FLUX No. 9 Food

the radiant chef, alan wong life on the line: hawai‘i's slaughterhouse industry my older brother, the root family feast: how food brings us together

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The Radian T Chef | 26

A few decades ago, several chefs, writers, critics, investors and foodies created a movement in Hawai‘i. After the development of what came to be known as Hawai‘i Regional Cuisine, native son Alan Wong has emerged the most ardent originator of his peers. Here, writer Sonny Ganaden documents the chef’s profound effect on how cuisine is thought of in Hawai‘i.

family f easT | 32

Without knowing traditions of our heritage, it’s impossible to make headway into bold new endeavors. Here, editor Lisa Yamada traces food traditions in Hawai‘i and how they bring us together. Images by John Hook.

m y Olde R B ROT he R , T he R OOT | 37

Taro once defined this land and sustained the majority of Hawai‘i’s population prior to Western contact. Writer Sonny Ganaden provides a brief history of taro and how this humble root vegetable can save us from ourselves.

lOC avOR e | 42

In an effort to discover the feasibility of eliminating our need for imported foods, writer Jade Eckardt challenged herself to eat 100 percent local for two weeks. What she discovered surprised even her.

l ife O n T he l ine | 48

Plagued with opposition and faced with persistent setbacks, O‘ahu’s slaughterhouse is on the brink of closing its doors unless it can find ways to adapt to the changing market. Writer Anna Harmon provides an all-access look of the floundering industry. Images by A.J. Feducia.

Tea Pa RT y | 54

A tea party fashion editorial in ‘Āina Haina, on location at Bayer Estate. Photographed by senior contributing photographer John Hook. Styled by Aly Ishikuni and Ara Laylo.

A tea party fashion editorial at the Bayer Estate. Stella McCartney lace top available at Neiman Marcus.

edi TOR’s le TT e R masT head

le TT e R s TO T he edi TOR CO n TR i BUTOR s

W haT T he flUX?! | 14

FA r M To TA b L e?

lOC al m OCO | 16

Swee T L ADY o F wAIA ho L e

n OTa B le WORK s | 18

K AKo‘o ‘o I w I

FLUXFIL e S : a RT | 20

Tr IS h A L A g AS o g o LD berg

FLUXFIL e S : m U siC | 22

oTTo c AK e

GR een | 24

M AILI Mo A FA r M

TR avel | 62 I NDIA

de CO nsTRUCT in G : | 64

MA‘ o ’ S c SA b oX

Kāko‘o ‘Ōiwi has been working to redevelop food systems in He‘eia ahupua‘a on the Windward side of O‘ahu.

f OO die ROU nd UP | 66

Ta B le f OR 6 | 68

Ver TI c AL J UNKI e S

in T he K i TC hen | 74

J AM e S Do N oh U e, w o LF g AN g’ S S T e AK ho US e

T he flyOve R | 80

Joh N h ec KAT hor N

T R ashed

Check out this behind-the-scenes video of sculptor Maika‘i Tubbs

V I d EO BY M

IKE O RBITO

Videographer Mike Orbito takes you into the home of sculptor Maika‘i Tubbs to see how he transforms throwaway items like plastic forks and spoons, plastic bags and Styrofoam containers into intricately beautiful creations. “There’s something about repetition that I’m really fascinated with, doing the same thing over and over again, but doing the same thing over and over again to get a different result,” he says of his process. “ Tubbs is currently in Canada for a three-month residency. His work will be featured from February 9 to April 22 in The Contemporary Museum’s Hawai‘i Art Now, a looking back of the past nine years from the Biennial of Hawai‘i Artists.

n e W lOC al mU siC Online

Local musicians are hustling. Just recently, Painted Highways released their five-track self-titled EP; indie rockers GRLFRNDS put out an 11-song album; and hip-hop duo Slapp Symphony released an 11-song album available at stores around Honolulu and online on iTunes. Support local music. It’s well worth it.

Of the things I miss most about the places I’ve been, food is among the top three. When thinking of Sri Lanka, I miss the sweet yet spicy sambal, a blend of freshly grated coconut, tomatoes, chili and garlic; of Indonesia, salty nasi goreng fried rice contrasted with the crunch of fresh cucumber; of Japan, the melt-in-your-mouth sushi from fish quivering on the docks only hours before; of Los Angeles, greasy carne asada burritos from late-night Mexican joints at 2 a.m. When thinking of Hawai‘i, after living in Los Angeles for four years, I missed limu poke piled atop warm white rice; the chili chicken mixed plate from Zippy’s; oden filled with daikon and fishcake from Marukai; ochazuke with furikake and fried ahi belly.

Wherever we find ourselves, it’s easy to proclaim the food on our plates at that moment as “the best [insert food] ever!” Delicious food can be found in every region of the world, but I don’t think there is anywhere else where we are more closely tied to the food we eat and the people we eat it with than in Hawai‘i.

Here, food is representative of the rich traditions that make up our diverse state, of a people who found a way to mingle as strangers and wound up becoming family. Hānai, the traditional Hawaiian custom of taking care of a child even though he or she is not your own, influences the makeup of our food and how we share it with others. People we have just met immediately become aunties and uncles, and we are only too happy when we can share that which nourishes and delights us with the “family” we meet.

From the way we grow it to how we consume it to how it can pave innovative new paths for the future, the food this issue celebrates highlights local people’s unique relationship to what they consume. And if Instagram is any indication, local people love to eat.

Enjoy.

Lisa Yamada Publisher/Editor

FLUX HAWAII

Lisa Yamada EDITOR / PUBLISHER

Ara Laylo CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Jason cutinella BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

CONTRIBUTORS

Jade eckardt

beau Flemister

Sonny ganaden

Kelli gratz

Anna harmon

Naomi Taga

blaine Tolentino

Jared Yamanuha

COPY EDITORS

Anna harmon

INTERNS

geremy campos

Joel gaspar

Naomi Taga

ADVERTISING

Scott hager

DIRECTOR OF MARKETING & ADVERTISING

scott@FLUXhawaii.com

erika Forberg

ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE erika@FLUXhawaii.com

SENIOR CONTRIBUTING

PHOTOGRAPHER

John hook

IMAGES

Shawn Andrews

bishop Museum

Kathy Y.L. chan

A.J. Feducia

beau Flemister

brad goda

Jonathon Laylo

Maili Moa Farms

Sean Marrs

David Murphy

Toshi Sato

CREATIVE

ryan Jacobie Salon, ryan camacho

Timeless classic beauty, Dulce Felipe & royal Silver

Aly Ishikuni

Multimedia

Matthew McVickar

COVER PHOTO

John hook

FLUX Hawaii, P.O. Box 30927, Honolulu, HI 96820. Contents of FLUX Hawaii are protected by copyright and may not be reproduced without the expressed written consent of the publisher. FLUX Hawaii accepts no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts and/or photographs and assumes no liability for products or services advertised herein. FLUX Hawaii reserves the right to edit, rewrite, refuse or reuse material, is not responsible for errors and omissions and may feature same on fluxhawaii.com, as well as other mediums for any and all purposes.

FLUX Hawaii is a quarterly lifestyle publication.

My name is Brad Starks and I’m a fashion and lifestyle photographer. I’ve been based in New York for the past 20 plus years and I’ve relocated to Maui. I’ve seen FLUX magazine and many of the gorgeous editorials that you’ve produced and wanted to contact you. I was just in O‘ahu last week and picked up the Winter 2011 issue. The “Spot Color” and “Black is The New Black” editorials where really great! Edgy styling yet elegantly lit. I also found the story on artist John Koga and Fred Kamaka very detailed and thought provoking.

I also found an issue of the Spring 2011 Women’s Issue. So many of the covers and editorials you guys create are breathtaking! I have to admit, FLUX has single-handedly changed the way Hawai‘i is thought of. I have a buddy Mickey Boardman, creative director of Paper Magazine in NYC that has said the same.

What a great profile on family-run businesses in Hawai‘i in “Paying Tribute: Hawai‘i’s Original Innovators” in your Resilience issue. I grew up in a family-owned business and I too can remember working in hot warehouses from when I was 12 years old. While all the other kids got to go to the beach, I spent my summers painting, sweeping and doing any other menial tasks. I am grateful for this experience though. It taught me the meaning of hard work and I hope businesses like these are around for many more years to come. Great subjects, stunning photography. Well done. – Billy Santos, Honolulu

Dear editor,

What the flux is right. Maybe you should think twice before writing about such cockamamie things like cockfighting and pakalolo purveyors. The only thing this magazine serves to do is to glorify frivolous and sordid activities.

Sincerely,

Doug Christiansen

Honolulu

Hi Doug,

Cockfighting and pakalolo are real issues that are embedded into Hawai‘i’s culture. Shedding light on what you deem frivolous and sordid can only serve to prompt discussion on other frivolities like the future of gambling in Hawai‘i and laws on medical marijuana use. If that’s frivolous, then I can only hope to become more frivolous in the future.

g Lunch available all day, 11:30am-4:00pm

g Wine by the glass, carafe and bottle

g Artisan cheese, cured meats, steaks, chops and seafood

g Half off happy hour, 4:00-6:00pm daily

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- Saturday 11:30 am - Late

beAU FLeMISTer

Food is:

Whatever you want it to be: a full sensory experience or just a meal to hold you over until the next one.

The first thing I’d eat after a long trip away from Hawai‘i: Kalbi dinner plate from Willow Tree in Kailua. The best Korean BBQ. Ever.

My most memorable experience with food: Traveling through India with my cousin. At night, to save money, we’d stop at these roadside dhabas where you can have a meal, chai tea, and sleep on a cot for 75 cents.

Food in Hawai‘i is unique because: It’s definitely a melting pot of cultures. In somewhere like Kaimukī, for instance, you can find food from Nepal, Jamaica, Korea, Mexico, Vietnam, Italy and France – and it’s all authentic. When they blend, that’s when the magic happens.

At 16, beau’s parents sent him on his first solo trip to brazil. Now, at 29, beau’s passport includes stamps from more than 50 countries. recently, a position as managing editor of Surfing magazine has quelled his wanderlust, but only time can tell for how long.

SoNNY gANADeN

Food is:

Unequally distributed. Not just abroad, but here in Hawai‘i. Poverty and a lack of basic education about nutrition have a terrible effect on public health, especially with kids.

The first thing I’d eat after a long trip away from Hawai‘i: Liliha Bakery at 2 a.m. Corn beef hash breakfast, single waffle, side coco puff.

My most memorable experience with food: Watching my lola bust out things that didn’t make any sense while cooking, like deglazing a roasting pan with Pepsi. Got me thinking that it’s OK to be creative in the kitchen.

Food in Hawai‘i is unique because: Of the myth of racial equality, as expressed in a plate lunch.

Lawyer by trade, printmaker and writer by hobby, Sonny brings forth unique commentary about hawai‘i, intermingling local social and cultural issues with political commentary. he’s been published in the honolulu Star-Advertiser, hawaii bar Journal and honolulu Magazine and works as a staff attorney at the Domestic Violence Action center.

ANNA hArMoN

Food is:

Too often defined as whatever scraps I find in the fridge.

The first thing I’d eat after a long trip away from Hawai‘i: MALASADAS.

My most memorable experience with food: Growing up, we would get boxes of freshly picked peaches in a small western Colorado town and hurry home to make peaches and cream pies.

Food in Hawai‘i is unique because: When I first moved here, my wonderful, local boss ladies wouldn’t stop feeding me. They ran me around to Yama’s and Pineapple Room, fed me lilikoi butter and homemade fish jun. Of course, the resources and amazing diversity of the islands make it unique, but what makes it truly so is how much people care and want to share with you.

Anna’s diet while copyediting this issue consisted of day-old li hing malasadas and jalapeno Kettle chips. Upon issue close, you can find the freelance writer in hog heaven getting pizza from V-Lounge, steak from wolfgang’s and dessert from Let Them eat cupcakes.

JohN hooK

Food is:

Overpriced when it’s healthy and not given away to the needy as much as it should be.

The first thing I’d eat after a long trip away from Hawai‘i: A meat jun plate, lots of kim chee and mac salad.

My most memorable experience with food: Cutting my wedding cake, then having a big cake fight with it.

Food in Hawai‘i is unique because: Right after you build up an appetite surfing amazing waves you can go eat Hawaiian, Thai, Filipino, American, Korean, Mexican, Chinese, Italian, Japanese or whatever. And you won’t even have to drive more than 20 miles from any beach to go eat.

our senior contributing photographer, John has shot more than half a million photos in the last year, essentially reaching the shutter life expectancy of his camera in one year. And that was just on one of his many cameras. In 2011, John captured once in a lifetime moments 450 times as a wedding photographer for Ko olina resort and Dave Miyamoto & company.

WHAT THE FLUX ?!

From farm to plate?

Average distance of food imports to Hawai‘i: 4,500 miles

Kahuku sweet corn on o‘ahu: 30 miles

h amakua mushrooms from big Island: 208 miles

Taro from Kaua‘i: 106 miles

Sweet Maui onion: 70 miles

Current figures estimate that Hawai‘i imports 85 to 90 percent of its food.

If you’ve never wondered, " h ow did that get on my plate?," you probably should, since we are continuously reminded during every tsunami warning that there isn’t enough food in h awai‘i to last a week. (cue stockpiling of ramen and bottle water.)

The low percentage of locally produced foods, coupled with the high price people in h awai‘i pay for it, (22 percent of average income, opposed to 13 percent on the mainland), degrade the island’s economic and environmental sustainability, as well as quality of life, which is why it is more important than ever to understand where our food is coming from.

