite a
few years back, we were trying to come up with
our you know, our motto for our company or you know,
what's our essence, but what's our driving force?
Speaker 3 (26:30):
And we kept all these different things that we try
to do and all our different managers and and finally
it just came down to, like, you know, it's weird.
It's hard to describe what we do, but we just
do the right thing. It came accidentally to us, if
you will. But so what that means is that we
want to do right by the guest obviously, but then
(26:53):
we want to do right by our employees, and we
want to do right by the farmers and all the
people we purchased from. And then we want to right
but the community that we're in we feel we are
forever indebted to Hawaii and the local culture of Hawaii,
and and then last, but I guess not in any
way at least would be you know, we're committed to
(27:15):
doing the right thing for the environment, to make sure
that there's a place for regionally grown food for my
great grandchildren some day.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
You know, whenever we go to Hawaii, we sense that
the respect for history and culture number one, respect for
the land and the stea and the environment and the reefs,
and everybody is very concerned because it is like everywhere
constantly battering the elements, the natural elements, and then the
(27:45):
human waste and pollution as well. So and when you
live on islands, you feel you feel that isolation. There's
only so much you can do. And food is when
you bring food in from the outside, it's expensive. So
many opal whye is so expensive. And you're gonna pay
a lot when you go to Hawai. You're gonna pay
a lot to get there, or you're gonna pay a
(28:06):
lot for your hotel. You may pay, but your own islands,
it is what it is. You're paying for that uniqueness, right, Oh, yeah.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
That's that's so true. Yes, it is expensive. And things
are different here, and that's why I live here, you know.
And by the way, we're there the furthest from any
major land mass of any place in the world. Right, So,
and we have more we've lost, we have more endangered
species than North America but together, so it's a super
(28:40):
unique place. And we only had one mammal prior to humans,
which was the monk seal. Right, there was no mammals
because we're so far away from from major land masks.
So it's a really interesting place. And you talk about
being part of the environment. You know, we have tsunamis,
we have earthquake, we have volcanoes, so we kind of
(29:04):
get you know, every type hurricane I name you mentioned.
I mean, we have every type of you know, you
just really feel in touch with nature in your hair.
And then I think true that to the host culture,
the Hawaiian culture, culture of the Hawaiian people, they they
are about the land and they're about the environment. And
(29:25):
so it's it's got a really good seed for germination
amongst the whole community here, I think many people feel.
And plus it's so incredibly beautiful you don't want to
get right, it really is beautiful.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
I mean yea, our whole, our whole demeanor change. You know,
when we go to Hawaii, we are on you know,
we travel a lot for wine and food and you know,
I say, as soon as we start writing notes, we're working.
But when we go to Hawaii, we don't do any
of that. We've done show, we have done shops, we
have dune shows. We actually we even stop doing that
(30:02):
when we're out there. We do the when we get
back because we just want to be in the moment
and totally unwind. And each island is so different and special,
and likewise, your concepts are different. I mean, Merriman's is
fine dining and elegant, and you know what I love
about it is the menu has you know, takes advantage
(30:23):
of the lamb, the amazing cattle. There's a lot of
ranching in White people don't think about that. They think
it's water. You fish. The beef and the lamb is amazing.
The pork, uh, the you know, if you're a vegetarian,
there's taro and there's amazing vegetables and fruits. There's it's
an abundance like no one that we live in Louisiana,
(30:45):
and there's a lot of pork and be similar. We
were battered a lot by the elements and we have it.
But weeople have the vegetables white as we missed vegetables.
We have a lot of sugar cane. You know, there's
a little we don't have the veget We have great
strawberry and so Hawaii. But there are other things. When
(31:05):
we go out there, we go to the farm markets
and shop and we're just like blown away by some
of the ingredients out there.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
If you if you go to the Helo's farmers Market,
you could swear you were in Southeast Asia. There's just
so many items. You go, I have no idea what
that thing is you're selling exactly. It's really fun. It's
really a fun fun thing to do. Yeah, so there's
a lot of a lot of unique and interesting ingredientstory.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
We like, Yeah, we have to go back to the
Big Island. We did to go to Maui and we
stay up in Princeville, so that's like our base. But
the Big Island is beyond anything. For anyone who is
watching and listening to the Big Island is very big,
and you've got this big volcano. There can be snow.
You can actually see the volcano will Rock. We walked
(31:55):
the law and there was like, you know, fire underneath
the law. You know, you had to be really careful,
and the lava flows you. It is a long drive
some of the stariest skies in the night I've ever seen.
