Food

We had a lot of opportunities to experiment with new foods in Maui. Two weeks in any given place gives you a chance to get a feeling for the regional cuisine. We actually found it more difficult to find local foods than we expected. Most restaurants served typical meat and potatoes types of dishes that catered to the cruise crowd. For a land surounded by the vast Pacific Ocean and settled by a diverse conglomeration of Pacific Rimmers, we figured they offered more than midwestern fare. We found what we were looking for.
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Rather than a recap of every meal- I'll run through some of the interesting fare we had. For the first week of the vacation we mostly made food and ate in the cabin. Hana offered a single general store from which to buy food (we bought some grub at a grocery store near the airport to save money but ended up mostly buying from the general store). In West Maui, we had had a choice of spending big money for food or making our own in the hotel suite. We split about half and half. Here's our recap.

Fish-
No real surprise its an island. However the surprise was more in the variety. Let see there was: Ono, Ahi, Aku, Opakapaka, Onaga, Gindai , Ehu , Uku, Lehi, Mahimahi, Opah, Spearfish, and Tako. Huh you say? Yeah, they pretty much all made it onto our plates at some point during the two weeks. Some were types of tuna, some were types of snapper, the rest were types of other fish you see such as swordfish. They pretty much had Mahimahi everywhere, kind of like haddock in New England.

Poke-
(sounds like pokay, rhymes with okay)- I ate more poke than most Hawaiians. Basically its raw fish chopped up and marinated in something. Typically it was Ahi Shoyo (Japanese soy sauce). Poke- tuna chopped and mixed with soy sauce, onions, green onions, and (don't tell Katie) seaweed. To top it off it only cost $6-$8 a pound. They also had other versions. One supermarket had about 20 different types set up in the deli including spicy ahi, tako, octopus, and other fish. After a week of eating for lunch, dinner, and breakfast, I sort of got tired of it.

Chris is very excited about the poke we bought at the grocery store

Poi-
Yeah, you've heard of it but until you taste it you have no idea what you're in for. Our first experience was when we bought it from Hasegawa's General Store in Hana. Here's a couple things to keep in mind:
#1- pay attention to the check out girl's instructions on how to prepare and eat poi
#2- Poi is a condiment and not a side dish.
#3- Poi is served cold not hot.
Let's just say our first experience was a little disappointing and left us each with a plate full of starchy warm brown goo that even the cats wouldn't touch. Turns out, again, its a condiment. Therefore, you are supposed to mix it with other stuff. I liked mine with roasted pork; it picks up the flavor of the meat and gives it a hardier, thicker consistency. I ended up liking it. Katie did not.

Mmmmm heated poo.

Lomi Lomi-
Basically Pico De Gallo with raw salmon in it. Mmmm.

Pork Lau Lau-
Pork and salted butterfish wrapped in taro leaves (a bitter green sort of like spinach) and steamed. I enjoyed thoroughly, Katie did not. (It might be noted that I pretty much eat anything and if people consume it, I generally can find a reason to like it.)

The Lau Lau is the dark stuff behind the shredded pork.

Sweet Potatoes-
The Hawaiian sweet potato was spectaular. Very sweet and very purple on the inside; they seemed to get even more colorful the more you cook them. The first time we baked them on the grill at the cabin Katie accused me of burning them because they were so dark. Delicious. We had them at the luau as well.

Breadfruit-
Unfortunately, we were only able to try this once. It was another suprisingly good veggie. Basically sort of starchy like a tuber but topped off with a sweet red chili sauce. We got the breadfruit at a road side stand outside Hana for a couple of bucks, we figured we had nothing to lose.

Mmmm breadfruit. You can even eat the outside of it.

Fruit-
Mostly served as garnishes for drinks... I kid. The road to Hana was littered with fruit stands and our cabin had some fresh stuff growing in the yard. Papaya, lechi, some fruit that starts with an S that we couldn't remember the name of, coconuts, guava, apple bananas, mangos, and more. I ate more fruit in the course of the two weeks than I did in all of 2007.

One of the many road side fruit stands

Macadamia nut banana bread and rambutans. Rambutans tasted like grapes.

Early morning harvesting of a guava from the ground

Apple bananas are so small, but yet so tasty!

Mmmmm papayas are yummy

Macadamia Nuts-
They're on and in everything.

Restaurants-
We put the links up for our favorite places. Hana had three places to eat. We tried one; then resorted to eating homemade food until we made it to West Maui. We went to a lu'au which was almost too much food...almost. There was a place called Aloha Mixed Plate, which served mixed plates. Go figure. Anyhow, apparently its a style stemming from the fruit plantation days where groups of plantation workers would eat together and "mix" plates of food. Hawaiian, Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino food all served together with two scoops of rice. (there's something significant about the two scoops, but not certain what.) We went to some high end fish places like Mama's Fish House in Central Maui and IO in West Maui. IO in particular showed some originality and experimentation with flavor (an example: cream of asparagus with curry soup). Mama's was a little more traditional but still very good. Eskimo Candy is local fish monger that supplies restaurants and has a cafe/deli attached to the warehouse. Probably the best fish and chips (ordered by Katie) and fried calamari I've had.

Overall I think a successful culinary vacation in addition to the sun and nature.


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