Processed Sugar Route:

2 Sugarcane processed into raw sugar on Maui

2 r aw sugar shipped to c & h Sugar refinery in contra costa county near San Francisco to be refined into white sugar.

2 refined sugar shipped to New York to be packaged into paper packets.

2 Packets of sugar shipped back to h awai‘i for cafés and restaurants.

Total distance = 10,000 miles.

Source: Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture

DISTAN ce F ro M ho N o LULU:

BROCCOLI ONIONS

LETTUCE

TARO PEPPERS

EGGPLANT

CORN

CUCUMBER

SWEET POTATO

CHINESE CABBAGE

TOTAL FRUITS IMPORTED: 70%

APPLES

GRAPES

PEARS

LEMONS

GRAPEFRUIT

AVOCADOES

BANANAS

WATERMELONS

PAPAYAS

Source: Statistics of Hawai‘i Agriculture, 2005-2009

Since 1986, h awai‘i’s market share of the local beef market has decreased from about 30 percent to less than 10 percent. o f that, three-quarters of all cattle marketed in h awai‘i are exported to be finished and marketed in North America. b ecause of these high feed transportation costs, the cattle industry in both h awai'i and the U.S. mainland is organized to ship cattle to feed rather than feed to cattle.

The percent of locally produced milk, eggs and hogs are even less than that of beef.

LocAL Moco: SweeT LADY oF wAIAhoLe

Fujiko Matayoshi

TEXT BY LISA YAMA d A | IMAGE COURTESY OF NANCY MATAYOSHI

Early in the morning, she would gather all her island fruits

And pack them as she starts another day. Carefully she makes her way beside the mountain stream,

As she sings an island chant of long ago.

Sweet lady of Waiāhole, She’s sitting by the highway

Selling her papaya

And green and ripe banana

-Bruddah Waltah, “Sweet Lady of Waiāhole”

The woman who inspired the song above is Fujiko Shimabukuro, born in Kohala, Hawai‘i on March 18, 1914. She moved to Okinawa when she was 3 and returned to Hawai‘i at 18. She married Koji Matayoshi and wound up in Kahalu‘u, where they had eight children, five daughters and three sons.

Locals know her as the “Sweet Lady of Waiāhole,” but, says her daughter Nancy, “She wasn’t a sweet lady. She was mean to us! My mother did all the disciplining in the house, and she broke so many wooden hangers on us.”

Fujiko eventually moved from Kahalu‘u to Waiāhole, where her husband and her husband’s father started farming a 10-acre plot of land that was leased to them by the McCandless family. Ironically, the farm’s main crop was sweet potato. In addition to papaya and banana, as mentioned in the song, the Matayoshis grew mango, watermelon and cucumber – and continue to do so today.

After her husband died, Fujiko needed a way to support her children, so every day, she would gather all her fruits in a wheelbarrow and wheel them down to sell on Kamehameha Highway.

“I remember one time she sold a Hayden mango to a tourist for $5,” recalls Nancy, who often helped her mother sell the roadside fruits. “And we’re talking about 26 years ago. I don’t know if they just didn’t know or they felt sorry for her, but I remember feeling so embarrassed. Every week, there was a lot of coins to count, and I would help her deposit money into the bank.” Fujiko passed away on Marcy 30, 1985. After 18 years of selling fruit, she had accumulated $20,000.

A year after Fujiko died, Nancy says they heard the song playing on KCCN. Nancy wrote to Mountain Apple Company, and Gordon Broad, who wrote the song, ended up coming to her house to get pictures of Fujiko for a laser disk he was producing. The laser disk would eventually go into almost every karaoke bar on the island.

Of course, Nancy remembers her mother’s sweet side too: “The neighbors, when they saw us, they would always say our mom was the kindest woman. She would make sweet potato tempura and give out to all the kids at the Waiāhole School basketball court. Or she would give to the kids who swam in the swimming hole behind our house. Sometimes she’d make andagi with chocolate or sweet potato inside. She always had something for them to eat.”

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Fujiko Matayoshi, the real “sweet lady of Waiāhole,” shown here selling her roadside fruits and vegetables on Kamehameha Highway.

NoTAbLe worKS

Kāko‘o ‘Ōiwi:

Redeveloping food systems in He‘eia

T EXT BY B LAINE T OLENTINO | I MAGE BY S EAN M ARRS

For the last two years, the organization Kāko‘o ‘Ōiwi has been actively restoring nearly 405 acres of historic agricultural lands in the lush, green Eden of He‘eia on the Windward side of O‘ahu. Under the project name Māhuahua ‘Ai o Hoi, a small staff and a horde of local volunteers are (re)developing a community food system that now extends its produce to anyone on O‘ahu interested in eating organic, raw kalo (taro), poi and hō‘i‘o (a type of fern).

Māhuahua ‘Ai o Hoi is a grassroots endeavor aimed at perpetuating the heritage, traditions and practices of mahi‘ai ‘ana (farming, cultivation) through the restoration of the food-producing lands and waters of He‘eia. A byproduct of this cause is a

Grade-A poi outlet for anyone who can find these folks on Facebook – they take orders via phone, email and Twitter, a great convenience for those interested in doing good and eating well.

“Despite the renewed focus on local agriculture and farm-to-table in recent years, what we’re doing isn’t novel at all,” says Janice-Renee Yoshioka, the CFO for Kāko‘o ‘Ōiwi. “We’re simply recreating a system, reinstating innovation and technologies that successfully sustained entire populations of people here culturally, economically and ecologically for centuries.”

Kāko‘o ‘Ōiwi works closely with other organizations and businesses to manage the rich

rich resources within the He‘eia ahupua‘a from the mountains to the sea, an unusual effort in this contemporary food culture. Through innovative collaborations with partners such as Paepae o He‘eia, Papahana Kualoa, Hui Ku Maoli Ola and the He‘eia Pier General Store and Deli, it’s easy to support the central hope of the area to sustain itself.

The second Saturday of every month serves as a chance for volunteers to get closer to their food and experience traditional and contemporary agriculture in Hawai‘i.

For more information on Māhuahua ‘Ai o Hoi, visit kakoooiwi.org or facebook.com/ mahuahuaaiohoi.

curator

more than just

Artist and

Trisha Lagaso Goldberg creates works of art that are

eye candy. Her most recent work, shown here, is Eshu Veve for Olaa Sugar Company.

LINES OF COMMUNICATION

Artist Trisha Lagaso Goldberg

Trisha Lagaso Goldberg creates drawings out of sugar, but don’t be quick to label them as simplistically sweet. Her latest piece, Eshu Veve for Olaa Sugar Company, is both visually pleasing and conceptually intriguing in a way that begs close inspection. Her work is, by no stretch of the imagination, just eye candy.

On a Saturday afternoon, I meet Goldberg at R&D in Kaka‘ako to talk story. We grab lattes and hunker down at a communal worktable, its surface a dry-erase board. Prior to meeting Goldberg, I was aware of her role as an arts administrator and curator – she is the project director for the Art in Public Places Program for the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts and was a curator at thirtyninehotel – so it was a pleasure to discover that she also creates compelling work.

Goldberg has had a remarkable journey, from her hanabada days at Waimalu Elementary School to the blossoming of her professional career in San Francisco to her return to Hawai‘i as a wife and mother, artworld pro and artist.

Goldberg describes her upbringing as typical, but is quick to note the sudden awakening of her class-consciousness in the seventh grade, when she began attending Mid-Pacific Institute. “It became clear to me that I had friends who were from different classes and had a lot more money than we did,” Goldberg says. “We were very working class.” In her formative years, she developed a misconception that people with more

money were somehow more cultured, and that her immigrant plantation background was something to be ashamed of. “When I moved away, that became the subject of my work,” says Goldberg.

In 1991, Goldberg left Hawai‘i for San Francisco, where she earned her BFA from San Francisco Art Institute and her MFA at San Francisco State University. After graduation, however, making new work proved impossible. “I couldn’t make art after that,” she tells me. “I didn’t have a single idea that felt authentic. Then I had the opportunity to start curating, so I did.” This sparked a career in the arts that is now two decades long.

In 2004, Goldberg, along with her husband and their son, prepared to leave the country, hoping she had secured a fellowship that would take them to the Philippines. “I didn’t get the fellowship, and we were trying to decide what to do,” admits Goldberg. Hawai‘i was the next option. In 2005, they decided to return to O‘ahu and stay for a short period before continuing on to the Philippines. “So that’s what we did,” Goldberg says. “And we never left.”

Interestingly enough, Hawai‘i proved the catalyst for her artistic output. “I came back home and immediately I had so many ideas.” says Goldberg.

I open my laptop and click on an image of Eshu Veve for Olaa Sugar Company, a laborintensive labyrinth of carefully sifted C&H sugar assembled in neat lines that twist and

curlicue, punctuated by items like thread, fruit and musical instruments. Goldberg tells me that she merged an aerial map of the Olaa Sugar Company plantation, where her family had worked, with the ritualistic practice of Yoruban drawings, in which cornmeal is used to create intricate works on the ground (a West African religious tradition that pays homage to her husband’s ancestry). The objects refer back to specific family members, mementos of their existence.

The piece functions, she tells me, as a portal, a two-way access road to her ancestors as a way of communicating to them her deep gratitude for their work. Where she was once ashamed of her parents’ past, she now, in the form of art, celebrates and embraces it.

Although her use of sugar references her family’s past, it leaves the door open to multiple readings and personal interpretations. “Sugar has so many associations,” Goldberg says. “On the one hand, it symbolizes a kind of promise and hope for a new beginning, and that’s why immigrants came here. But there wasn’t equality on the plantations, it was hard labor, and my family went through a lot of painful moments.”

Goldberg continues, “Sugar symbolizes a kind of tragedy, but it’s simultaneously charged with new beginnings, because now we’re prospering here,” she says. Sweet.

For more information, visit metrohawaii.com/ trishalagasogoldberg.

As owner of the wildly popular Otto Cake and bassist for the enduring band

The 86 List, Otto’s journey is as influenced by music as it is by cheesecake.

A BITE OF NOSTALGIA

Otto Cake / 86 List

It would be accurate to report Otto’s story simply as this: 22 years ago, boy perfects signature delectable cheesecake especially for mom; today this recipe remains the basis for the more than 150 varieties rotating through the window of his shop on Smith Street. That however, affords Otto’s story little justice. His run is as cheese-infused as it is musically inclined, and along the way, has seen Hawai‘i through many changes. Not to be mistaken, the cake came first, but the soundtrack to Otto Cake’s journey has made the bite all the more sweet.

Otto and I exit shop left and head for a walk around the block. I inquire about his initial attempt to conquer the elusive gourmet cheesecake and whether he had envisioned the Otto Cake of today, to which he responds: “I had absolutely no idea. They say the first one is the one that didn’t work or the first one is the one that actually worked. For me, the first one didn’t. It took a long time to get the recipe down.” In fact, the cake master got it down so well that hipsters and little Asian ladies alike continue to seek out the much-beloved dessert, whether it be at his downtown bakery or at cafes and restaurants throughout O‘ahu. By word of mouth and sensible taste buds, Otto has seen his business grow.

By simplifying the process and recipe, Otto is able to bring all sorts of unexpected twists into his mixes. Daily flavors range from plain to green tea to seasonal candy cane; there’s almond cookie for Chinese New Year, Fruit Loop, lemon dark chocolate and strawberry basil. Otto explains, “People will come in and ask for weird things, but when I go running, it just comes to me, or when reading an article about something done to a martini, I just incorporate it into a cheesecake.”

Just as atypical are the places an Otto Cake slice has been devoured. He’s sold them at show venues, parking lots and every Big Mele or Reggae in the Country field event. Stemming from Otto’s happenstance ability to create a symbiotic identity between his oven child and his music, he has participated and played a big part in promoting Hawai‘i’s underground punk rock circles. “A lot of things happened because of the cake,” he says. “I actually ended up working for Goldenvoice and putting The Big Mele on. That’s how I got into The Sticklers and the eight other bands I’ve been in.”

The bassist’s most recent band, The 86 List, can salute to 12 years and five albums. Otto’s been on road trips, rocked out to po-

litical lyricism, and even won over Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong with his creamy cakes. “We played on his birthday, and Goldenvoice asked me if I would make a cake. [Armstrong] liked it so much that his tour manager brought me backstage so he could thank me. Something came up about my age and he couldn’t believe it.”

In a punk world harboring youth and rebellion in perfect chaos, Otto gets a nod. His lasting presence in Hawai‘i’s punk movement has earned him respect even amidst dire retrospect. “Back then, we’d call it punk rock scenes, but it was a mix of everything, and you had all these different bands that went together,” says Otto. “Today, there are less people going to the shows. Before, we’d be playing a show and there were 400 people there every time. I was talking to Alex from The Sticklers and he was saying that they’re just happy to have 50 people in the room. … I drive by so many venues and they’re gone.”

In recognition of what started it all, Otto exhales. “This cake has taken me many places,” he says. My mind begins to drift elsewhere. Otto’s shop’s walls of blue and white clouds, that salvaged velvet curtain, and this slice of heaven have me waxing nostalgic and damn, it just tastes so good.

These young chicks at Maili Moa Farm in Wai‘anae are free to roam and stretch their feathers, resulting in “eggier” eggs now available at Whole Foods Market in Kahala.