When we go, we just stopped the car and looked
up and went, oh my god. In the middle of
it is this coffee belt where they make some of
(32:17):
the great coffee. He Lo is one end. It's more
it's way out there, and you're right, you feel like
you're almost in Asia in terms of the ingredients. It's
very small town. The other side you've got the fancy resorts,
but still not like now we were you know, Coppolo
or kind of Holywrid resort, resort resort. It really is.
(32:38):
I mean hopefully we haven't been there well, but just
it's a stunning place. The Big island.
Speaker 4 (32:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
So you know, the easy way to understand is geologically,
and it goes the oldest part of the Hawaiian Archipelago
is in the northwest and the youngest in the southeast.
So the island is the youngest, right, So the further
like when you're up on Kowaiti, then you get really
carved extinct volcanoes. Right now, you get dormant volcanoes. The
(33:08):
West Malay is carved, and like the alcohol is not
carved because it's dormant. It's not extinct yet. And then
when you get to the Big Island you get active volcanoes.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Yeah, you sure do.
Speaker 5 (33:21):
I have to say it was pretty fascinating when we
when we hiked into Volcanoes National Park and hiked up
to where the lava was still flowing past us, literally
two feet from where we were standing. Was amazing to see,
just incredible and at the birth of the earth.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
Yeah, the birth of the Earth. So tell us about
some of your other condoms. So when we're in Maui,
we go to Monkey Pot, a lot that's like our
because what we'll do is even we'll walk. There's a
boardwalk on con of Poly. You can walk from where
we if we feel like it, where we stay in
the western conn of Poly, you walk down this board
walk all the way to where Monkey Pot is in
(33:59):
this little shop area. And then we don't have like
an early early early supper back.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
So yeah, as I was mentioning earlier, like really, my
heart is always in casual bistro cafe type food, right,
and so I had always wanted to do that place.
You know, we could serve burgers and pizzas and and
so that's what that's what Monkey Pot is. It's it's
(34:26):
it's much more accessible. You know, we wanted to do pizzas,
but do pizzas right. So we put a pizza oven
or real pizza oven in each in each Monkey Pot,
and we buy the zero zero flour from from Italy
to have the right proper crust, and we all our
fish are fresh, and we we make everything on site,
(34:48):
from the hamburger buns to the desserts that everything is
made on. So that was the idea we could we
could serve simple food in a super high co quality. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
I love those pieces. By the way, there's a truffle
one I think. Yeah, the mushroom tuffle pizza. Oh my god,
Oh my god, oh my god. And then we always
get the fresh catch sandwich. We love, love, love, and
you have really good French fries. And the wine's by
the glass with the beverage perform is really great. We
always get we're kind of like regulars. We go there
(35:23):
and we love the wine by the glass. I think
there's a chocolate always get. I mean, we just it's
like a place we love to go and it's casual,
no reservations, you just show up, right.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
We take a few reservations, but not many and they're
hard to get. But yeah, that's exactly what it is.
And you know, and we decided like we're an expensive place,
but we don't have to put the wine in inexpensive glass.
We put it in a nice glass, you know, that
type of thing. But you know, the this is a
(35:57):
little bit off the point, but so proud of our
wines about our glass because we've been working with five
wineries on the mainland, high quality of wineries to get
rid of so many glass bottles that are being shipped
to Hawaii. So we worked with with Obsidian Ridge and
(36:21):
Melville Matthias in Leaning, Colodo and Frogs Leap and developed
a program to put super quality wines, really good quality
wines into a box and serve that for our Wine
by the Glass program. So that's what we have at
All Merriment's All Monkeys. That's great and yeah, it's it's fabulous,
(36:42):
and you know, we we put twenty thousand less bottles
in the landfill every year because of this program.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
How long have you been doing that?
Speaker 3 (36:53):
This is I think our second year. Yeah, so where
you know, there's some some kinks to work out in
the system and so forth, but it's it's really cool.
I mean, we get to work with these really cool
owners of these wineries and winemakers, and these are all
people who are ecologically minded. That's why they joined the program.
It's really scary for a wine maker right to take
(37:15):
his high his or her high quality wine and put
it in a box. Yeah yeah, dad, you're a wine guy.
Then it's interesting. You know.