LocALLY SoUrceD

Maili Moa Farm Eggs

MAGES COURTESY OF M AILI M OA F ARMS | Sp ECIAL pROMOTIONAL S ECTION

Crack open a locally farmed egg, and you immediately see the difference. The yolk is a perky yellow sphere, the whites clear and runny, and the taste, well, there’s no other way to put it than to say that it’s just “eggier.” Egg farms in Hawai‘i have adopted safety measures that exceed the national guidelines, ensuring the highest quality for their community. And since most eggs come from smaller family farms with smaller flocks, there is no need for the use of additional antibiotics in chickens, making a healthier and better tasting egg.

Recently, Whole Foods started working with Maili Moa Egg Farm to carry local, free-range eggs, a resource that has become increasingly hard to come by. In the 1980s, there were 21 commercial egg farms supplying Hawai‘i with 85 percent of its eggs; today, with only four egg farms remaining, locals rely heavily on mainland eggs. At Whole Foods, O‘ahu shoppers will be able to purchase these local, cage-free eggs. Sourced from the second-generation farm in Wai‘anae, white and

brown eggs arrive at stores in less than 24 hours. Compare that to the weeks it can take for mainland eggs to reach our shores. As the young hens’ rate of laying increases and more eggs are available, Maili Moa eggs will also replace all mainland eggs used in the prepared foods departments of Whole Foods’ island stores.

Owned and operated by Mark Takaki and Minda Cortado, Maili Moa Farm recently invested in a barn to house cage-free hens. In this environment, hens are able to roam freely and express natural behaviors such as dust bathing, socializing and stretching their wings. If happy cows make great cheese, then happy chickens make great eggs. “The most rewarding part of the business is when a customer comes to the farm and says, ‘You guys have the best eggs, better than mainland eggs,’” says Takaki. “I would like to see my farm thrive and be profitable and help provide our state with fresh island eggs for years to come.”

Alan Wong has emerged as the most ardent originator among his Hawai‘i Regional Cuisine peers. Shown here is his signature ahi stack appetizer.

THE RADIANT CHEF

Alan Wong and the Cuisine of 21st Century Hawai‘i

T EXT BY SONNY GANA d EN | MAGES BY JOHN HOOK

In its most elevated form, food is an ephemeral art. A few decades ago, several chefs, writers, critics, investors and foodies created a movement in Hawai‘i. After the development of what came to be known as Hawai‘i Regional Cuisine and the explosion of chef personalities in American popular culture, native son Alan Wong has emerged the most ardent originator of his peers. He has also become a local celebrity. As Wong has not been content to simply cook delicious food as the most acclaimed chef in a multi-million dollar industry, he has involved himself and his dedicated staff in every aspect of food production on the islands. “The Chef,” as his coworkers call him, has worked with everybody who’s anybody in local eating, from dairy farmers and start-up kale growers to the President himself.

Alan Wong’s CV hardly needs reiteration. Coming from a local upbringing and an education at the Kapi‘olani Community College Culinary Arts Program, to which he lends his credibility, Wong now exists in the upper echelon of the modern chef-ascelebrity era. The back flap to his beautiful 2010 cookbook The Blue Tomato tells some of the story: a 1996 James Beard award winner, a stint as a guest judge for show Top Chef, and several appearances on the Food Network and public broadcasting, including extensive exposure on the Hawai‘i episode of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations.

In 2009, Wong took his staff to the White House to serve 2,300 guests at the annual Congressional Picnic. “Obama wanted something like a first baby luau,” he explains. Wong tells the story in a self-effacing way. “It was a once in a lifetime opportunity. More than being a chef, it made me happy as a boss that I could take 13 folks to the White House, and I knew they’d have this forever. This restaurant made that opportunity for them.”

Wong’s ascendancy has traced the arc of a local food movement that was in need of something better to eat. The growth of what came to be called Hawai‘i Regional Cuisine over the last 25 or so years was a community endeavor, and none championed the emergence of the scene more than English professor and magazine editor John Heckathorn. Prior to his untimely passing in late December 2011, Heckathorn wrote concise, mouth-watering descriptions of the latest in local farm-to-table innovation and his favorite subject: the food and camaraderie at Alan Wong’s. In 2008, he wrote, “Alan Wong’s is, by acclamation, the best restaurant in Hawai‘i. Wong himself is a Hawai‘i-born, classically trained, James Beard Awardwinning chef. He helped invent Hawai‘i Regional Cuisine in the early ’90s, and he remains its current reigning practitioner.”

A cuisine is not the endpoint of their diet, a stock number of dishes prepared in a fixed way, but rather the result of thousands of small decisions made by the community at large asking itself, “What will we eat tonight?”

Heckathorn knew what he was talking about. Unlike food critics from the mainland, he did not apply classic Euro-centrism to the movement, which alternatively dismissed Hawaiian cuisine as nothing more than fusion food or lazy interpretations of other cultures’ delicacies. Seeing Hawai‘i’s emerging cooking culture as just an amalgamation of better stuff from other parts of the world. The argument was that, as Hawai‘i did not have centuries of communal cultivation to back it, the dishes could never bear comparison to the fine dining of Europe. It was saying to local folks something people of color had gotten used to hearing throughout the 20th century: that your experiences are not valid.

Even as non-local critics extolled the insanely delicious meals of local chefs, they applied a false, static set of rules to something inherently dynamic. In that way, they missed the biggest lesson that one takes from a basic study of cultural theory - that it is always in flux. Cuisine is not the endpoint of a community’s diet, a stock number of dishes prepared in a fixed way, but rather the result of thousands of small decisions made by the community at large asking itself, “What will we eat tonight?”

Alan Wong and his peers had an answer to that. In his cookbook, New Wave Luau, published in 1999, Wong reiterates the nowmythic plantation progeny of our ubiquitous mix plate. We’ve all heard the story, the one about a Chinese farm worker far away from home, who in between shifts hacking at sugar stalks, made his way to the Hawaiian guy and the Japanese guy eating lunch in

the field. A bit later, the Portuguese guy and the Filipino guy joined the club. Out there in the hot shadow of the sugar mill, they spoke their own language and laughed while mixing and matching their wives’ packed lunches. From there, they made their own culture and a cuisine to match its diversity. Back in their workers’ plantation homes, their families made a special kind of dinner: white rice from Asia, Chinese buns with Hawaiian-style pork, Portuguese bread and Filipino noodles. It is from these sugarfield encounters that local folks eventually modified and created what we eat regularly on the islands.

Of course, the history of Hawai‘i and its food has never been that simple. But it is a glorious, romantic myth of equality, which Alan Wong celebrates in his restaurant nightly, to great acclaim. The real gift of Hawai‘i Regional Cuisine was that it validated the experience of local palettes. Up until the mid-1980s, the best place to eat in Honolulu while on holiday was at a baby’s first luau. The vast majority of hotel kitchens and restaurants were headed by non-locals, and they cooked that way. In attempting to emulate the way fine dining operates in other parts of the world, they were missing out on the possibilities of what could be produced locally. Two thousand years of indigenous cuisine and a few hundred years of mostly peaceful ethnic coexistence as expressed on a dinner plate was eschewed for uninspired, pre-frozen cod with macadamia nuts sprinkled on top. When local chefs started using local ingredients as a statement

about their own identity, the community rallied and quite literally ate it up.

***

Wong could easily rest on his capacity to cook delicious food and manage a talented staff. What sets him apart from his peers is not his ability to cook, but rather his active involvement in changing the way we eat and grow food on the islands, and by extension, order our culture. In consistently pursuing the local over the nonlocal, he is making a political statement about what it means to eat here, now.

Alan Wong knows his numbers and has been making a pitch for the “eat local” movement for years: “The Department of Agriculture says that if we increase local consumption by 10 percent, we make 300,000 jobs and increase our local tax base by $600 million,” he says. “So, it’s our company mission to help get towards 10 percent by shining a light on these local growers. We do that, in part, with the Farm Series dinners.” Although a week of these dinners is the price of a slightly used sedan, at least the moral component is in place. Wong certainly understands what he is up against. “Things are disappearing all around us. Look at the bees. Without them, we have about seven years on planet earth. I’m doing this adopt-a-beehive program with UH Hilo to help local folks learn about beekeeping. This is just bees though. We used to make 70 percent of our own food, our own eggs and dairy.”

He explains what he’s up to. “I know

Alan Wong is set apart by his active involvement in the way we eat and grow food on the islands. Photo by David Murphy.

The butter poached lobster from Alan Wong’s on King Street.

this restaurant is doing our part to be more selfsufficient and sustainable. There’s a supply and demand thing going on with local production,” he says as he checks off a mental list of points for an interview. “I was just in a civil defense meeting. Who knows how I got invited, but there I was. Without shipping, we’ve got no more than three days of MREs before we starve. I’m trying to make this place more than a restaurant. People raise money with us all the time – really the entire chef population does it so it’s not just us. This is good karma.” More than good karma, this is actually the sort of sermon that makes it seem completely rational to drop half a paycheck on a dinner date.

Alan Wong’s flagship restaurant on King Street in Honolulu is easy to miss if you’re zooming past McCully Street and the more conspicuous chop suey spots. The place requires a slower pace to find. The day I took the elevator up to the third floor, the chef and his staff were reviewing menu items for a forthcoming restaurant to be located in the Grand Wailea resort on Maui, named Amasia.

Arranged on one of the tables were dishes in various forms of development. Simply grilled, large sardines were presented on a silver platter; poha and caper berries glistened in spiced olive oil; a platter of fried lotus root with mustard powder looked like something I would stand in line for 30 minutes to attack at Costco. Fried ulu (breadfruit) and sweet potato spiraled out of a metal container like an edible fire, and a pot of Japanese pork curry with whole peppercorns and macadamia nuts funked up the area, disrupting all capacity for rational thought. I tried not to drool all over a conspicuous notepad. In a vain attempt to maintain professionalism, I sat askew of the table and waited to dig in like a Pavlovian dog after the bell had rung. It was intensely difficult to pay attention to the serious discussion of dish preparation with the full spread awaiting plunder like that. A later review of my notes was a testament to the experience. For a full page all I could write was, “Effing ONO,” like Jack Nicholson’s character in The Shining when he really lost his marbles.

When Wong reviews his menu, it is a serious affair. Gathered around the table, the young chefs resembled doctoral candidates during a status review of their respective work prior to submission, hanging on the words of their director. He uses

silence as an instructional tool much like a stoic professor out of a Kurosawa film, with all moves and words intentional and instructive. In The Blue Tomato, Wong writes about the process of menu development: “Our staff’s reaction and interaction is more important than whether that dish ever makes it onto the menu. ... This process also makes anyone offering a critique a better teacher. Criticizing a new dish in front of the staff can be intimidating, but our most successful cooks, who have gone on to become sous chefs of chefs, were the ones who embraced this and met the challenge.” Each staff member was being actively reviewed for talent, and the dishes met the challenge.

New restaurants are notoriously difficult business ventures, and even the best have failed to survive past the watershed two-year mark. No matter what happens with Amasia, the food will be amazing. The concept of the restaurant is the “gastro-pub,” a phenomenon that has been changing the way we eat out for the better. Wong later explained it as “izakaya-style, something that goes across cultures. We’re celebrating Asian street food. There will be traditional tables, and a robata station for certain orders.” In describing the necessary investment discussions, he explained, “I was in a meeting with haole guys from the mainland, and you could imagine how well ‘pupus’ goes over as a restaurant title with them.”

Pupus would have been a great name, but not with the tourists. While the traditional American sit-down offers very few surprises, the pupu platter concept is nothing but hits. What Wong and other restaurateurs have picked up on is the way we eat when we aren’t stuck in our chairs. With smaller plates and more options, sharing becomes a necessity. Eating can be fun again. The chefs that Alan Wong has hired will not disappoint. This is local food unburdened by provincialism. These are local ingredients set free to inspire.

When I asked him what the secret is to cooking for local folks, he spun the question back at me, “How do you tell if say, a Chinese restaurant is good?” To which I replied, “If there’s a table of old Chinese dudes grinding at the corner table at 3 p.m.”

“You got it,” he said. “Another good sign is if kids like your food. You can’t fake it to them.” Like an ancient sage, the chef answered my question with an observation. The reason that local folks love his food so much is that it is an artistic, gorgeous interpretation of what we eat at home. It’s a reflection of ourselves.

Food traditions, like the one shown here of making nishime for New Year’s, bring families together.

FAMILY FEAST

Celebrating the food and traditions that bring us together

TEXT BY LISA YAMA d A | I MAGES BY JOHN HOOK

“The loss of tradition is tragic because a generation cannot break away from a past into bold new creative patterns if it has no relationship to the past.” – Paul Goodman, TIME magazine

Every year during Thanksgiving and New Year’s, my family gets together to prepare the same two dishes we’ve been preparing for as long as I can remember: chow mein noodles and nishime, the traditional Japanese stew made with root vegetables and in our case, chicken. We all get together to help chop. By now, everyone knows his or her duties. While mom preps all the ingredients – peeling the carrots, boiling the araimo (mountain potato), soaking the shitake mushrooms – we start chopping away. My oldest brother Jason starts with the char siu for the chow mein, cutting off chunks of fat from 10 pounds of juicy pork before slicing it thin, while my sister-in-law Donna and I julienne carrots and flat green beans. Dad starts with the kobu, long strands of seaweed that he ties off into knots and cuts into bite-sized pieces for the nishime. We joke that it’ll take him all night to finish the kobu – and it does. We laugh and predict dad will end up cutting himself –and he does. The youngest in our family, my niece Jessica, usually ends up with the easiest job, picking Chinese parsley from its stems and cutting the tips off garlic cloves.

Over the years, we’ve all become quality control agents, scolding dad when his kobu is not the right size, some knots extra knobby and way larger than bite-size. Donna’s carrots are too thin, my beans too big;

Jason peeling away too much potato with the husky araimo skin. “All gotta be same size,” mom says, “or it won’t cook evenly.” We chop the gobo (burdock root) into stubby diagonal spears, more carrots are done the same way. Hasu (lotus root), or what we like to call “wagon wheels,” are sliced into rounds and placed into tubs of water to prevent them from turning brown. Mom slams slabs of konnyaku in the sink to keep the wobbly potato-based blocks from getting chewy. For some reason, the blocks stink like squid. It’s cut into thin sashimi-like pieces, slit through the middle and turned inside out to resemble the shape of ribbons. More shitakes for the chow mein, then another bucketful for the nishime. “No need cut the stems off,” Jason argues. “Just throw the whole thing in the pot.” Mom says that he can do it however he wants when he takes over and insists the tough stems be cut off. There is, after all, only one cook in the kitchen. We predict that my middle brother Daven will end up coming late or not at all. He and his wife Charity, along with their 3-month-old newborn Madison, come right on schedule two hours later.

With the eight of us, the chopping continues into the night, and we finally finish five hours later. I can remember when mom

did everything by herself. She’d run around between Chinatown and Marukai, looking for which store had the best sale, searching to find the most succulent char siu and the cheapest string beans and hasu. She would stay up into the wee hours of the night, getting barely more than a couple hours of sleep. Even now, her work will continue long after we’ve cleaned our cutting boards and put away our knives, when she huddles over simmering pots of stew, the mix of vegetables, puffy tofu skins and chicken becoming higher and higher until she is forced to empty out the cooked vegetables into gallon-sized chili buckets from Zippy’s.

Jason says he’ll just buy the nishime once mom is gone, but I don’t think he’s serious. I can’t imagine a New Year’s without mom’s nishime, and I don’t think he can either. After all, it’s tradition. And far too many traditions are already being lost, traded in for convenience and a result of general apathy. Sure we monku (complain) about the tedious process of preparing the ingredients exactly as mom instructs (“no need tie off the kobu” and, “no one’s going to care if the konnyaku isn’t twisted”), but of course, this is all just part of the tradition, phrases we mutter every year. I think deep down, we are grateful to come together as a family, grate-

MOCHI p OUN d ING AT

I think deep down, we are grateful to come together as a family, grateful to be connected to a past that started with my grandmother, but which originated much before.

ful to be connected to a past that started with my grandmother, but which originated much before. It’s not so much the making of the food, or even the food itself that’s so important – it’d be much easier to buy noodles from Chun Wah Kam or nishime from any neighborhood okazuya – but it’s the experience of coming together as a family that is what’s most cherished.

nacho dip; pork, fish and chicken lau laus, to be served later on for dinner, are steaming in handmade wooden boxes set atop propane burners.

Right before New Year’s, a friend invited me to attend her family’s annual mochi pounding get together. I was expecting a small get-together of aunts and uncles, but when I got there, the house was filled with aunties, uncles, cousins, nephews, neighbors, friends, friends of friends, and people who had just heard something about some mochi pounding thing in Mānoa, all warmly welcomed by Gordon and Gayle Lum. In typical local style, Mr. Lum pushed me toward the spread of food. “Eat, eat,” he tells me. Then again two minutes later, “Did you eat? You gotta eat, that’s why everybody comes!” Three minutes after that, I’m handed a plate piled high with tripe stew, chow fun, corn clam chowder and braised short ribs, all homemade by Mr. Lum; on the table there’s manapua buns, platters of chicken katsu, barbeque beef and

Meanwhile, the thock, thock, thock of wood hitting wood resumes behind me. Steaming hot sweet rice is pulled from those same handmade boxes that the lau laus are being steamed in and dumped into an usu, the bowl used for pounding the mochi. “The rice has to be soaked for a couple days before,” says Mrs. Lum about the mochi-making process. “Once the rice is cooked, you’re going to mash it to get the grains sticking together. Then after you mash, you pound.” Once the mochi is smooth, it’s moved to a table covered with flour, where many hands work to stuff the warm mochi with an assortment of fillings like azuki bean, peanut butter and chocolate.

The Lum and Kobayashi families have been hosting mochi poundings since the mid ’90s, but they’ve been pounding much longer than that. “Our grandparents and parents did it a long, long time ago,” says Mrs. Lum, “but back then, we were just kids and we didn’t want to be bothered with that, so eventually we stopped doing it. But as we got older, my cousins, which is the Kobayashi side, started having kids and they wanted their kids to learn how to do it.” Though they’ve adjusted the formula a bit, using propane tanks instead of a wood-burning cauldron to steam the rice, the

mochi remains as delicious as ever. There’s nothing quite like freshly pounded mochi, still warm and much softer than the storebought kind.

This year, Mrs. Lum estimates they’ll pound 150 pounds of rice into the chewy sweets, with many people bringing their own rice to pound. Her family provides 50 pounds of rice, but it’s meant to be shared with others. “I’m not gonna pound all that rice myself,” she says. “We bring all that so that friends will do it.” A dry-erase board lists names of people waiting to pound. There’s a couple from Australia, a father and daughter whose swift strokes make it obvious they’ve done this before, a nephew visiting from California who’s experiencing his first pound.

I ask one of the nieces if she’ll carry on the tradition. “Do you know how much work it is?” she says, looking at me like I’m crazy. “My aunty and uncle are prepping the entire week for this.” I’m sure those words were uttered years ago when Gordon and Gayle were her age. ***

This year, I unwittingly started a tradition of my own. So much time was spent over the

holidays with my biological family, but so little with the people I encounter every day, my work family. The one time of year our house is clean enough to have company over, I invited a few colleagues over for dinner and some ping-pong and karaoke.

Chicken katsu, grilled ribeye, seafood crab salad, baked salmon, seven-layer dip, sashimi, Chinese chicken salad, chocolate trifle, pear tart, banana cream pie, pound cake – mom went all out. And because a family always pitches in to help each other out, dad cleaned, Jason grilled the steaks, Donna made her famous crab jun, and my Aunty Elaine, mom’s sister, baked a sushi casserole and a no-sugar banana bread, making one diabetic guest very happy. “We should all write our names on the bottles of wine or beer that we brought and see if they’re still here next year,” said one guest, automatically assuming there would be a next year.

Food is what inevitably brings us together. More than feeding our bodies, food feeds our spirits, strengthening bonds between family and friends and often building new ones with strangers. We may not agree on the appropriate size of kobu or the exact way to steam sweet rice, but I’m sure we can all agree on that.

Hosting new traditions with the author’s work family.

MY OLDER BROTHER, THE ROOT

A brief history of taro and its connection to the life and land of Hawai‘i

T EXT BY S ONNY G ANA d EN MAGES COURTESY OF B ISHO p M USEUM

Taro is good for you. In recent years, modern science has corroborated what native Hawaiians had figured out over multiple generations here in Hawai‘i: that a reciprocal relationship between nutritious food and the community it feeds is essential to health.

That reciprocity has not survived to the modern era. The free market has flooded developed nations with an overabundance of choice, something that scientists are realizing our ancient hypothalamus has not yet adapted to. With choice has come consequence, notably the easy accessibility of food that is not terribly nutritious and is shipped across the vast ocean to reach us, all made possible by the emergence of globalized economics and the falsely lowered price of subsidized beef and corn, a product of American agribusiness.

So our choices regarding food are not as free as they seem. They are fixed and limited by poverty. Over a decade into the 21st century, we still inhabit a world where children in troubled parts of the world still go hungry and thousands of local kids depend on food stamps and subsidized lunches to get what they need. For many in our local community, the basis of dietary decisions is based in the same hard realities that made our prehistoric hypothalamus what it is now. The looming presence of hunger, necessity, and availability of food is hard-wired into us, helping the human race survive into the Netflix and microwaved pot pie era.

There is something inherently unequal in the distribution of good, nutritious food if many in our community cannot afford it. Although this is a common story even in the developed world, what makes it unique in Hawai’i is that it was not always this way. A humble root vegetable used to feed everybody here, and its cultivation was the primary impetus in organizing a society.

If you have never had fresh pa‘i‘ai, you

are missing out. It tastes different enough from bagged poi (which is not terrible) to warrant analogies to fresh versus frozen peas, or canned versus fresh carrots. This fresh stuff, hand-pounded from a steaming stack of hot roots, has an earthy sweetness and complex texture incomparable to anything else. It somehow retains the interior heat of the root, staying hot and gooey enough to burn tender lips far longer than the closest thing it can be compared to, mashed potatoes. It is, to use the appropriate term, ono

But taro is not peas and carrots. This humble root vegetable once defined this land and sustained the majority of the population prior to Western contact. Taro traces its development through journeys across the longest, loneliest distances man ever embarked on before the modern age, and the story of taro, its customs and its laws, have traced the story of Hawaiians themselves. Laws passed in recent years continue to mark this relationship as the modern era responds to a connection deeper than the rules that are imposed upon it.

Ask the right Hawaiian, and you will hear a story as old as time itself, of the earth mother mating with the sky father. Some point later, sky father mates with the daughter, and they produce a child. That child is stillborn, and is buried. From that arose the first taro plant, Haloanakalaukapalili. The second child of this union was the first kanaka, the first man. From there, we have a reciprocal relationship between plant and man that predates all other relationships. As wild as the story sounds, it defines a worldview (and is much more poetic when recited in Hawaiian).

Poi, diluted with more water than pa‘i‘ai, was a mainstay of the social order, and defined life. This was something first missionaries saw straightaway. Nineteenth-century English travel writer Isabella Bird noted, “A

Taro vendor in Hawai‘i photographed between 1897 and 1901 by Frank Davey.

This humble root vegetable once defined this land and sustained the majority of the population prior to Western contact. Taro traces its development through journeys across the longest, loneliest distances man ever embarked on before the modern age, and the story of taro, its customs and its laws, have traced the story of Hawaiians themselves.

Hawaiian could not exist without his calabash of poi. The root is an object of the tenderest solicitude, from the day it is planted until the hour it is eaten.” The Hawaiian word for the commoner class, the folks responsible for growing taro and other food, can be translated as the “eyes of the land.” Hawaiian men and women remain stewards in a reciprocal, familial relationship. As the community cares for the land, so it shall care for the community.

In the intervening years of missionary contact and the application of Western law, the relationship between Haloa and the people it has fed has been nearly severed. With the creation and application of the common law in the 19th century, the taro’s days as the primary form of sustenance for Hawaiians have been numbered. As water became ordered in the way it was in England, the source of the original law of water ownership, the impressively competent indigenous ahupua‘a system of land management, deteriorated.

Only now has the story of this relationship between a plant and a people moved in an interesting, different direction, as Hawaiian lawyers and activists have taken taro as a rallying point for political activism. In 2008, the “Taro Security Bill” was actively

pursued. The bill was written to create a law that “prohibits the development, testing, propagation, release, importation, planting, or growing of genetically modified Hawaiian taro in the state.” What has become ordinary for other crops (government-sponsored genetic testing to develop more hardy plants) became a topic of intense debate during the legislative session. Folks that had nothing to do with farming sent stacks of letters, placed hundreds of calls, and burned servers with emails. It made a lot more sense when realizing those emails were coming from an anger at the attack of a relationship that goes back to the beginning of Hawaiian cosmology.

Legislation often creates strange bedfellows. In support of the bill, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs found itself allied with the sort of kooky anti-GMO folks that have defined the debate over agribusiness on the mainland in recent years. Against the bill were many of the organizations that would be tasked with enforcing it, including the University of Hawai‘i.

For non-Hawaiians and those simply interested in eating well, the most interesting development in the story of taro came last year with Act 107, or the “Pa‘i‘ai Bill,” as it came to be known. Recently passed into law, the bill exempts freshly pounded poi from

the food safety laws of similar types of prepared food under the Hawai‘i State Department of Health.

The bill’s proponents had a point. There really was no reason to put fresh poi in the same category as frozen peas and carrots, considering its historic relationship to the community. The law passed by the Hawaiian Territory’s Department of Health in 1911 was created by mainlanders who were scared of eating something fresh from the ground that was touched by unknown hands. It was time to eat poi in Hawai‘i the way it had always been eaten, before hands became dirtied by money.

The story of taro and the law is far from over. As Hawaiians are contented by the fact that the venerated taro plant will not be tainted by foreign strains, and fresh pa‘i‘ai is now outside the scope of what is ordinarily traded and regulated by the state, we can hope to see more fresh poi at places other than baby luaus and wedding receptions in the country. As new laws come into effect, a relationship between a humble plant and the people it has developed with is slowly being restored. This is a good thing for all of us, as there really is nothing like the fresh stuff. For the first time in generations, there is a reemergence in the possibility of ecological reciprocity.

Hawaiians pounding poi. A handcolored photo from 1890. Photo by Gonsalves.

LOCAVORES

14 days of eating 100 percent locally grown, organic foods

T EXT BY J A d E E CKAR d T | MAGES BY JOHN HOOK

What was once a way of life is now a trend as hot as the reusable shopping bags we’re hauling farmers-market-bought greens and free-range eggs in. It’s nearly impossible to be out and about on any Hawaiian island without seeing the catch phrase “eat local” on a T-shirt, bumper sticker, or jutting out on a sign in a supermarket isle, coercing us to buy locally grown food.

That’s not to say it’s a trend lacking in an honorable goal. Hawai‘i relies on imports for around 85 to 90 percent of its foods. There are numerous benefits to eating local, from better heath to economic sustainability and food security. Locally grown produce and fruit is generally higher in nutrition than food that has sat for weeks while being shipped from the mainland or another country. Eggs from your own backyard coop or an island, free-range farm are significantly higher in nutrition than mainland eggs (ever noticed the darker yolk?). Buying and eating local supports the local economy, and it’s no secret that we need a boost there.