Speaker 5 (37:24):
I actually interviewed Matt Trevison from lenn Kelodo. He's a
great guy, and he's a very private guy and he
doesn't do a lot of interviews, but he felt like
doing it with me, so he sat in his in
his wine cellar into the live radio show. It wasn't
this one, sorry, Melanie, but it was a it was
a while back, but he was really fun. I'm surprised
he actually went for that, but it's interesting to see.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
That he did. Matt Trevison is like my hero, so dedicated.
I mean, I met that. I wish you had a
recording that show. I'm sure it was super interesting that
things he's doing on his winery that you know, and
I know. And just one point about him is that
we're sitting there in the bottom of his one of
his vineyards and there's a giant old oak tree, two
(38:05):
hundred year old oak tree. He said, the thing takes
like thirty gallons a day from this this particular vineyard.
And I said, well, cut the thing down, you know,
and he goes, well, I thought he wanted to kill me.
You don't cut down a tree, you know. And what
he's really interested in is making that land still usable
two hundred years from Yeah, it's just such a philosophy
(38:27):
for people.
Speaker 5 (38:28):
Yeah, he's a unique guy in the wine world.
Speaker 3 (38:30):
I think, really great guy. Yeah, well there's there's yeah,
there's some there are other you know, John Williams of
a Frog's Leap, he's been organic for like thirty five years,
you know. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of cool people
in that industry, including you did.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
Well. We we think that you know, the wineless, that
monkey pot is really exceptional for a casual concepts, exceptional
for the depth and breadth of it and the approachability
of it as well. We wist one we tried another concept,
the newer one Ulu Kitchen. Mm hmmm, yeah resort. It
(39:08):
was amazing. We ate right, we were literally ocean side.
Speaker 3 (39:13):
Yeah, thank you. So Ulu is the Hawaiian word for
bread fruit, so so that that Hulu Kitchen is is
named for breadfruit. And Lahaina Uh pre contact was an
errand known for its breadfruit. It was plentiful and breadfruit.
So that's that's the reason. It's an homage to the
to the traditional uh Hawaii And what we tried to
(39:37):
do there is try to get a spot somewhere in
between you know, Merriman's and monkey Pots on a really
big gap in there, a little gap. We try to
fit right in there, and you know, a lot of seafood,
definitely the Hawaii influences. We're definitely using breadfruit. We I
think by the way we were serving the it's an
(39:58):
exotic but thenis and the.
Speaker 5 (40:01):
Ordered it I actually had that I was actually I
was going to bring it up later, but I'm going
to bring it up now. It was That's where farm
to Table and your philosophy hit home for me because
we had been up the mountain that day and passed
the Venison farm where you got that venison from Yeah, yeah,
And I asked the I asked our server, who was amazing,
(40:22):
by the way, and she's from Lehina. I can't remember
what her name was.
Speaker 3 (40:26):
We'll figure it out.
Speaker 5 (40:28):
And she said, yeah, we get it from that farm
up on the side of the on the side of
the volcano.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
And I said, I knew it because we passed that farm.
Speaker 3 (40:34):
And I was like, so this is the venicon. I
hatic very interesting.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
And I ordered something really interesting and it was a
VegT a vegetable pot pie. You also have no merriments
from time to time, and it was it just you know,
it's hard to get really good vegetable foot I eat fish,
but I was so intrigued by it. And it was
just incredible because you've got the mushrooms and the cabbage
(40:58):
and the you have it was amazing puff pastry and
bread food and it was just filmed and there's such
an abundance of wonderful vegetables in Waii. It's a great presentations.
Just fabulous. Yeah. We had a great meal that night
and it was we had the best table. We were
sitting like right there with the boardwalk and it was
a beautiful night and we wandered a lot of food.
(41:20):
We had the smashed cucumber salad which was great, and
the Waiapoli farms mixed screens. Again you acknowledged the farmers
and a lot of your dishes, and I think we
had a river bottle of wine. It was a great night.
It was a definitely and we've never been there, so
it was fabulous. And to walk home and we walked home.
I think we took a cab, but anyway, it was
(41:42):
it was a beautiful setting and that was a new
one for us. Are you working on any other new concepts?
Are you doing other?
Speaker 3 (41:50):
Yeah, well not not concept but we're going in the
fall this year, probably around November. We'll be being the
Beach House Wild Wailea Maui and that'll be very similar
to the kitchen, respects a little bit step up in
(42:11):
pricing quality from Monkey pot. Shouldn't say quality, it's really
just price because it's just different items that costs more
kind of thing. So yeah, that's exciting. And you know,
Monkey Potiki was our first dventure into the breakfast business.