Then of course, there’s the idea that locally produced food is more environmentally friendly, and that its carbon footprint is lighter than something shipped in from out of state, whic depends on a lot more than just fuel mileage on a ship or a plane – the treatment of pesticides and herbicides and the amount of fertilizer, water and land used are just some of the elements that determine the carbon footprint of an apple.

Perhaps the strongest motivation behind becoming a locavore is to support the growth of local food sources to prepare for the day when the barges stop bringing the food that stocks our supermarket shelves. It’s been estimated if the barges should stop, we have about seven days worth of food in the islands. After that ran out, we’d be screwed – and starving.

With the locavore movement stronger than ever, I initiated a personal eat-local challenge: two weeks, strictly local, beginning January 1, 2012. Furthering the chal-

lenge is the fact that I’m vegetarian and that after I had kids, made it a goal to buy organic. I told myself it wouldn’t be too hard. Local veggies, locally made tofu, water and coconuts and the occasional locally brewed beer. Eating strictly local food didn’t sound much different than my normal diet, everything would just be local. Turns out, it’s not that simple.

JANUARY 1, 2012

It’s New Year’s Day and I’ve slacked on stocking my fridge with local food, so I wake up with nothing more to eat than two apple bananas. The lack of my usual New Year’s hangover proves a blessing, or I would be desperately longing for my magical hangover cure: greasy hash browns, ketchup, a buttersoaked grilled cheese sandwich, and a daylong supply of Calistoga bubbly water – of which nothing is locally made or grown. The bananas cure the hunger shakes, but not for long. The rest of the day includes a couple of salads, an orange and Moloka‘i sweet potatoes for dinner – without butter, unfortunately. With New Year’s traffic clogging up North Shore roads, I was hesitant to venture out to the farmers market. Plus, although farmers markets are loaded with local food, a lot of it isn’t organic. And personally, I’d rather eat organic over local, since the latter isn’t always grown without the use of pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, genetically modified organisms, antibiotics or growth hormones.

In 2010, there were 7,500 farms throughout the state utilizing 1.1 million acres according to the 2010 State Agricultural Overview published by the National Agricultural Statistics Survey. While the average farm was estimated to cover approximately 148 acres of this land, O‘ahu is home to a large number of “small farmers” who farm approximately one to five acres. Academics have estimated that pre-contact Hawaiians were feeding

Though the author does not eat eggs, she collects them fresh daily for her family from one of her 25 chickens.

The author purchased this pet goat, Ramona, with hopes of milking for milk and cheese.

roughly 500,000 people with sweet potatoes, taro, ulu (breadfruit), bananas and fish. Today, Hawai‘i has a population of approximately 1.3 million people, and only about 10 percent of our food is locally grown.

So the question is, can we do it? According to several farmers I’ve talked to, they face various obstacles, including lack of irrigation, expensive insurance premiums, short and expensive leases that affect loan qualification, and the simple fact that there’s not exactly an abundance of would-be farmers. With the problems farmers face, can we feed nearly three times as many people as the islands have ever had before with strictly local food?

Not far from my home on O‘ahu’s North Shore is a number of small farms making locally grown produce readily available to residents. Organic produce from Mohala farms is available at the local health food store, organic fruit from Poamoho Organic Produce can be easily obtained, taro is being cultivated in an unassuming area of Waialua at Na Mea Kupono Farms, Meleana’s Farm provides weekly community supported agriculture (CSA) baskets, and the Tin Roof Ranch sells organic, free-range eggs and chickens that they process themselves. What’s interesting is that all of these farmers are new, having left behind an old career for farm boots and dirt, or are still keeping their day (or night) jobs.

It’s people running these small farms who are making rather small but significant contributions towards Hawai‘i’s sustainable future. On the other hand, it’s a lack of dedicated farmers like these that may be an obstacle towards that same goal.

Travis Overly, the owner of ‘Aina Ono Farm Stands, considers himself a new farmer. He recalls his first encounter with agriculture while in California; it was something drastically different than what local children see today. “I call the first farmers I saw in Napa ‘rockstar farmers.’ They pulled up to their farm in a Mercedes or BMW, threw on a pair of overalls and jumped into the fields. I thought, ‘This is what I want to do.’ But here in Hawai‘i you look at the historical aspect, and it’s a paradigm. Kids these days see farming as something to evolve and grow from, something to escape, not something that they want to aspire to. Coming from

generations of people who were essentially slaves on a plantation, they want to move on to other things.”

JANUARY 3, 2012

By day three, I’ve renamed the locavore diet the “starvation diet.” Two days of bananas, salad, avocados and sweet potatoes sans buttery goodness have passed and I’m starving. Vegetables and fruit just don’t keep me full. Locally grown, protein-packed foods I normally eat, like black beans, quinoa and lentils, aren’t available. I have a chicken coop with 25 hens where I collect eggs for my son daily (usually still warm from the hen), but I don’t eat eggs. I look over at my beloved goat, Ramona, and wish she had indeed been pregnant when we bought her as the rancher promised so we could have milked her and made goat cheese.

Wandering around Foodland looking for something local, a light bulb goes off in my head – poi! I embark on a poi-hunting mission and it turns out the entire North Shore is out. Bypassing Wahiawa, I head straight to Mililani and find days-old poi, nice and firm and far from fresh. But I don’t care. I scarf down half a pound in the parking lot and feel truly full for the first time in almost three days. And yes, I realize the gas spent on procuring my poi cancelled out the possibility of being environmentally friendly by eating local for this meal.

Farmers markets and backyard vegetable gardens have always been around (as have cloth shopping bags, which went unnoticed when only hippies utilized them 20 years ago), so why is it that suddenly, in the last few years, there has been a large influx of people becoming aware of them and their benefits?

According to filmmaker Robert Bates, director and executive producer of Ingredients Hawai‘i, a film that explores O‘ahu’s local food movement, “The evidence of health benefits of eating local is really very clear. It leads to a long healthy life, healthy bodies, and no food from a package. From the health standpoint, it’s a no brainer. Locally grown food has a higher nutritive value. It’s common sense.” Bates has spent the last several years exploring nearly every aspect of

O‘ahu’s local food movement. From small farmers to individuals who have cured illnesses by eating local food to gourmet chefs who focus on local food, Bates has studied people “pushing back against the mainstream system,” food wise.

Bates is right about that. There’s nothing traditional or mainstream about a rooftop garden on an old gas station in Waimanalo that produces 25 pounds of gourmet greens a week. Or a woman, like Luann Casey from the Tin Roof Ranch, who is a nurse by profession but has added “chicken de-featherer” to her daily duties simply because she “wanted to know where her food came from.”

Do we have it in us to do these things too? Could I grow pounds of veggies with my not-so-green thumb? Could I de-feather chickens so my family could eat? If those barges stopped, I wouldn’t have a choice.

JANUARY 7, 2012

It’s a week into my life as a locavore, and I’ve finally got my routine down. A rotation of Moloka‘i sweet potatoes, poi, taro, salad, broccoli and a few ulus, which were surprisingly hard to come by, are keeping my stomach quite content. What’s lacking is variation in flavor, of course. No balsamic vinegar and olive oil on my salad, just local Meyer lemon juice and coconut oil made by a Big Island friend, and finally, some local butter on my baked sweet potatoes. I’ve essentially turned to a traditional Hawaiian diet to get the most out of local food. Could this be the answer to our journey to eat local?

The lack of available options of truly local food brought something to light – locally made doesn’t mean locally grown. There may be a broad array of local foods, but when it comes to the collective ingredients, they are rarely 100 percent local. Locally made bread is made with wheat flour grown in the Midwest. The best we can hope for in a freshly blended smoothie may be local papaya (hopefully non-GMO), but those blueberries and strawberries are from far, far away. Local beer is unfortunately made with non-local ingredients – we don’t have endless fields of wheat and barley growing in Hawai‘i.

“The evidence of health benefits of eating local is really very clear. It leads to a long healthy life, healthy bodies, and no food from a package. From the health standpoint, it’s a no brainer.

Locally grown food has a higher nutritive value. It’s common sense.”

That’s where the effort to eat local gets tough. One of the things I noticed the most was that eating local means making a change at the individual level. We probably won’t be enjoying a breakfast of wheat pancakes, maple syrup and bacon unless a friend caught a wild boar (the last O‘ahu slaughterhouse processes mostly imported pigs), or a venti-sized, two-pump vanilla latte with whip from Starbucks. A sandwich with cheddar and deli turkey, a bag of corn chips, and an energy drink is out of the question. Days won’t end with yellow Thai curry and spring rolls followed by cocktails.

To truly go local, we’ll have to adapt once again. We’ll have to accept the fact that Hawai‘i probably won’t ever produce all of the ingredients for the indulgences that we’re used to – wheat, M&M’s, soy in all forms, enough dairy for everyone, buffalo mozzarella, rum and vodka, olive oil and balsamic vinegar, mustard – you get the idea. We’ll have to accept change in our diet, and we may have to lean towards a diet similar to that of pre-contact Hawaiians and other traditional Pacific Islanders.

It may even go deeper than that. We may have to find the time to tend a backyard garden and chicken coop, to milk our own goat or cow. And if we don’t have the space or time for this, than we’ll have to trade with a neighbor who does.

During my two-week stint eating local, I realized I unknowingly grew up a locavore. Living in Puna on the Big Island, we ate lo-

cal without thinking about it. If we needed an avocado for sandwiches, we’d head out to one of the many trees around our neighborhood. When my mom sent me outside to play, guavas, java plums and mangoes served as treats instead of candy. Instead of heading to McDonald’s for fries, we’d pick an ulu and make ulu fries. Days spent at the beach surfing were sustained by random friends and beachgoers offering up a daily harvest of coconuts, cracked opened with a machete right on the beach, rather than running to a lunch wagon for soda.

Hawai‘i once provided for its people, and generations later, the people are looking to come full circle and thrive on what the land has to offer. Looking forward, Bates says, “The functionality of the local food movement is based on a sense of connecting like-minded people supporting each other. If you combined prime agricultural land with great farmers and commitment, you could feed everyone.”

JANUARY 12, 2012

I fall off the locavore wagon two days before my journey is supposed to be over. Ironically, it’s on a dinner date at one of Honolulu’s most popular local food restaurants with a good friend who’s moving away. Still, even these guys can’t guarantee that everything will be local. The food is awesome, the drinks are strong, and even though I’ve technically failed, I know that the chefs, and myself, are all trying.

The slaughterhouse industry in Hawai‘i has faced barrier after barrier, making it increasingly difficult for this small, family-run business in Campbell Industrial Park.

LIFE ON THE LINE

Behind the Scenes of O‘ahu’s Slaughterhouse

T

EXT BY A NNA H ARMON | MAGES BY A.J. F E d UCIA

The line was silent for a moment – and then Leonard Oshiro laughed, a deep chuckle spanning an increasingly uncomfortable number of seconds. After a pause, the general manager of O‘ahu’s only USDA-certified hog and cattle slaughterhouse finally answered my proposal to visit with a gruff, “What, ’cause we’re going to close?”

These days on the islands, Spam doesn’t have exclusive rights to the title “mystery meat.” In every single one of O‘ahu’s grocery stores, all pork products and the large majority of beef has been shipped from the mainland, where it was raised, slaughtered, processed, then chilled or frozen and shipped in Matson containers. “If you buy frozen stuff, when was it killed? Could be one year ago,” says Leonard. “You buy chilled, you know it’s going to take seven days over the ocean and another three days here. By the time it gets to a shelf, you’re talking almost two weeks.” But even Chinatown ethnic markets, traditionally devoted to “hot pork” (pork that’s been slaughtered within 48 hours), have started mixing in chilled mainland carcasses with their local stocks. And as urban sprawl crawls up the mountains and into the valleys, the island’s general population continues to distance itself from the bloody background of the meat it eats, eating from

Costco or McDonald’s or whatever’s nearby, and sleeping easy.

A local man with a piercing look and shuffling walk, Leonard grew up as close to the meat market as you can – on a hog farm in Wai‘anae from which he still commutes. He has an uncanny ability to be both abrasive and accommodating. When my photographer and I explained why we wanted a picture of him among the slaughterhouse scenery – to show the personal side of the complicated, controversial meat market – he refused, then just minutes later allowed us to snap a shot of him in front of a worker spraying off a gutted hog carcass.

Leonard was part of the formation of the Hawaii Livestock Cooperative, created in 1998 to preserve the slaughtering lifeline of the meat market, which backed and now runs the Campbell Industrial Park slaughterhouse in Kapolei. But the facility has been bombarded with a slurry of opposition and disappointment since day one. Leonard ticks off a number of things as soon as I meet him. First, a dead dairy industry and empty promises from Palama Meat Co., both intended to be the backbone of its cattle supply. Second, the skyrocketing cost of mainland-sourced grain, which island hogs and cattle are typically raised on, due to demand

for ethanol. Third, increased efficiency of Matson’s shipping methods, allowing chilled and refrigerated meat from distant locations to be offered at undercutting prices.

And the list goes on these days with animal rights activists who have begun clamoring about what they deem inhumane treatment of live mainland hogs imported by the slaughterhouse. After being associated with enough of this negative publicity and the target of subsequent mail-writing campaigns, Foodland and Times (the only large markets that were still buying from the slaughterhouse) stopped selling any pork slaughtered in Hawai‘i at all. Now, only mainland raised and slaughtered pork fills the freezers of these two grocery chains.

Of the more than 50 hobby and commercial hog farms that populate rural O‘ahu from Waianae to Waimanalo, only two actually send animals to the slaughterhouse – the rest rely on direct farm sales, which are when hogs are selected and slaughtered on-site for personal consumption. One of these two slaughterhouse stalwarts, Shimokawa Farms, is nestled deep along the backbone of the Ko‘olau Mountains, where the lush surroundings

Shown at top is Leonard Oshiro, the general manager of the slaughterhouse in Kapolei. Below images are from Shimokawa Farms in Waimanalo.

The problem is that hog farms are local and family-run, but they aren’t easily romanticized; their livestock isn’t running free through the open range. It’s expensive, smelly work and extremely difficult to give a good name.

bring a mysterious charm to the cinder blocks and rusting trucks marking its first 200 yards. Beyond them lies an infrastructure of concrete and corrugated steel that contains 50 sows, six studs and 300 to 400 hogs being raised from birth to slaughtering weight.

Just two years ago, the family farm used to be twice the size. “The slaughterhouse is really struggling because there’s not enough farmers that support it,” says Wayne Shimokawa, who runs the half-century old family farm with his brother Robert. Wayne has a soothing voice and dirty black jeans tucked into rubber boots. He stands a few yards in front of the hog maternity ward after giving us an all access tour of the farm, a friendly, chained Rottweiler at his feet. “The bottom line is that what wholesalers are paying us for these hogs is really tough. By the time it hits the market, the local farmers may walk in and say, ‘Wow, look at what these guys are charging and I’m only getting this much,’” he explains.

“Also, I guess, the amount of production of hogs on O‘ahu already has already fallen quite dramatically versus 15 or 20 years ago. … Gosh, another large hog farm just shut down end of last year, and they were one of the biggest ones here.” Since the ’90s, the cost of imported grain has tripled, but with the average size of farms less than three acres, there is no way farms can grow their own feed.

Instead, Wayne and Robert’s hogs spend the first half of their lives being fattened up on the expensive grain, and the second chowing down on recycled food waste – known in old-school terms as “slop” – picked up from hotels and restaurants and re-cooked at the farm. “Using food waste is a little more feasible for us at this point. Pigs don’t grow as fast, but at least it’s a cheaper cost,” says

Wayne. Both Leonard and Dr. Halina Zaleski, UH Mānoa’s swine department extension specialist, say this feed option may keep the industry alive, since it is hailed as environmentally friendly, a big plus on an isolated island, and farmers get paid to pick up the waste. However, many chefs debate the quality of this meat, and it takes almost twice as long to raise the hogs to slaughtering weight. Leonard’s family farm in Wai‘anae still, in fact, sticks to strictly grain.

Another hog farm in Waimanalo, Shinsato Farms, owns the only other USDA-certified slaughterhouse on the island, a tiny plant designated for its own hogs only. Thanks to its quaint family-farm history and easily accessed, USDA-certified product, Shinsato has monopolized the pork market of gourmets within the local food movement – think Ed Kenney of town, Kevin Hanney of Salt Kitchen & Tasting Bar, and Robert McGee of Plancha and the soon-to-be Whole Ox Deli.

Instead, the bulk of local hog supporters are those individuals or families from traditional backgrounds, mostly Filipino, who walk onto farms, choose a hog, and slaughter it themselves right on the property. These types of “farm sales” are definitely not USDA-certified, but are allowed because they are qualified as personal consumption only. “To sell a pig on the farm versus selling to a wholesaler, your cost difference is $100, a little bit more per animal,” explains Wayne, but selling pork this way can be a more feasible option due to the flexible demand of individual consumers versus a rigorous contract with wholesalers, who request only certain cuts of pork. Even for Wayne, one of two farmers with a wholesale contract, 60 percent of his livestock is still sold through farm sales,

creating an unreliable and hush-hush market for pork that is guaranteed to be local. Because of the limited availability of local pork, back at the Kapolei slaughterhouse, Leonard has to import 90 to 95 percent of his hog supply from the mainland to keep up with the demand. “It keeps the volume going through the slaughterhouse and it supports any fluctuations,” says Dr. Zaleski. This move has created new fodder for animal rights activists who have been attempting to close the slaughterhouse since the day it was proposed at a Kapolei town committee meeting. Animal Rights Hawaii cites cruelly hot days spent in shipping containers and no food on the last day on the water. While Hawaii Livestock Coalition has its own counterpoints, such as the handler who is with the animals at every moment on their final journey, their arguments often fall on deaf ears.

In April 2011, Senate Bill 249 was introduced, proposing that the state buy the slaughterhouse for the security of future local farmers (the bill was rejected in September). In response, Down to Earth, one of O‘ahu’s only all vegetarian, organic and natural foods store, started the Facebook group “Stop Hawaii Slaughterhouse Bill SB 249.” One post reads, “If [Russell Kokobun of the Hawai‘i Department of Agriculture] really wants food security, then why doesn’t he use these funds to support small family organic farmers?”

The problem with this reasoning is that hog farms are local and family-run, but they aren’t easily romanticized; their livestock isn’t running free through the open range, and try-

ing to raise porkers organically actually makes them surprisingly susceptible to parasites. It’s expensive, smelly work and extremely difficult to give a good name. Wayne himself plans on shutting down or leasing out his farm soon enough. “I’m burnt out,” he says with a laugh. “If it’s not one thing, it’s another. My brother-in-law made a good point,” he says, referring to his own struggle with animal rights activists in a time when he can barely afford upkeep. “America has never starved. That’s why they don’t realize the importance of the American farmer, you know?”

However, while O‘ahu tends to forsake its pig farmers, it has always had a crush on its ranchers and cowboys, who are making a late comeback thanks to the words like “grass-fed” and are setting the groundwork with the Campbell slaughterhouse once more. The entire right side of the Campbell facility, which boasts a separate entrance and larger corrals and hooks, was built with high hopes and high ceilings, but has remained largely unused until recently. Now, 10 to 15 cattle from Hawaii Cattle Producers Co-op, who source from the Big Island and Kaua‘i, and O‘ahu’s Kualoa Ranch are slaughtered here every Thursday. These cattle are being heralded as the facility’s saving grace.

“We were expecting a lot of cattle that never came through, and the hogs alone can’t pay for the whole cattle side,” explains Dr. Zaleski, whose expertise was also consulted during the formation the Hawaii Livestock Co-op. Fortunately in the last year, numbers have increased from about 10 cattle per month to 40 or 50. The Campbell slaughterhouse now even garners recognition as the location of slaughter on the homepage of Kualoa Ranch’s website, right below this charming language: “Kualoa Ranch cattle are all raised on our 4,000-acre property where they’re free to graze in the 1,500 acres of pasture … The cattle are grass-fed, which produces leaner cuts of meat, lowering the fat content and

providing a healthier choice.”

“Ranchers are stewards of large swaths of contiguous land that should remain in agriculture and open space,” says Dan Nakasone, who works as a ranch hand at North Shore Cattle Company every weekend and has coordinated projects for the Hawai‘i Department of Agriculture. “It’s obvious that if anything happened to the Campbell facility, the industry would lose a critical option. It’s the newest facility and it has the most capacity. It would be especially bad for Kualoa Ranch if it were to shut down.” Additionally, for Dan, if the slaughterhouse were gone, and “any neighboring facilities were to shut down, that particular island would be in deep kim chee.”

The Campbell slaughterhouse is familysized compared to mainland facilities, handling only 850 hogs and about 150 cattle a month. If we relied solely on locally grown meat, the slaughterhouse wouldn’t be able to handle the volume, but it’s the largest dual facility on the islands and processes too much traffic for a mobile slaughterhouse, which travels from farm to farm, to be a feasible replacement, or to be maintained at sanitary levels, according to Leonard. ***

When I took the exit off the H-1 at Kapolei and headed for Barber’s Point to visit the slaughterhouse, I realized I was entering the underbelly of O‘ahu – not in the seedy kind of way, but in hard mechanics, the cogs behind the shining, golden beachfront. It’s what city folk, and even most country folk, barely recognize about our island. It’s the place where palm trees are interspersed with heavy machinery and industrial plants, workers wear rubber boots instead of aloha shirts, and energy is created with fossil fuels. It’s here where livestock from farmers across several islands, as well as hogs imported

from the mainland, arrive for slaughtering. The meat then goes to processing facilities, which in turn feeds into the broader market. “The slaughterhouse is the bottleneck,” says Leonard. “Farmers have to get their meat to the market. It’s a funnel in, funnel out.”

Two facilities, Hawaii Food Products and Wong’s Meat Market, process the carcasses. Through them, freshly slaughtered local and mainland pork goes to Chinatown, Waipahu, and a handful of restaurants. Beef from Big Island, Kaua‘i and O‘ahu heads to distribution companies (Higa Food Service and Hawaii Ranchers Beef), restaurants (including Roy’s, which snaps up the local veal), and to the shelves of grocery stores, including Times and Foodland. In turn, caterers, luau hosts and restaurants buy an array of products from ethnic markets and various meat retailers. So while we consume meats in plate lunches and dinners out, there’s a chance we could be eating local, supporting a variety of meat-based jobs, and have no idea. Contrarily, we could be eating mainland meat without knowing it either.

One of the notes I jotted down, “slaughter with aloha,” caught me off guard when I was reading back through my notebook. Then I read this quote from Dr. Zaleski: “Even though the slaughterhouse only gets sheep once a year from 4-H, the agricultureoriented youth group, they put in a whole plan to slaughter sheep, and they’re willing to go with goats too, because now there’s a 4-H goat project. It’s a lot of work to get a plan approved by the USDA. Leonard will bend over backwards.”

“It’s not an easy job, but I enjoy it,” says Leonard from his desk, which overlooks shelves stacked with binders full of approved plans and piles of pork and beef paperwork. Just outside the warehouse, about 30 mainland hogs are in holding stalls, awaiting slaughter the next morning. “If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here.”

Wayne Shimokawa runs one of the last farms that still sends hogs to the slaughterhouse, though he has plans to shut down or lease out his farm in the near future.

SOPHIA: White dress, vintage, Barrio Vintage. Gold ring and black cap, vintage, Mish Mash. Single strand pearl necklace, Majorica, Neiman Marcus. Black boots, model’s own.

JULIA: Ivory lace top, Stella McCartney, Neiman Marcus. Long white skirt, vintage, Barrio Vintage. Gold cameo necklace and gold rings, vintage, Mish Mash. Black patent wedge with bow, Valentino, Neiman Marcus.

tea party

Photography by JOHN HOOK

Styled by ALY ISHIKUNI & ARA LAYLO

Makeup by DULCE FELIPE & ROYAL SILVER, Timeless Classic Beauty

Hair by RYAN CAMACHO & KYLIE MATTOS, Ryan Jacobie Salon

Models: JULIA CURRIER & SOPHIA KLEIN

Location: BAYER ESTATE

Tea Set courtesy of: TEA AT 1024

SOPHIA: Cream chain print top, high waist shorts, yellow gloves and clutch bag, vintage, Barrio Vintage. Beret and black belt, vintage, Mish Mash.

SOPHIA: Long grey dress, Helmut Lang, Neiman Marcus. Cone earrings and orchid motif ring, Oscar de la Renta, Neiman Marcus. Gold crown necklace and fur, vintage, Mish Mash.

JULIA: Long blue dress, Fighting Eel, Fighting Eel. Cameo necklace, bracelet and gold rings, vintage, Mish Mash.

SOPHIA: Multi print dress, Marni, Neiman Marcus. Metallic jacket, Rachel Zoe, Neiman Marcus. Gold mesh and black ribbon necklace and bracelet, Marni, Neiman Marcus. Black leather wedge, Diane von Furstenberg, Neiman Marcus. Fur and green beret, vintage, Mish Mash.

JULIA: Top with jeweled neckline, Marni, Neiman Marcus. Black patent wedge with bow, Valentino, Neiman Marcus. Green skirt, vintage, Barrio Vintage. Gold blue belt, gold rings, vintage, Mish Mash.

SOPHIA: Floral dress, Milly, Neiman Marcus. Pearl necklace, gold ring and black hat, vintage, Mish Mash.

JULIA: Floral dress, Erdem, Neiman Marcus. Black pearl necklace, Armenta, Neiman Marcus. Gold rings, vintage, Mish Mash. Turquoise beret, stylist’s own.

goLDeN DAYS

Life between meals in Northern India

S TORY AN d MAGE BY B EAU F LEMISTER

I arrived with a crash just meters from my cousin’s house, the two of us laughing in a clump of limbs, spilt luggage and motorcycle. We’d been traveling uphill for the last stretch, so when we hit an unseen log, it wasn’t much of a collision – we just fell over. He had picked me up from a small airport near Dharamsala in northern India, and on the back of a puttering Royal Enfield, I journeyed the two hours back to his home. Enroute, I locked the toes of my tennis shoes under the back pegs and clutched the iron luggage racks until my palms blistered.

My cousin came here to meditate and fly (the two verbs curiously interchangeable, he’d tell me). Fly as in paraglide, the mountains behind his home fertile launching grounds for his kind. He’d been here for two years and pays $500 – a year – to rent the top floor of a house. I came to write a novel. To separate myself from the sea and friends and any other fantastic distraction my island home taunted me with. And in this small village, vacant from most maps, writing is basically all I can do to keep busy. That, and eat.