And we have breakfast and we'll have breakfast at Monkey
(42:32):
at the Beach House and we have we have just
we have wonderful breakfast. I'm so proud of our breakfast.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
We do meceadamia pancakes, yeah, we do, but we do
what we do.
Speaker 3 (42:46):
Our favorite one is the my type pancake, which which
we we serve a lillokoy lilo. It's passion fruit, so
we serve a likoy foam on top of the pancake
and and we serve it with a rum butter maple syrup.
It's like they're great and we and we make our
(43:07):
by the way, and it doesn't mean much to people
that aren't in restaurant business, but we make our hamburger
I mean hamburger pancake batter every twenty minutes.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
Wow. The only place I eat pancakes isn't Hawaii.
Speaker 3 (43:22):
Well you gotta try them at our place the next time. Yeah,
So it's it's uh, I'm really proud of the breakfast.
And Hulu has you know, they're making their own sausage
for breakfast and then and then then of course we
have Simon noodle soup for breakfast too, and it's it's
a great sigment. Really.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
Oh that just sounds fabulous. I love Asian breakfast. You know,
we have to mention the monkey pot By tie, which
is like everywhere and everybody's coughing your mind tie. You
know Culu organic silver and dark RUMs Kula limehouse made
Macadamian at Orgia and the orange curroso and this Lillkoy
honey Lilla cooy. It is the best my tie period
(44:05):
in Hawaiian probably anywhere, and is often coffee. I mean
you have it everywhere, but I've seen it other places
really do with the imitation. It is fabulous. It is
you know, your cocktail. Your beverage program is terrific. But
that that my tie.
Speaker 3 (44:22):
Then yeah, we love that my tie, and it's super
popular and even people who don't like my ties like
that my ty kind of thing. Jason Vandrels are mixologist
and director of beverage and he uses the same philosophy
on the on the drinks that we use on the food,
(44:44):
which is used super high quality ingredients. Don't make over
complicate them, keep them simple. Almost all of our drinks
will have five ingredients are less right, so you can
really taste what the thing was supposed to taste. Like
with food, that's my philosophy on food is do high
quality ingredient perfectly executed, and then get out of the way.
(45:08):
As the cook or the chef, you got to get
out of the way. Not too many sauces and too
many garnishes and so forth, just enough to highlight and
elevate the flavor a little bit.
Speaker 2 (45:18):
Let the ingredients be the store and not the shock.
Speaker 3 (45:21):
Absolutely absolutely, and put all that effort into chasing down
those farmers and developing those contacts and let people when
you when you hopefully when you had your venison, you
could chase venicin right.
Speaker 4 (45:32):
It was.
Speaker 2 (45:32):
It was delicious, I mean really exceptionally. I normally don't
even eat meat, and I was like, give me some
more debt.
Speaker 3 (45:37):
So, you know, like like growing up in Pittsburgh, we
had lots of venison around and stuff. You know, my
grandfather's big time hunter here and all. But this venison
out here is by far the best there is. It's
pretty amazing.
Speaker 5 (45:49):
I've had New Zealand venison and I've had American venis,
and I've had all kinds of difference. And I used
to hunt myself when I lived in upstate New York,
and I supply a leg of venison for Chris was
dinner every year for the family, and you know, I
do it from from bullet bullet to reppt so I
do myself. Wow, do all the butchering myself. I'd skin it,
(46:13):
marinated all that stuff. And I always love venison and
this was just your venison. And the now we knew
he venison, which is where the farm that it comes from,
is really just fabulous.
Speaker 3 (46:22):
It's it's a it's an access to year. It's a
much smaller creature than what you probably had. Not you
probably have white tail, and upstairs we have a white tail. Yeah,
it's much smaller animal than that, so the yield is
smaller and and the harvest of it is difficult because
you need to have a USDA inspector out in the field.
(46:42):
You kill the animal, and I don't want to get
two graphics. But they do it at night and they
got to kill it with a single shot. So yeah,
so that some pretty good shots out there.
Speaker 2 (46:54):
Less struggle. So there's less struggle, you know, Peter, before
we wrap up, tell us about you do have some
wonderful film thropic initiatives to give back and we want
to make sure we share that with our followers.
Speaker 3 (47:08):
Oh boy, yeah, so philanthropic and we have all sorts
of different things.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
And then we're to start I say, the scholarships.