Oddly, food dictates my days here. It shapes and frames the lucky few daily interactions I have with people, what trails I take to find the ingredients, what I see and smell and hear along the way. Because I have little to no obligations, I immerse myself in the ritual of preparation, the dicing, chopping, peeling, boiling, kneading, frying, stirring of it all. Or really, whatever my cousin tells me to do (I’m

no top chef). So my life here is divided not in time, but in meals. And that’s fine – I’ve never been one to wear a watch anyway.

In the morning, we start making the roti (flatbread). Mix the flour with water, knead it into a silky, rubbery form. I leave it to heat and rise in the sunlight upon a table where I write overlooking the valley. We eat yogurt made from scratch with milk we get from the boy with the cow, mixing in fresh apple slices, oranges, raisins and figs.

It is wintertime here, so there is no afternoon. Just stubborn mornings, lit by a diagonal sun. The mornings meander and sigh into evenings, giving everyone and everything an enchanted tinge of gold. I have to walk about an hour to get to the nearest town with internet to do any research. Along the way, I buy the tomatoes and onions, garlic and cinnamon, cloves and pepper to mix with kidney beans for the rajma we concoct for lunch. I buy spices and veggies and chickpeas, too, from local women on the roadside – women hooded and wrapped in neon saris lined with silver and gold, fabrics that flow from their shoulders, dripping onto the ground beneath them.

I walk back for lunch, through the paths and roads and trails I follow that cross 19 streams, four grade schools, eight farms, 29 gardens, three Buddhist temples, and one snarling dog that I’m positive is rabid. I walk by houses made of stones and cow dung, a

hundred splayed hands still imprinted in the cakes like the cave paintings on the walls of Lascaux. I arrive and we make the rajma, eat it and prepare for more. The roti has risen and we roll small spheres flat on the stone table. We fry them on an iron pan and save them until dinner.

I walk yet again for more ingredients. I pass packs of young Tibetans pacing the terraces, reciting scripture. I pass rustling tea bushes that explode with mangy, starving dogs hunting mongoose. I find the man with the goat to purchase paneer (cheese) he’s packaged. I find the man with the knife to butcher a chicken. He asks if we want the feathers still on, but I decline, and we sit in silence while he weighs the limp bird on an old-fashioned libra scale. I walk home and we cut the paneer into small cubes. We make a dish called matar paneer by stir-frying the cubes with green peas, tomatoes, cumin and masala spices. We dip the roti in the matar and we are buzzing and sated. We soak the chickpeas in water overnight for tomorrow’s chana masala. We give the chicken to the family below because they’ve been gracious and welcoming.

And tomorrow will be similar to today, but that’s perfectly alright with me. I’ll write a few more pages, walk a little, probably visit a man about some goat cheese. I’ll see my cousin sitting still for a while, or maybe floating across the sky.

“Food dictates my days here. It shapes and frames the lucky few daily interactions i have with people, what trails I take to find the ingredients, what I see and smell along the way.” Dharamsala, Northern India.

chard: This cooking green has a slightly bitter taste and is great when sautéed with olive oil, garlic, a bit of salt and some kind of vinaigrette. Available all year.

cassava, or tapioca root: Starchy and typically used in the same way you would a sweet potato, this root vegetable is best served steamed or cut thin and fried.

DECONSTRUCTING

Image by John h ook

MA‘O’s Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Box

For $32 a week, aspiring home cooks or those looking to sample new foods can pick up a Community Supported Agriculture box from MA‘O Organic Farms. Each bright yellow CSA box is bursting with seasonal fruits and vegetables grown fresh at MA‘O’s farm in Lualualei Valley in Wai‘anae and can supply up to four people for a week. “The boxes are one way for the eater to directly support and get to know a farmer,” says Derrick Kiyabu, MA‘O’s farm manager. “It allows the eater to support local, organic agriculture and creates another value chain outside of the normal massdistributed consumption chain.” Launched in November 2009, the CSA program at MA‘O now distributes about 120 boxes per week. Though the boxes change depending on the season, eaters can always expect to find a bag of salad mix, root crops like beets or carrots, herbs like oregano or basil, fruits, and a cooking green like chard or collard greens.

Apple bananas: Low in calories but high in potassium and fiber, these sweet yet slightly tart bananas actually grow on a large herbaceous plant.

beets: high in folate and potassium, beets, like many other root vegetables available at the farm (carrots and Japanese turnip, to name a few), are delicious when roasted with a little olive oil and salt. Save the leafy tops (rich in beta-carotene, vitamin c, iron and calcium) for sautéing.

green onions: Available year-round, green onions are milder than most onions and can be cooked or eaten raw in a variety of dishes.

eggplant: Purple or white in color, these nightshades are great any way you slice them, baked with parmesan, broiled with miso, or roasted with tahini for baba ganoush.

collard greens: A member of the cabbage family with a fairly mild flavor similar to kale, collard greens are best when served with a fatty protein like pork. Available seasonally.

More than just a farm, MA‘O is rooted in social entrepreneurship, growing organic food and young leaders for a sustainable Hawai‘i.

FOODIE ROUNDUP

We asked four notable foodies and chefs: What trends can we expect in 2012?

“I agree with predictions that a revival of homesteader arts like pickling, salting, canning and kitchen gardening will gain momentum this year. And smaller portions – think small plates and tapas – will likely replace the mega meals of 2011. That’s partly due to economics, partly to health concerns about irresponsible food intake. And finally, dessert. Cupcakes will never be out – not unless there’s a severe shortage of 6-year-olds in the world. Though not yet available anywhere locally that I’ve seen, canelés, made from an egg-yolk-enriched, crepe-like batter that’s baked in copper molds lined with caramel and beeswax, are supposed to be the

next big thing. They’re popular on the mainland, but my foodie friends and I can’t find any here in Hawai‘i yet. Too new!”

Born and raised on O‘ahu, Catherine E. Toth has worked as a newspaper reporter in Hawai‘i for 10 years and continues to freelance – in between teaching journalism full time at Kapi‘olani Community College, hitting the surf, and hiking with her two dogs – for national and local print and online publications. On the eve of the purported end of the world, December 20, 2012, Catherine will be eating: everything in sight. Find her at thecatdish.com or on Twitter @thedailydish.

“Vegetables will take center stage. Local farmers have listened to the consumer’s call for healthful options and variety and are growing more unique and tasty fruits and vegetables than ever before. Along with our staple Asian greens and mesclun lettuces, farmers are now growing heirloom beans, brassicas of all kinds, purslane and more. With diet-related ailments such as diabetes and heart disease, as well as a consciousness to combat childhood obesity, people will be eating less meat and more veggies.”

Ed Kenney is the chef and owner of Town in Kaimuki, where the menu changes daily based on fresh ingredients procured from MA‘O Farms, and Downtown @ the HiSAM. With a desire to reconnect people to the food they eat and to the people they eat with, Kenney says on December 20, 2012 that he won’t be eating. “I’ll be feeding people. After the last guest has departed, I’ll probably eat our nightly staff meal, which is usually something simple like pasta or a stir-fry with rice.” Find him at townkaimuki.com or on Twitter @edstown.

“I can only hope for a fantastic, made-from-scratch, any-flavoryou-want pie cafe or truck. Piggybacking on the locavore movement, we will see a more artisanal approach to the movement. Not to mention pop-ups galore.”

Poni Askew is the visionary and founder of Eat the Street, a monthly smorgasbord when some of Hawa‘i’s most delicious food trucks converge on one spot. December 20, 2012, Poni will be eating laulau, lomi salmon, poi, poke (inamona and Hawaiian salt only, please) and squid lu‘au. Find her at streetgrindz. com or on Twitter @streetgrindz.

CATHERINE TOTH

ED KENNEY

PONI ASKEW

MARK NOGUCHI

“We are going to see more pop-up restaurants. There are many young, talented chefs out there, but a serious limit on capital. The Pig & The Lady set the bar on how solid a menu you can put out in a kitchen or environment that’s not yours. Other people followed suit: Places like Prima in Kailua and R&D in Kaka‘ako embrace non-conventional thinkers. As long as new pop-ups aren’t putting out B.S. food, I’m down. There’s also something to be said about today’s social media. Deny it all you want, but Twitter and Facebook are a major part of our daily lives. People love the voyeuristic ability to know what’s going on at any given time of the day. As chefs, we can post daily specials, new ingredients, inspired dishes or simply cool kitchen culture in a heartbeat. An entire loyal, almost cult-like following was built solely on Twitter last year. Case in point: the Melt truck.”

Mark Noguchi, as chef of the newly revamped He‘eia General Store and Deli, is empowering his community of Kāne‘ohe one gourmet plate lunch at a time. Known for innovative local cuisine and fresh daily catches, He‘eia General Store & Deli satisfies both uncles and foodies alike. December 20, 2012, Noguchi will be eating: Dave Caldiero’s carbonara, Chris Kajioka’s short ribs, He‘eia Pier’s katsu bacon cheeseburger, bread by Christopher Sy and a Hank’s Haute Dogs’ Italian beef with hot peppers and a pineapple freeze. Imbibe and Dave Power will pour the drinks (Fernet for everyone) with Linkin Park and The Kills playing live for a really short list of family and friends. It’s the end of the world … why not? Find him on Twitter @ musubman.

TABLE FOR SIX

Promotions crew turned restaurateurs, Vertical Junkies

Finding a few minutes of downtime among the hectic schedule of running three restaurants seems to be the biggest challenge for Kanoe Sandefur, Lindsey Ozawa, Alejandro Briceno, Blaine Tomita, Mark Noguchi and Russell Inouye. With V-Lounge in USA Today’s “51 Great Pizza Parlors” and Food Network Magazine’s “50 Pizzas, 50 States,” you’d better believe they know a thing or two about restaurants.

Emerging from the underground events and promotions arena under the name Vertical Junkies, these guys have quickly become one of Hawai‘i’s most enterprising restaurateurs. “The shelf life of a promoter is not very long, so we knew we needed to expand and diversify,” says co-owner Kanoe Sandefur. “We decided to partner up with really good chefs to create establishments that really give

the customer a great food experience.” VLounge, He‘eia Pier General Store and Deli, and Prima have all opened within the last four years and have taken O‘ahu by surprise.

In 2008, V-Lounge opened to the public, with Chef Alejandro “Aker” Briceno creating recipes of pizza perfection. Hailing from Venezuela, Briceno studied in Spain and Italy, where his culinary talents burgeoned. With one visit to V-Lounge, guests experience the art and craft of a true pizzaiolo (Italian pizza chef). Unassuming in décor and open until 4 a.m., V-Lounge specializes in Kiawe-woodfired, brick-oven pizzas, bringing authentic Italian-style pizzas without need of a passport.

My personal favorite is the Proscuitto Rucola, which consists of San Marzano tomato sauce, freshly pulled mozzarella, parmigiano reggiano, arugula and prosciutto and is noth-

ing short of miraculous. The really adventurous can opt for the Boquerones, topped with white, marinated Spanish anchovies, or the Prima, topped with pancetta, Hāmākua ali‘i oyster mushrooms, egg yolk and truffle oil. In addition to grub, V-Lounge offers a full bar.

With a good-food-done-right mentality, this sextet introduced both He‘eia Pier General Store and Deli and Prima in 2011. “He‘eia Pier General Store and Deli is that childhood memory that you have from 20 years ago when you used to go down to the pier and fish with your father and get lunch,” says Sandefur. “And Prima features modern Italian dining with Kiawe-wood-fired, brickoven pizzas and only the finest ingredients. Similar in concept to V-Lounge, but with a much more diversified menu.”

For V-Lounge and Prima, the crew choos-

es to import things like flour and cured meats from Italy so that the end product is spot on. They even pull their own fresh mozzarella every day. “A lot of restaurants these days rely on gimmicks to get people in,” says Sandefur. “The last thing we want is to be a gimmick. We believe in doing good food the right way, and whether that means sourcing locally or internationally, we want the food to really speak for itself. Working with our neighbors, spending a little more for the non-GMO stuff. All of these things make for a good restaurant.”

However, their local counterpart, He‘eia Pier General Store and Deli, is the epitome of modern-day Hawaiian food. “Using local produce from neighboring farmers and local beef from the Big Island, our partner, chef Mark Noguchi, has really created a tasty eatery.” With sights of Kāne‘ohe Bay and

the Ko‘olau Mountain range on either side, He‘eia Pier General Store and Deli serves plate lunches with a gourmet twist, playing on old favorites like kālua pig and cabbage and fried rice. The guava chicken with kalo (taro) macaroni salad is a must; other popular choices include the Kuahiwi beef hamburger steak with MA‘O organic farm greens, and the fresh catch of the day.

Finding a good restaurant can be as hard as starting one. Luckily, the Vertical Junkies crew knows what people want because they’ve toiled in the service industry for years. They’ve sweated, diced, chopped, ran and served their way up the proverbial ladder, and strive to be the exception to the norm.

For more information, visit verticaljunkies. com, vloungehawaii.com or primahawaii.com.

Russell Inouye and Kanoe Sandefur, two of the six crew members of Vertical Junkies.

NO WHINING, JUST WINING WONDERFUL WINES AT BRASSERIE DU VIN

With the guidance of Rebecca Fineman, in-house certified sommelier and beverage manager, Brasserie Du Vin lives up to its name: a restaurant very much driven by wine. Brasserie Du Vin makes wines accessible and affordable. At any given time, nearly 200 bottles are on the menu, with a selection available by the glass and half and full carafes during lunch. In recognition of its wine program, Brasserie Du Vin has received Wine Spectator Magazine’s Award of Excellence five years in a row. Wine tastings and special dinners with wine pairings are offered regularly. Both wine novices and converts appreciate Tuesdays, when bottles

are half off. And here are two little-known tips: 1) You may always request a taste of an open bottle before you order a glass, and 2) Du Vin sells halfglass portions.