Speaker 3 (47:16):
Yeah, the Merriment's Color Culinary Scholarship is it's a five
oh one c three nonprofit and we pay for four
young people per year to go to culinary school. And
those people are from Hawaii. They're people they don't even
can't come from the mainland right now. So that's that's
one of our biggest ones. But we also support Pukui,
(47:40):
which is the mountain in the mountain, the top of
the mountain in West Malay. The water shed up there.
So people this is a kind of a big issue worldwide.
People don't fully and a lot of people don't fully
understand that watersheds are super important and they need to
be protected. Right. We're deeply, deeply involved with that. Then
(48:01):
after that, a lot of our initiatives are not technically nonprofit.
We can't take a tax break on them, but we
do them anyway. Like Merryman'sli Maya became the first restaurant
in Hawaii to be carbon neutral. Took a lot of
great great that we like I said, with the Wine
Box program, what I'm missing nonprofits and I do a
(48:27):
lot of work on you know, I'm on the board
at Hawaii Public Radio, and you know I work with
the Hawaii Land Trusts, so helped them get a huge
piece of land protected forever on the Big Island. So
I think that's in general, that's.
Speaker 2 (48:45):
A that's a lot, but it's a it's a community.
You know, once you're there, and you've been there a London,
you have to be part of the community, and you
clearly are. One lot of question. Are you in touch
with some of your fellow Are you all still in
touch the chefs who were like the twelve Pioneer.
Speaker 3 (49:01):
Not as much, very infrequently. A couple of them have
passed away. A couple of them I have totally lost
contact with. But I'll run into Alan here and there.
And actually three of our chess have passed away. That stinks.
(49:21):
And I see Roy once in a while, and oh damn,
of course. And you know, folks that are still in
Hawaiian kicking around, but the ones that have moved away
from Hawaiian. Roger Daikon is still here, but he's not
active right now.
Speaker 2 (49:35):
He's I think beverleygan and sold her restaurant.
Speaker 3 (49:38):
Yeah, that's right, I think she's I think she's still
I haven't seen her, but she sold her restaurant and
she's probably done a lot of traveling, probably worked your
ass off for well.
Speaker 2 (49:49):
I just say that. The James Spear Foundation announced the
semi finalists today and there were a few in Hawaii.
I don't know it, you may, I don't know if
any of them have ever worked for you. Mikaela de Bardi,
Sally Peppi.
Speaker 3 (50:02):
And the Heina Oh wow, great love that.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
Yeah. Ed Kenny of mud hen Water in Honolulu.
Speaker 3 (50:09):
Oh, he's a great guy too.
Speaker 2 (50:10):
Andrew Lay the Pig and the Lady in Honolulu. Good picks,
and one more, two more Sheldon Simeon Tiffany's Restaurant and
Bar in Walla Way Luku right and last So it
was a good representation.
Speaker 4 (50:26):
You ya Yama yamanaka ya yamanaka, Paris, Hawaii, Honolulu. Oh,
I don't know you you yeah u ya yamanaka Yeah, Paris, Parris, Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii.
Speaker 3 (50:41):
I gotta go check that out.
Speaker 2 (50:43):
So these are just for These are the semi finalists,
so they're you know, they'll whittle it down to five,
as you know. But good to see, you know, good
to see the next generation.
Speaker 3 (50:52):
Yeah, that's great. There's a bunch of good cooks in
that outfit there, so happy to see that selection.
Speaker 2 (50:59):
Well, we want to thank you for joining us today,
Peter Meriman. It's amazing you're still out there, You're still
making waves, You're still doing it, and we can't wait
to come out out to Hawaii and hopefully see you
as well. But we love in your restaurant and thank
you for all you do and all you have done
to put Hawaii regional cuisine on the map. It is
(51:20):
important that we honor and respect the culture and tradition
and farmers and fishermen and people who make Hawaii so
special and that we keep it that way.
Speaker 3 (51:29):
Right, that's right, Thank you very much. It has been
a lot of fun. I really enjoyed talking going for
a couple.
Speaker 2 (51:35):
More hours, I know, and as we like to say,
mahalo and Hui ho, Hui ho that reason, until we
meet again. For anyone who doesn't know the Hawaiian you've
been listening to the Connected Table Live, we hope you
enjoyed the show. You can see it on YouTube on
the Connected Table TV channel and I hear it on
(51:56):
sixty five podcast channels anytime on demand and you just
pick the one you like. We love sharing our friends
in the industry with you. We love exploring, and we
want you to always eat younk, explore and stay inspired
with us. Always stay instatiably curious. Thank you,
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