In addition to wine, Du Vin is known for its Frenchinspired menu ranging from artisan meats and cheeses to seafood and grilled steaks and chops. Tempting, house-made cakes, pies and tarts are also on the menu, along with a full selection of spirits and cocktails. Walk-ins, private dining and special events welcome.

Brasserie Du Vin 1115 Bethel Street 808-545-1115

brasserieduvin.com

JAPENGO

Mixing exotic flavors from the Pacific Rim and Southeast Asia, Japengo at the Hyatt Regency Waikiki reemerges from what was once Ciao Mein as a contemporary sushi bar with sleek lines and sophisticated interior design. Hyatt’s newest restaurant features unique dishes and flavors from Japan, Korea, China and more and offers a cuisine that is unique in Waikīkī. Standout dishes include the scallop butter yaki with black tobiko and shiso leaf and crispy salmon skin

maki with kaiware daikon sprouts and Maui onion ponzu. Intimate seating for two is available, as well as communal tables, group and private dining. Aside from regular dining hours, Japengo transforms into an after-hours lounge on Saturday nights featuring signature cocktails.

Japengo is located on the third floor of the Hyatt Regency Waikiki, located at 2424 Kalakaua Avenue. Reservations are available at 808-237-4180.

ALLURE

Hair Studio & Day Spa

An oasis of relaxation, Allure Hair Studio & Day Spa is conveniently located in beautiful Mānoa Valley, not far from Waikīkī and Honolulu. Whether you get a creative haircut and color, a Kerastase treatment, or a customized Aveda facial, Maja and her team of stylists take joy and pride in their work and services. Besides an expert salon, they are also a full-service day spa, featuring Aveda Chakra and Hawaiian lomi lomi massages. The well-trained staff provides each client with a personal consultation before treatment. Relax and experience the spirit of Mānoa!

OPEN SPACE YOGA

Unify body, breath and mind

Open Space Yoga’s mission is to create an atmosphere where each student finds his or her own way into yoga. Yoga is not defined as one system or tradition but, in fact, has infinite ways of expression.

At Open Space Yoga, we value and respect the varying forms and expressions of yoga. We offer most styles of yoga, including Vinyasa Flow, Kundalini, ParaYoga, Ashtanga, Pre-Natal,

Yoga Basics, Yin Yoga, Anusara, Hot Yoga, Mom and Baby, and Relax Deeply. We can be found at three locations: Our Monsarrat Studios are walking distance from WaikĪkĪ Beach, located at 3106 Monsarrat Avenue and 3046 Monsarrat Ave. Our Chinatown studio is in the heart of the arts district, located at 1111 Nu‘uanu Avenue.

New to Open Space Yoga? Get two weeks of unlimited yoga for $40. For more information, visit yogaopenspace.com or call 808-232-8851.

Allure is located at 2801 East Mānoa Rd. Parking is in front. For reservations, call 808-988-3350 Tuesday through Sunday – evening appointments possible. See the full menu of services at allurehawaii.com.

When Kawehi Haug and Nick Gervais lost their jobs in 2010, the only thing they gave to the man were cupcakes.

Let Them Eat Cupcakes

Kawehi Haug and Nick Gervais make killer cupcakes. The proof is in the frosting: an original vanilla buttercream topping that packs subtly rich flavor and complements a doughy cake perfection of density and sponge. These handheld treats, which come in flavors like Nutella, maple bacon, snickerdoodle, li hing mango and classics like chocolate and red velvet, are to die for.

Prior to opening downtown Honolulu’s newest specialty bakery, the duo worked alongside one another at the Honolulu Advertiser until the 2010 merger with Honolulu Star-Bulletin cost them their jobs. Losing a well-loved job was not easy, nor easily forgiven. But paying no mind, the two found their own unconventional way of “sticking it to the man” (hence the logo). Nick explains, “It was like, alright, so she can’t write anymore and I can’t do graphics anymore. Let them eat cupcakes. Screw you! They’ve actually ordered from us a couple of times. It’s a very incestuous kind of community.”

But Kawehi notes that Hawai‘i customers are very loyal. A large following of foodie ad-

venturers, students, and most notably, lunching office ladies are a big factor in their business’ success. “For example, ladies from the office will come in, have a cupcake, and the next day return to buy in bulk.”

The team envisions the lil’ beasts as another staple dessert far beyond any pre-claimed trend. When Nick first started researching, he found Wall Street Journal articles recognizing how successful the model of a cupcake shop was, due to small start-up costs and growing popularity. Those were written a decade ago. The duo concurs, “It used to be low brow, and now, it’s like personalized cakes. It speaks for single people or couples. It works really well if you don’t want the commitment of a cake. Even people who buy six for themselves, I think, feel less glutinous. It’s not like I just bought a cake and I’m taking it home. I could give one away to a friend … or I could eat them all.”

Let Them Eat Cupcakes is located at 35 S. Beretania Street. For more information, visit letthemeatcupcakes808.com.

At only 22 years old, Kahalu‘u native James Donohue is the executive chef of Wolfgang’s Steakhouse. Shown here in Wolfgang’s dry-aging room.

IN The KITcheN w ITh...

James Donohue, executive chef of Wolfgang’s Steakhouse Waikīkī

T EXT BY LISA YAMA d A | IMAGES BY J OHN H OOK

James Donohue has a lot on his plate – a 32-ounce Porterhouse steak to be exact. At only 22 years old, Donohue is the executive chef of Wolfgang’s Steakhouse in Waikīkī, one of six locations established by Wolfgang Zwiener, who served for decades as the head waiter of New York City’s most celebrated steakhouse, Peter Luger’s.

Though Donohue spent a brief four months in the Kapi‘olani Culinary Arts Program, he learned the basics of cooking while working at Watercolor, a four-diamond resort in Florida. “I always loved to cook, or

I guess I loved to eat more than I loved to cook,” says the Kahalu‘u native. “Florida was my first experience in culinary, and getting a job in the kitchen was how I realized I wanted to be around food all the time.”

As luck would have it, Donohue returned to Hawai‘i right when Wolfgang’s was opening. He applied and was hired in what he calls the lowest post in the kitchen, the potatofry station, where he made exactly what one would expect: things like onion rings, potato chips and mashed potatoes. “I thought it was cool at the time because I thought, ‘Who

else has a job where they come to work and peel potatoes all day long?’” Peeling potatoes, though, would not satisfy Donohue. Dedicated and passionate, Donohue quickly moved up the ranks, working in each kitchen station and learning the ropes before being asked to take the reins.

He worked his way into salads, but soon enough got bored with the leafy greens and dressings. “It was too easy,” he says, “so I would walk around during my shift and try to find a new station I could learn at.” He cooked his way into the broiler station, and

then made the chilly move to New York to work in the fast-paced kitchen of Wolfgang’s on Park Avenue in the sauté station. Though the restaurant is only about half the size of the Waikīkī location, they serve on average 400 dinners a night. After working in New York for a few months, Donohue moved back to Hawai‘i to be Wolfgang’s kitchen manager, and within a week, the executive chef resigned. “I told the general manager, ‘Hey, I think I can do a better job. Give me a chance.’ And he did.”

Though he gained experience working under pressure on Park Avenue, nothing prepared Donohue for one of his earlier moments as executive chef. “It was Christmas night and we had 200 people in the restaurant,” he recalls. “The ticket machines didn’t want to work, and when there’s 28 different servers wanting something from you and you’re trying to run a nine-man kitchen line, it gets a little confusing.”

Like its precursor, Wolfgang’s dry-ages its USDA-certified Prime beef in the is-

land’s largest dry-aging room for 28 days, giving the steaks a charred, crisp exterior and a meaty, juicy interior. Butchered to order, the steaks come sizzling in clarified butter and can be accompanied by heaping sides like lobster mac and cheese, fluffy mashed potatoes and creamed spinach. But unlike most steakhouses (including other Wolfgang’s locations), which often have an enclosed, basement-like, boy’s club feeling, Wolfgang’s Waikīkī is airy and refreshing, with high ceilings and large glass windows overlooking Kalākaua Avenue. The glass wine case allows guests to choose from more than 400 varieties.

As a chef, it’s easy to feel stifled in the culture of a corporate restaurant, where the steaks must be prepared consistently order after order after order, but Donohue is unfazed and finds creativity in the process.

“When I worked in New York, I staged in a French restaurant and the chef wanted me to understand why we were doing every little

detail, even something as simple as reducing heavy cream before adding garlic or pesto. My creativity stems from showing other people why we are doing it this way or that, and then I start thinking in my head about what I want to do next.”

Already, Donohue knows the meaning of hard work, sometimes at the restaurant for up to 20 hours a day and normally no less than 12. It’s an ethic that will propel forward his hopes to open a restaurant of his own someday, which will probably be a French cafe or maybe Italian. Regardless, what Donohue hopes most is that people enjoy his food. “My favorite part of cooking is watching people’s reactions. People get a paycheck, they get that feeling of accomplishment. People eat my food, if they enjoy it, I feel good. I know I did something right.”

Wolfgang’s Steakhouse Waikīkī is located on level three of the Royal Hawaiian Center. For more information, visit wolfgangssteakhouse.net/waikiki.

U PCOMING E XHIBITIONS

The Contemporary Museum, Spalding House

Tenth Biennial of Hawai‘i Artists and Hawai‘i Art Now celebrate the high caliber of contemporary island art

Biennial of Hawai‘i Artists X February 23 – July 22, 2012

Every two years since 1993, TCM Spalding House has invited six artists to choose a gallery space to either show a body of work or develop a site-specific installation. It’s the only exhibition of its kind in Hawai‘i, conceived to be a complement and an alternative to the juried exhibitions that take place annually throughout the state. The result for viewers is the chance to more fully appreciate and understand each artist’s sensibilities, ideas and techniques. Biennial of Hawai‘i Artists X reflects the Honolulu Academy of Arts’ ongoing commitment to show local artists and support the creation of significant new work. Collectively, the visions of the artists express the diversity of perspectives being considered by artists living and working in the state of Hawai‘i today. This year’s Biennial will feature artwork by Mary Babcock (O‘ahu), Solomon Enos (O‘ahu), Jianjie Ji (O‘ahu), Jaisy Hanlon (Maui), Sally Lundburg (Hawai‘i) and Bruna Stude (Kaua‘i).

Hawai‘i Art Now

February 9 – April 22, 2012

Since the first Biennial of Hawai’i Artists in 1993, 58 artists have been selected to show their work. While Biennial X goes on view, viewers also have a chance to visually catch up with artists from the past nine Biennials. The museum invited them to submit work completed within the last two years. The participating artists include Eli Baxter, Gaye Chan, Jacqueline Rush Lee, Tom Lieber, Cade Roster, Maika‘i Tubbs, Jason Teraoka, Linda Yamamoto, Scott Yoell and many more. Tragically, two past Biennial artists have passed away since they participated in the exhibition, photographer Sergio Goes and sculptor Michael Tom. James Jensen, curator of contemporary art, worked with the families of the two artists in selecting and lending work to the exhibition, and as a result, both will be represented.

Mary Babcock

Sally Lundburg

Bruna Stude

Art on the Walls of Hotel Renew

G ROUP SHOW CURATED bY J O hn KOGA

F EBRUARy 16 – A PRIL 2

From February 16 through April 2, Hotel Renew will host 11 local contemporary artists, selected by curator John Koga specifically for the hotel. On display throughout the modern boutique hotel will be art by three-dimensional art-

ists Garid Chapman, Nicole Naone and Marika Emi. Two-dimensional artists will include Ben Thomas, Drew Broderick, Jason Teraoka, John Koga, Laura Marguiles, Lawrence Seward, Tiffany Torre and Juvana Soliven.

The FLYoVer

John

Heckathorn

NTERVIEW BY L ISA Y AMA d A | I MAGE BY S HAWN A N d REWS

Only recently did I have the privilege of getting to know John Heckathorn, prolific food writer, editor and professor. I got to know John as writer in March 2007 when I read his article in Honolulu Magazine, “Lucky You Eat Hawai‘i.” Proposed with the question, “If you had to leave Hawai‘i for a long time, and then came back for a visit, what would you have to eat?”, John blurted out the first thing that came to mind: “chili chicken plate from Zippy’s.” Unpretentious, ever grateful, John closed with the following: “We don’t know how lucky we are to eat here. I couldn’t move away. I’d starve.”

My second encounter came in real life when I accompanied Jason Cutinella of Nel-

la Media Group to speak to John’s class of Hawai‘i Pacific University students on “the journalist as entrepreneur.” It wasn’t our time within the fluorescent-lit class that left the greatest impression, but what happened after. It was a Friday evening, a First Friday to be exact, and by the time we left class, the streets of Chinatown were already buzzing. For the next 90 minutes, we hung with John, a plastic cup of white wine in his hand, a smile never leaving his face. He was so at ease, still in his element even amidst 20-somethings. It occurred to me then that the reason John was able to tell such a great story was that he connected with people. He could understand the

inner workings of a food or a person, without judgment, and people were drawn to that.

My third encounter happened about a month before his passing. I asked his advice for our Food Issue, and he was only too willing to oblige, culling thoughts from his decades of experience. Though my encounters with John were brief, they were enduring. Reading his recent writings now, I can just about hear him speaking aloud, the intentioned and raspy tonal quality of his voice causing me to go or not to go. Full of life, he loved and he laughed, and I can only bet he’s still smiling over us now as we enjoy the food and culture he’s spoken of so fondly.